The Septuagint which is at least nine centuries older than the Masoretic Text says that Goliath was 18 cubits and a span. This would have put him at a height of 6'9 which considering the average height of a Jewish man in that day was 5'4 he would have still been a giant in the eyes of the Jews. Another interesting thing about the Septuagint is found in the book of Job. The phrase sons of God were never used to describe angels, it simply said the angels of God so if someone was using this manuscript in the day of Christ or earlier the book of Job would have never been used to prove that the sons of God in Genesis 6 were angels. Why did the Jewish scribes change angels of God in Job to sons of God when writing they wrote the Masoretic Text? They probably did it because they rejected Jesus's claim that He was the Only Begotten Son of the Father. Hebrews says that God has never called an angel son, yet the Masoretic Text does it 3 times. Food for thought..............
There’s only one way to follow a foot washer. That’s to wash feel. Jesus was the physical incarnation of God’s heart: “I do only what I see my Father doing.” I st out of the intimacy of the Godhead that Jesus acts. And he acts in perfect harmony with his Abba and the Spirit. He acts before he preached. I bored of seeing church leadership preach about foot washing. If they want to lead like Jesus they need to get down from the lectern, roll up their sleeves and actually start washing feet. That would be prophetic leadership. Mouth shut. Sleeves rolled up. On your knees before the dirty feet of your community.
Faith seems to be a profoundly human behaviour, shown to have many benefits in terms of individual psychological resilience and social solidarity. it has the capacity to elevate a society culturally. The corporate endeavour towards the transcendent can lead to development in the sacred arts, including great architecture and music. Not only can faith bring a shared identity like this, but it is often the bedrock for a healthy shared social morality. The problem seems to arise when corporate faiths become attached to power structures which use it to manipulate or subjugate populations, or those sections of a faith that have become associated with it’s leadership begin to use their moral authority to develop their power base. In this way all organised religion exhibits the negative aspects of cultic power play. Characterising normal human emotions and behaviours as temptations to sins that must be fought binds adherents in shame cycles of failure, guilt and repentance. Internal shame leads to ever more fanatical religiosity. And shame and condemnation are used as a way to police the borders between the in-group and outsiders. Christian Evangelicalism, like many other organised religions is, at heart, morally compromised and profoundly uncivilised. It relies for it’s so called morality, on the authority of a literal reading of ancient Scriptures, written in cultures with a moral code that only made sense in the original historical context and we would now consider brutal and backward. This leaves the church open to a raft of wicked theological justifications for blatantly inhumane practices and a slavish submission to a literalist interpretation of the scriptures, even where they reflect the brutal morality of primitive cultures. This leaves no room for the individual to recognise any true empathy for his fellow man. The profoundly progressive “Do as you would be done by” and “love thy neighbour as thyself” in the teachings of Jesus are lost beneath the dictates of a patriarchal authoritarianism, where a literalist interpretation of Scripture can be used to justify the vilest crimes against humanity. These crimes have historically included slavery for hundreds of years, the ethnic cleansing of indigenous populations in the new world, the exploitation of colonial peoples and nations, the exploitation of the working classes by their overlords, apartheid, and the holocaust. Not to mention all the evil of the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the Protestant Reformation. It continues to justify evil attitudes like ant-Semitism, homophobia, misogyny and racism. The fact that modern Christian Protestant thinking almost totally failed to challenge these outrages and actually still endorses many of them is testimony to the power of religious dogmatic belief over the rational mind and the feeling conscience. This power is so complete that otherwise intelligent people are capable of behaving like monstrous imbeciles in the name of a God of love. And those on the outside of this cultic group-think are left in a state that goes beyond outrage to astonished disbelief at the apparent hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance and sheer bloody-minded stupidity of believers. It is no accident that American Evangelicalism is synonymous with Christian Nationalism and has led the the current state of the GOP and the support for Donald Trump. “The very idea that a text should tell you what you should do is actually immoral. Because now you’re saying that whatever somebody writes has become moral for you. Morality should not be based on authority. It should be based on your empathy for the suffering of other human beings.” Dr Avalos
When I lived in Cumming , Ga. 9 years ago I fell in love with this church. Never found one like it anywhere. Not any state. It is one of my places I visit in my memory. As you get old and if not married life becomes so lonely. So we visit the good times in our minds This is a big testimony to their loving church. They reach out to the poor and struggling. They aren't about $..they have a lot of fellowship with each other. It's Bible based. I'm 65 now. It was my favorite church. The pastor reached out to everyone.
I always wondered that if God loved us why did he put that tree in the garden to tempt Adam and Eve in the first place. Kind of feels like a set up from the get go.
