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@jswauto, we can agree that God pursues us like the shepherd does for his one sheep out of his 100, but I object categorically to the word "reckless" in describing God and his love. That word has negative connotation that should never be associated with God. Dictionary.com defines the word...

@jswauto, after years of studying that passage and others, I have come to the conclusion that the "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" is a whole lifetime of rebellion against his influence and truth so that, at some point, God says, "Have it your own way" and lets the person remain in his sinful...

@VeritatisVerba, for me, the objective test is the Bible itself in its whole context. Of course, every decision about pastors must be bathed with persistent prayer for God's gift of wisdom to discern his will.

Yes, @jswauto, human pride often gets in the way of true beliefs, because people want their reasoning and experience always to be true and right instead of being willing to be taught how we can improve our thinking and feeling. That's why God commands us through James, Jas 4:7 Submit...

@VeritatisVerba, respectfully, you're still trying to define and interpret the Bible by what it doesn't say and what people at that time thought it meant. God inspired the prophets and apostles to write the whole Bible. Therefore, we must go by the ways those inspired people used the words, yes...

@jesus lover, Christianity is the only religion that believes in the Bible's description of a fully-human man dying to free us from God the Father's guilty verdict that we deserve and rising permanently as fully-God to give people new life that will last forever.

@VeritatisVerba, the best way to know if a doctrine is true is to compare the Bible's passages that say similar ideas and to look at a church's beliefs and also compare them with the Bible's teachings in context. The Bible is God's inspired book, as it claims.

Here is the context of Jesus' reference to the wide and narrow gates. Jesus says that the wide gate is "easy" and that it has many people entering it who do not follow the "golden rule" of verse 12. The people going through both gates are recognized by their actions done in humble service...

@Frankj, you are asking an unanswerable question, because the Bible doesn't say what our resurrection bodies will be like, sexually or physically. It appears in 1 Corinthians 15:42-44 that they will be these bodies perfectly transformed, strengthened, and full of God's glory, but beyond that...

@VeritatisVerba, you make the mistake of defining the word "logos" in terms of the culture of the Greeks and a secular dictionary, whereas the best way to define who or what the "Word" or "Logos" is by the whole Gospel of John. Since God inspired the Bible, we need to define its words the way...

We sang a contemporary song in church recently, the chorus of which says, "Praise the Father, praise the Son, praise the Spirit, three in one. God of glory, majesty; praise forever the King of Kings!" It got me thinking about how we look at the Bible. I think we need to watch out for the...

@Holy999, we are already perfectly-holy in God our Judge's sight because of Jesus' holiness, but we need to run the race in our daily lives like Paul toward the prize of perfect holiness at our bodily resurrection: Php 3:8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of...

@Holy999, I would say only what Jesus says in the following three verses, that no one knows when he will come: Mat_24:44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. Mat_24:50 the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect...

@Lamb, first, as usual, the context helps us out, at least a little bit: Mat 7:7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. Mat 7:8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened...

@Frankj, I'm afraid that you're taking an idea out of its context when you say that being like the angels "implies not male and female but non-sexual at all." Jesus was just referring to our marital state in response to a ridiculous trap posed by the Pharisees: Mat 22:30 For in the...

Why do you even quote such outlying ideas, @MoreCoffee? That's not what most evangelical people would say.

@Holy999, when our bodies die, our souls go to God, while our bodies go to dust. When Jesus returns, we who trust in Jesus will be raised from the dead. I believe the Bible says that our bodies will be these same, but spiritually-transformed (that is, filled with and guided by the Spirit) bodies...

@MoreCoffee, are you sure that those evangelical Christians said that "the Bible is God in the sense of being incarnate Word"? What in the world did they mean by that description, and what do you think they meant, if they said it that way?

@VeritatisVerba, I don't care whether or not they claim to be biblical, but I think that we must discern through attendance and questioning whether or not they are biblical in their approach to the whole Scripture. That means that we must know what the Bible says in evaluating pastors in its light.

For about 11 years, I left God's call to be a pastor to be an English teacher and then a sales manager instead, but God renewed his old call and sent me into the church ministry to 7 congregations until it was time for me to retire from being a pastor to become a published author. The last two...