BornAgain490

Peter asked Jesus "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? seven times?" Peter is asking about the sin of a brother. So, ask yourself: who is my brother? We who are in Christ are brothers and sisters of all others who are in Christ. So, if you see a brother or sister in Christ committing what you believe is abuse a child, stop them, rebuke them, counsel them, instructs them, and if the abuse rises to the level of criminal behavior, report them. And if you've ever been in court and witnessed the impact statements of some abuse victims, who've suffered horrendous abuse, rise above their anguish and speak words of forgiveness to their abusers, ... well, I don't know about you, but I broke down in tears, and I always thought in over thirty years on the job I'd seem it all. Jesus instructs us how we should be with our fellow brothers, but He also instructs us how we should be with those that hate us, or are our enemies, or persecute us, or take our possessions from us. Will any of us be perfect? Only when we are glorified with Christ. Blessings.

You can call Gentiles Plan A if you like. But I prefer to say God chose/purposed Israel to be His holy instrument to be a light by which it would draw Gentiles out of darkness, away from idol worship, and into faith in God. The teaching that the Gentile church, was God's Plan B is a false dispensational teaching which posits that Jesus came only to save the Jews. This false teaching argues further that, since the Jews rejected Jesus, God turned His attention to the Gentiles to establish a "Gentile church." As I've argued before, not only here but in live discussions with dispensational teachers, this 'Plan B' argument is unbiblical to say the least. No. God did target Gentiles from the beginning: Seth, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and everyone prior to Jacob who had faith in God and in God's promised Seed, were all Gentiles. God then chose the nation of Israel to be a priestly nation and a light to the Gentile nations. God did have Israel in His plan of redemption, but not just to redeem Israelis, but to be a priestly nation and a light to draw the Gentile nations to God. God's plan was to save as many as in the world that would have faith, and God purposed Israel as His instrument to draw the nations to Himself. It's one fold when the two are joined, and scripture clearly states it is one. Just as when you take two groups of olives from two different olive trees from two different lands, and crush them in one vat to get the oil from them to make one bottle of oil. Of course, Paul uses the olive tree analogy, where Jews are cut off and Gentiles are grafted in to the one olive tree. Yes, the Israel of God is the total sum of all believing Jews and all believing Gentiles. Blindness in part is permanent, it stays. Blindness in part means that there are some Jews that will never believe. That is what "I part" means. The phrase "until the fulness of the Gentiles come in" refers to the completed sum total of the Israel of God, i.e., all faithful Jews and all faithful Gentiles. When that occurs, the blinded Jews remain blinded and lost with the lost Gentiles.

As the Bible says, which I included in a prior post, God's wrath is revealed from heaven every day against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. (Romans 1:18). The "day" of the Lord does not literally mean one day, and the "year" of recompenses does not refer to a literal period of 360 days; these are figures of speech. Just as the 144,000 in Revelation figuratively and symbolically refers to a great number no one can count, and the five months in Rev. 9 is likewise figurative and symbolic of eternal condemnation for all that are not in Christ.

I did not say that. Symbolism in the Bible is as important and meaningful as all writing genres found in the Bible.

Hello @faroukAlso in Acts, after the apostles were beaten for proclaiming the name of Jesus, the apostles rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for Christ's name.

I believe the priority will be to round up all those who've already been ordered by a court to be deported back, but haven't, then all those that committed a crime in the US but remain at-large, along with those that have a criminal history from their country of origin, and lastly those that overstayed visas. I just don't believe, nor can I envision, the US doing anything similar to what Germany did in the holocaust, or what the US did with America-Japanese internment.

There are some Christians (pastors and laity) who believe and teach that God is not in our suffering; that all manner of suffering is of the devil, by the devil, and from the devil. Is this true? Does Satan bring about, or the primary cause, of our suffering? Or is suffering something we bring upon ourselves? Or is suffering brought onto us by chance or random happenstance? Or, is suffering brought onto us by God, with an ultimate purpose for us and for those that experience and endure suffering? In the Bible, Job is described as the most righteous man of his day. Despite the fact that Job pleased God, God permitted Satan to afflict Job and cause Job to suffer financially, familialy, physically, and spiritually. Job had one question: Why? Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron, rebelled against Moses and was thus struck by God with leprosy. As she suffered her affliction she was required to remain outside the camp of Israel and outside the presence of God for seven days. Joseph suffered at the hands of his brothers, and later at the false accusations of Potiphar's wife. We are told that God was with Joseph in all of his suffering and afflictions, and that God meant for good the evil that Joseph's brothers had committed. If God is not in suffering, how can those who teach as much reconcile the presence of God in the sufferings and afflictions of the aforementioned? Many Christians around the world suffer calamities common to everyone, and then there are those who suffer great persecution, torture, and death simply because they are in Christ. God has a purpose for the suffering in the body of Christ, even when we don't understand why. Let us continue to pray for the Body of which we belong, and particularly pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ suffering brutal persecutions, with such evil occurring as you read this. Amen amen.

Faith is indeed a gift, given to all who are born again in Christ, and it involves more than simply believing, for even the devils believe. The difference between someone who's received the gift of saving faith and someone who has not, but says they simply believe is this: the one who has been gifted saving faith is in Christ and lives according to the Spirit and not in the flesh, and minds the things of the Spirit and not the things of the flesh. Whereas the one without saving faith, who claims to be a believer, will live according to the flesh and mind the things of the flesh; they cannot please God. Their god is their belly, and they lack confident assurance of their salvation.

It didn't just rain, and yes, the flood came and killed everyone on the first day. Genesis 7:10-12 "And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. ... the same days were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights." All that water from under the deep, and all water from the firmament of the heaven above the earth was unleashed by God, which created a violent and sudden catastrophic flooding event that no one could survive, and no one did survive. It was so massive, so violent, so sudden, that it even changed the geological topography of the entire world. It was worse than all the tsunamis and all the flooding of Katrina, Helene and all the hurricanes combined throughout history. Revelation is full if symbolism. God's wrath was poured out when He flooded the earth, and His wrath was perfected when all that He had repented of creating were dead, which happened on the first day. Why God flooded the earth for 150 days after He had killed all that He intended to kill, God only knows. What we do know is that God stopped the waters from heaven, restrained the rain, stopped the waters of the deep, and the waters returned to from off the earth until the ark rested on the mount, and some time after God told Noah to "Go forth of the ark."

God knew Israel would fail to be a light to the nations, which is why the True Light - Jesus Christ - God in flesh, came. Jesus came as God's suffering servant, He came to perfect the will of God, He came to be a perfect sinless sacrifice to die a sinners death to absorb the wrath of God on our behalf, to be a ransom for many, to draw the nations to Himself through faith in Him, in who He is and in all He's done, in His death, burial, and resurrection. I never said Gentiles were first, but I guess Gentiles are first, since neither Seth, nor Enoch, nor Noah, nor Shem, nor Abraham, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, nor anyone that came before Jacob who had faith in the promised Seed, were Jews, they were all Gentiles. There's only one harvest, though, because there is only one body - the BODY OF CHRIST, which is what Paul calls the ISRAEL OF GOD.

Paul always uses the term "Israel" to refer to lost Jews still under the law of Moses, that is: when he is not referring to saved Jews like himself or other apostles. When Paul refers to the "church" he includes in that term saved Jews. The distinction that Paul always makes is that there are lost Jews and there is the church, which includes all saved Jews.

In Matthew 24:37, "the days of Noe" specifically refers to "the days that were before the flood..." v.38. Here, Jesus is drawing a comparison with how people behaved in the days before the flood to how people will be behaving in the days just before Jesus returns. In Noah's day, God's wrath likely killed everyone in the firsr hour, even though the text first mentions the fact that every living thing on dry land died within the first 40 days. (Gen. 7:17-23). So, the wrath of God was not one year long, because the effects of God's wrath were immediate upon those whom God judged. Likewise, in Luke 17 Jesus is comparing the behavior of the people in Lots day just prior to God's wrath, which killed all in Sodom and Gomorrha in one day, with the people in the day just before Jesus returns. Therefore, the use of "day" and "year" are both poetically and metaphorically to refer to an undetermined time.

Day and Year are used metaphorically to refer to a period of time. Otherwise you've got God saying two different things about the very same thing: it's a day, but it's also a year. Told you before: you have difficultly with metaphorical language.

Which refers to all that are the faithful remnant.

You dont know, because you've not studied God's word. Instead, you've been taught a perverted theology that perverts God's word. Had you not been so wrapped up in dispensational heresy, and had you studied God's word instead of the theology you were taught, you'd know that God's ultimate purpose for Israel was, namely: to be a priestly nation, set apart to be a blessing and a light to the nations, in order to bring the Gentile nations out from worshipping false gods, into knowing and worshipping the one true God. Neither were Gentiles nor the church God's "Plan B". Gentiles were God's targeted people from the beginning, and Israel was the instrument chosen by God by which God would draw the Gentile nations of the world unto Himself. If you studied just the word, and not the hobbled scripture you study to suit the private dispensational interpretation that you've bought into, you would clearly see that Israel, though chosen by God and loved by God, disobeyed God and failed to do what God had commanded it to do. Israel's disobedience and utter failure was the reason God came in the flesh, to fulfill and perfect His plan of redemption for the entire world, not just the Jews. When Jesus said he had come to fulfill the law and the prophets, his final words on the cross are evidence of that fulfillment: "Tetelestai!" God has always had only one plan of redemption (by grace through faith in the Seed) , only one people to redeem (faithful Gentiles and faithful Jews), and only one eternal destiny for His people (the new heaven and new earth and new Jerusalem). The redeemed are one people, the sum total of which is every saved Gentile and every saved Jew, which makes up one body called the Body of Christ, which Apostle Paul calls the Israel of God.