So you should maybe not set yourself up so high as a judge of everybody else regarding things that have nothing to do with right or wrong, good or bad, but just what you expected or didn't expect.

Come on.

Just read your Bible. It's obvious that on every page we are running a race, it's not over until it's over, and that we need the Holy Spirit to run it. If we grieve, quench or insult the HS, we will LOSE it. The Holy Spirit IS OUR SEAL.

What do you want me to say?

Yes, any believer can and must love God with all our heart, soul and mind and our neighbor as ourself. This is what is expected of us, that we die to self and live to God, that we reckon ourself dead to sin. Any believer is capable of doing this. Yes.

Read your Bible. Paul was perfect, even though some of the antinomian posters here try to say he was a terrible sinner to the day he died. He wasn't. He walked in the Spirit 100 percent, or at least 99.9 percent.

David is another example in the OT of walking in the Spirit. When David killed Golieth, he did it in faith, even telling the giant that "God will deliver you into my hand." And He did, but it was David who by faith picked up the five stones, went out to meet the giant, and slew him by the grace of God. True, David fell, but David repented and was restored in his relationship with God, but he paid dearly for his sin in this life.

The Bible says without faith it's impossible to please God. When I listen to some of the posters here, you make it sound like faith means doing absolutely nothing, that the less you do the more faith you have somehow.

Lurker, so are you saying here that to be a "good Christian" we just go to sleep and remember that Jesus' rightousness is ours, and don't worry about anything?

Is that what you're saying, that apathy and inaction is a virtue?

Because if it is, you are dead wrong. We are supposed to have a real righteousness, not an imputed righteousness. Jesus made a way of forgiveness, not a cop-out for living a life that includes truly loving God with all our heart, soul and mind and our neighbor as ourself.

If you want to know when I was first saved, it doesn't matter really, because the important question is not when or how, but what has happened since, and if I still consider myself to be saved.

My spiritual condition at this present moment is something I'm not willing to share with anybody on this board. I would discuss that kind of thing privately with somebody I trusted and whose opinion I valued, somebody like Abigail, but certainly not with the people on this board, most of whom I don't think know God, and some of whom, frankly, are quite demon-possessed and working quite hard for their master.

I don't really care what people's personal testimony is here because I'm not on this board to make friends. I just want to talk about the Bible here.

Sorry. And it annoys me when people get all friendly and black-slappy here also. I figure if people like each other that much, they should communicate privately. This forum is for hashing out doctrine and what we think the Bible is telling us about how to prepare for these days we are living in, which I think we are already in the Tribulation.

These men don't have a monopoly on the truth, and people are free to find truth anyplace they want to go looking for it, and will recognize it when it comes to them.

Vines and Matthew Henry, they leave me cold. Who needs them. They might be okay for a jumping off point, a catalyst, but that's about it.

You are good at finding reasons why people should not serve God, and why they should not believe the Bible. Your example is one that would also convince people not to ever want to be a Christian.

They are wilfully blind. They will not even consider they may be wrong, and just go tripping through the Bible like it's full of landmines, avoiding verses, redefining words, explaining away the verses.

The worst of these are the HyperDs like JD who have managed to nullify almost the entire Bible.

Theey never received a love of the truth. If they had received it, they would recognize the truth when they heard it and embrace it gladly. Instead, they run and hide from it, ignore it, and take up lame doctrines and heresies to kill their conscience and innoculate themselves from the truth.

I used to sit in churches and listen to OSAS every week. And although I had my serious doubts, the pressure to agree was huge. But when I heard others speaking out what I had already thought in my private readings of Scripture, it was an instant YES!

Sorry. You did make your point, kind of a double-satire.

I'm glad you oppose the war.

If these branches were never saved, why were they growing out of the vine? How did they get there? Didn't Jesus say that he was the vine and to abide (stay connected) to him, to allow his lifesap to flow through us, that we would bear fruit, not wither and die?

If Jesus commanded us to abide (stay connected) to him, would that not lead to the logical conclusion that we have the ability NOT to abide (stay connected)?

Otherwise, if it's a given, something that happens automatically, why did Jesus warn/command us to do it (abide)?

Since when is Matthew Henry the pope? We have Calvin, Scofield, Ratzinger, and now Matthew Henry to tell us what Jesus really meant, and to slavishly swallow every word.

Oh, no, no, no. I don't do babysitting. The prescription was for your parents to carry out. You can just give it to them and let them carry on.

I prescribe you some landing gear to come on down to earth.

Once you get down here, I prescribe you a good thrashing and put you in your room for a week with no TV, and to wean you completely off it thereafter, being careful not to send you into severe withdrawal.

After you've learned to stop acting like a spoiled brat and have learned how to sit still and focus for a few minutes, I prescribe you a nice Italian Bible in large letters, and you will be made to read at least five chapters a day and be tested on them, also to memorize at least five scriptures a day (really, it's not that hard). You can memorize the same verses in English as well because it will be good for your English skills.

After you have followed this prescription for at least a year, you will be fit to be let out of the house and into the public domain, but not until.

________

__________

No, it's not nonsense. If it was "nonsense," the advertising agencies wouldn't spend trillions to create these images, and Hollywood movies are an extension of the ad agencies. And they have obviously worked very well on Mike from NY who is so brainwashed and worldly that you couldn't pierce through with truth to him if you tried because he doesn't even have a clue about how well-brainwashed he is.

Jesus used many illustrations to make his points because people are REALLY THICK. Still we have people like you claiming everything's in code so as provide an excuse to ignore the whole teaching.

What proof do you have that the vine in Jesus' parable specifically refers to a Jewish vine to include only Jewish branches and Jewish fruit? Jesus said HE was the vine.

And the olive tree spoken of by Paul is admittedly a Jewish olive tree, but that the wild olive tree (gentiles) were and are grafted in, will still bear fruit, and that they can be broken off along with the "natural branches."

Same exact message Jesus taught in John.

So what's your point, since your ways are high like God's, far above what we can understand or reason? What is God telling you that makes you think Jesus is only for Jews to abide in and not Christians?

And if the Jews are the only ones who can abide in Jesus, why don't they?

Gag, choke.

The only thing you care about when it comes to WORDS, is how to explain them away by saying they weren't written to us but "to the Jews," and to just ignore them.

I believe you hate the Bible. You don't even usually know what it says but you know how to explain it away and turn it into a secret book of codes and types.

I've known you to berate women that their ears were waxed and they didn't have the Spirit if they didn't agree with you, to swallow your wacky heresies on your say-so because your ways are like God's and not like ours, of your supposed exclusive hot line to God.

You are a brainwashed dupe of the Illuminati, just like those women dressed in gray in the Communist Soviet Union who worked in the fields alongside the men while the state raised their children to be good little commies.

If you think fighting in wars means liberation, or abortion, or getting to sleep around like the men do, or to have your own porn to read like the men do --

You should try the real liberation that Jesus promises, Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free, and come on to me you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.

I'm sure there are a lot of cowardly men who would love to have you go in their place to breathe the DU and go kicking in doors and machine gunning families to death.