Does the NT church include OT saints? My grandfather thought so. His position was historic premil. I followed my grandfather in this until I applied to my mission board in 1977, and had to write that I disagreed with their doctrinal statement where it said, "The church as peculiar to the age of grace." At the candidate committee, my friend said I came out after 2 hours, white as a sheet and sweating profusely. His interview only took ten minutes! So, they encouraged me to study out...

I am starting this thread because the previous once was locked before I could respond...

@JonShaff posted this...


Quoted by @JonShaff

Once again, you are conflating Faith.

Faith/Believe in John 20:31 is a Verb

Faith in Galatians 5:22 is a Noun

I agree with you. Faith is a noun and believe/belief/believing is a verb. Those who have faith exercise(put faith into action, which by definition, is a verb) their belief. You will not believe in anything you do not have faith in.

This is in the news with Brett Kavanaugh. He denies, and the woman looks to be a very unreliable witness. I tend to believe the story is not true. If it were, it would have come out earlier.

But the irony is, I would still support him, even if he groped a woman as a teenager. The idea that a man's life is disqualified for something he did drunk as a teen is just amazing to me.

Where did this thinking come from? Surely most Christians understand the foolishness of such an idea? Or...

Something has bothered me quite a bit that happens in our church. People come and people go. In talking to the ones that "go" a central theme seems to be "we were out a couple weeks due to sickness(etc.) and no one in leadership ever asked about us." "Now a year later, no one in leadership has ever asked about us."

So, in another thread, @1689Dave submitted that "that which is perfect..." is the Bible. And because he believes that Paul is referencing the bible, that is his conclusion: Perfect = Bible. Yes, we know the Bible is complete/perfect. But the Question remains, however, is that what Paul is referencing here? Could it be Christ, the eternal state, God's Love, the complete state of glorified man, etc?

Regardless of whether you are cessationist, how do we breakdown Paul's intended meaning of...

Is it now the new normal that defining words and using dictionaries as a basic first step foundation for studying the Scripture is now frowned upon?
I have run across several recent Bible college grads who when I use Strongs or other dictionaries/encyclopedias - or if they're not comfortable running Biblical languages (I use an old program with where I can see different language versions and try to link them up to each other) - or even just the dictionary. They immediately respond that you...

Born of God: Getting John 1:11-13 Right!
Instead, it is quite obvious from this context that the three points the apostle John lists here are in reference to the misconceptions of what Israelites perceived as their given covenantal “RIGHTS”[4]as direct descendants of Abraham:
not of blood = being a descendant or blood relative of Abraham (Rom. 9:7)
nor of the will of the flesh = being one who “pursued” or “ran after” the law so as to merit righteousness (Rom. 9:31)
nor of the will of man...

Has anyone heard that the SBC will not allow persons attending CBF associated churches to teach at SBC seminaries? I heard that the other day and just wondered whether it's correct. I'm not making any value statement here. Just asking for information.

On the 'Would you Stay? 3' thread, @Davyboy wrote:

2nd – “All” in the Greek is PASA, and it actually means “Every”. In the Bible, when Scripture is used in the singular it refers to an individual passage or book, not the whole Bible. So this means every passage of Scripture is useful. Thus, the erroneous Protestant reading of “pasa graphe” would mean every single passage of Scripture is exclusive. This would also mean Christians could not only use “sola Matthew,” or “sola Mark,” but could...

the following are some excerpts from a lesson I did on how to understand the Bible, feel free to comment on them, I will post new points as time goes by:

2 Timothy 3:16 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

The word study in 2 Timothy 2:15 means to be diligent.

The phrase rightly dividing in Greek has the idea of making a straight cut.

It seems to give me the idea of precision.

We need precision,...