Featured Was the Kingdom of Heaven Really at Hand When Jesus Came

I don't understand. Which taught you that the office of pastor was valid, your own reading of Acts 8 or did some pastor have to read Acts 8 for you and tell you what it meant?

That, obviously, is a rhetorical question, the point of which, I hope, is obvious.

Of course, there is an appropriate place for pastors, teachers and preachers and elders, etc. The fact that there are people who have a talent for teaching and a passion for the word of God and a desire to dig down into the details and pull out treasures that others might never notice and all that sort of thing does not imply that there is some sort of special revelation given to such people. A pastor is just a regular human being and he has no more or less supernaturally given ability to read and understand the bible than any one of the member of his congregation. The difference between him and someone else an innate set of talents that drive him toward dedicating his time toward the study of God's word and a desire to make such studies and the teaching of God's word his vocation. Such people would be better at teaching the bible for the same reason a carpenter is better at building tables and a policeman is better at driving a car.

In short, I was not suggesting that bible study is easy or that one cannot become an bible expert or that some are not better at teaching than others, etc. I'm simply saying that the bible is not written in some sort of code that only the initiated know or that the only way for the scripture to be understood is if God does some sort of supernatural miracle that allows the code to be revealed to your mind.

This is almost a valid point, except that you immediately go into what is effectively an argument against this very point....

Errant definitions and other causes of doctrinal confusion are not caused by scripture, right? Van didn't get the idea that the church has replaced Israel from scripture, someone taught him that - some pastor taught him that. The gross distortion of nearly every word in the entire Christian lexicon that has been intentionally performed by Calvinists isn't something they got out of the bible, it's them conforming the bible to their doctrine. I isn't God's word that teaches them that God cannot change in any way whatsoever, it is the pastors and teachers (i.e. seminary professors) who drive their doctrine into the minds of their students by intentionally altering the definitions of common words for precisely the purpose of teaching something the the bible itself, if it were simply read and taken to mean what it seams to mean, would never even imply.

I have had hundreds of similar experiences. I know just precisely what you're saying here but don't you see that you're arguing against your own position? Was it not your intention for people to simply read Romans 5:6 and take it to mean what any third grade child would understand it to mean? Do you think that there is any pastor on planet Earth that has the words it would take to cause someone to understand that passage if they can't understand it by just reading it? Whatever errors that existed in the responses you got, would they not all be rectified by simply reading that text and taking to mean what it plainly states rather than for them to be trying to read their doctrine into the text?

You can just about take it to the bank that he hadn't read them, right?
To whatever degree he has read them, they were almost certainly not the actual bible but the JW adulteration of the bible, the "New World Translation" or whatever.

No. It wasn't because he was missing the Spirit but because the truth had been taught out of his mind by his pastor (i.e. cult leader in this case). JW's aren't JW's because God has forsaken them and thereby made it impossible for them to be saved. On the contrary, God's actual word is there for them to read and to understand if they so choose. The fact that you didn't instantly convince someone who had very likely grown up as a JW and been indoctrinated with its lies for his entire life by a single instance of quoting him four verses of scripture isn't surprising at all. So much so that it doesn't even count as evidence that he failed to be convinced because God failed to impart His Spirit to the man.

Because you had exposed his lie sufficiently for even him to realize that he can't have his kids hear the plain reading of scripture if he desires them to grow up to be JWs!

Romans 10:14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”​

Just who is the preacher supposed to preach to, if not the unbeliever, and what is the preacher supposed to preach if not the word of God, plainly read and understood?

Well, once again, the existence of preachers is a biblical thing but besides that...

They're all anecdotal, of course, but the Gideon Bible Society reports hundreds, surely thousands, of stories about people who have come to Christ as a result of encountering one of the bibles that were in a hotel room.

 

This is definitely false. It is the gospel itself that is the power of God unto salvation.

Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. 17 For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”​

Combine that passage with the one I quoted above....

Romans 10:14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”​

How can the gospel be the power unto salvation if you have be born again (i.e. saved) to understand the scriptures where the gospel is found?

Well, hearing and believing (and by implication, understanding), but exactly! Where is the gospel found if not in the scripture?

WHAT?! What is he to preach, if the the bible?

People are NOT saved by the preaching of their personal testimony but by the preaching of the gospel of God as written in God's word. If that gospel happens to be couched within someone's testimony, then that fine, well and good, but it isn't the personal testimony that saves, it is Jesus Christ and Him crucified and raised from the dead according to the scriptures.

This makes two errors. First you're simply incorrect. There are plenty of people who have read the bible for themselves and learned a very great deal about the deeper things of God. John Bunyan (author of Pilgrim's Progress - second most sold book in world history) was almost entirely self-taught, just to give one famous example.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly in the context of this discussion, is that you've now moved the goal post on me here. I would not try to argue that the average person would normally come to an understanding of many of the deeper truths without some help from someone who had already been educated in those deeper truths, but even granting that much is no victory for your side of our disagreement here because none of those deeper truths are written into the bible with some sort of secret code that is indecipherable except by those who are blessed with an extra layer divine revelation. Those truths are all very much biblical and can be taught or simply understood via the plain reading of it. Indeed, the more plainly read the scripture, the more valid the doctrine which comes from it.

Once again, you quote a scripture that I presume you desire for people to read and to take to mean what it plainly states in order to argue that the bible cannot be simply read and understood to mean what it plainly states. How can you not see that as a contradiction?


In closing, the correct paradigm or approach or attitude (whatever you call it) toward formulating doctrine happens to require three things, a sort of trinity of principles, if you will...

• A correct understanding of who God is.
• Sound reason.
• The scriptures plainly read.

Note that I didn't number those items, as there isn't any way to rank those three things. They are co-equal in importance. They overlap and undergird each other. You can neither read nor understand the scriptures without sound reason, you cannot understand who God is without both the scripture and sound reason and God Himself is Reason (John 1:1-4 - the citation there just circles you back to the scripture again and around and round it goes). It is an interwoven circle of wisdom that cannot be undone without visiting disaster upon one's doctrine.


Outstanding post by the way! I mean, seriously! If everyone here made actual arguments, good or bad, like you've done, I'd never have sufficient time to respond to it all. It's so refreshing and gratifying!