Old Testament Christian quoting fundies need to read 2 Corinthians 3:3-18

[ElsewheresDaughter]

The old covenant engraved on stone kills.... while the new covenant engraved by the Spirit on hearts brings life....these thumpers and misinformed old testament bringers of death need to open their eyes.


2 Corinthians 3:3-18

3 Clearly you are a letter of Christ which I have delivered, a letter written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh in the heart.
4 This great confidence in God is ours, through Christ. 5 it is not that we are entitled of ourselves to take credit for anything. Our sole credit is from God, 6 who has made us qualified ministers of a New Covenant not of written law engraved in stone but of the Spirit. The written law kills, but the Spirit gives life.

7 If the ministry of death, carved on stone, was inaugurated with such glory that the Israelites could not look on Moses' face because of the glory that shone on it (even though it was a fading glory), 8 how much more greater will be the glory of the ministry of the Spirit? 9 If the ministry of the convenant that condemned had glory, greater by far is the glory that justifies and brings life. 10 Indeed, when you compare that limited glory with this surpassing glory, the former should be declared no glory at all. 11 If what was destined to pass away was given glory, greater by far is the glory that endures.

12 Our hope being such, we act with full confidence. 13 We are not like Moses, who used to hide his face with a veil so that the Israelites could not see the final fading of that glory. 14 Their minds, of course were dulled. To this very day, when the old covenant is read the veil remains unlifted; it is only in Christ that it is taken away. 15 Even now, when Moses is read a veil covers their understanding. 16 But whenever he turns to the Lord, the veil will be removed. 17 The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 All of us, gazing on the Lord's glory with unveiled faces, are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image by the Lord who is the Spirit.

[fasttense]

1. Most fundies don't read the bible.

They just spew out predigested opinion from their leaders.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

6. that's what is truly dangereous about them

[Dhalgren]

2. The fundies are locked into a cult of death...

They cannot promote life because, to them, life is to be annihilated. Fundamentalist Christians are the ultimate anti-Christ.

[atreides1]

3. You Might Have Something

Maybe that's it, could it be that the anti-Christ isn't a single person but a group or coalition of like minded individuals, who while professing to preach the word of God, are nothing more then a
"Death Cult".

In a nutshell, doesn't Revelations say that the anti-Christ will control the political arena as well as religious belief, so is it
that far of a stretch to theorize that the anti-Christ isn't just a single person?

Even Jesus had his Disciples!!!!

Dhalgren you might have hit the nail on the head, anyone else want to add to this theory?

[ElsewheresDaughter]

4. i will 2nd that theory...."the great deciever" the anti-Christ will fool..

many into believing he is an angel of God

[Squeech]

5. I couldn't agree more

Philosophical rant follows. Please don't take it personally.

The sacrifice of Jesus was supposed to inaugurate a new covenant between God and man, based on love rather than Old Testament retribution, right? After the consummation of this ultimate sacrifice, God will never require us to kill another living thing in His name, right?

So how come the overwhelming majority of the saints, and the ones most revered, are martyrs? If Jesus was truly the last religiously required death, why do we keep having them, and promoting them as important and desirable?

Sometimes I think the most crucial sectarian difference is that Catholics have a predilection to maim themselves, whereas Protestants prefer to oppress the rest of us. But the desire to cause pain seems disturbingly closely tied to the Christian religious experience.

If not, what am I missing? Or where is the love, really?

[gratuitous]

7. We had an interesting Sunday school session yesterday

We're reading a terrific book called "If Grace is True" by Gulley and Mulholland, which in a nutshell posits "I believe God will save every person."

We had a visitor yesterday from another denominational church in a more conservative area of the country. After reading a few paragraphs together (from about page 166), he could barely contain himself any longer, and remarked that he thought the authors were way off base, totally wrong. So we discussed some of what the authors had been talking about for the preceding 165 pages.

The discussion was frank but respectful. No one called anyone else names, and when we reached a quote in the book from 1 Peter 3 : 9 ("The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.") our visitor said that he understood that passage to mean that God's grace was only extended to human beings until the time of death.

I acknowledged that that was the traditional understanding of the passage, but I noted that that specific condition -- grace only while we are alive -- is not precisely in the text. Our visitor nodded and said nothing, but it was as if a new thought was a-borning in his mind.

I don't know if anything will come of it, and it may be that he will bring tales back to his home congregation of this whacky bunch out on the Left Coast, but I think his mind may have been flexed in some new and unfamiliar ways by his exposure to us.

[Dhalgren]

8. I had a similar experience while visiting my wife's church.

I was on the "mind flexing" end of it, though. This was just after the "Heaven's Gate" suicides and my wife's priest spoke about the cult's actions in his sermon. He became actually angry with the cult members for their foolishness. Then later when he prayed, he asked god to save those misguided cult members and, via Grace, keep them from perdition. This was this first I had actually heard of this concept (having been reared in a fundamentalist household). After the services, I asked the priest about this and he said (paraphrase) that god's grace was infinite and would be extended whenever it was god's will. So this particular priest, though angry at the cultists stupidity, still wanted them saved. I thought that this particular instance was one that Jesus would have approved of...

[Dhalgren]

9. One thing that makes the fundies either step back,

look blank, or lie is to hit them with the old "what would Jesus do?" line. I've done that a couple of times and you should see them short-circuiting.