Unless the words were preserved by God. And if you can believe that God can speak in English. Then you still have holy scriptures that you can read, trust, understand, and believe today. 6 The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. 7 Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever. (Psalm 12)

17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. (John 3:17-21) I'm on my ipad so I can't highlight, so in the above verses I'm mainly pointing to what is said in verse 18 - '.....but he that believeth not is condemned already.....' If the starting point for the debate mentioned in the OP is with both sides believing that Jesus blood was shed on the cross to bring salvation, then we can go from there. It would seem that the crucifixion was not in vain, but served a purpose. If everyone just goes to heaven anyway (or some people prefer to believe that "most people" go), then why was it necessary for his blood to be shed in the first place? He died so that all of a person's sins can be covered, but not everyone's sins will be covered. Something puts into effect whether your sins are, or are not, covered. Why do the verses above say that you are condemned already if it was the case that you still go to heaven without believing "on" the finished work of Christ? Also, if there was no need for people to believe on the shed blood of Jesus, then why did God want the disciples to go into all the world to spread the news? We can't know everything in the mind of God, but what he has given us is sufficient. He has given us the means and the way to come to him in the time that we live. He can also work it so that those in other "non-Christian" countries who seek truth, and seek him, will be given it. He has many ways that go beyond what we think he can do.

The holy scriptures tell us that when the Old Testament saints died that they went to a place called 'Abraham's bosom' which was located in the centre of the earth. Old Testament saints were those people who were saved, but they were not saved by believing on the shed blood of Jesus because he hadn't yet died. Because they didn't have the blood of the saviour covering their sins, they did not go straight up to heaven until after Jesus death and resurrection. This was when Jesus 'led captivity captive.' God would not have made both heaven and hell if hardly anyone went to hell. (This saddens me, I'm not boasting that people go to hell.) He does not desire that anyone goes to hell, and originally it was made to lock up the fallen angels who rebelled. The bible says that hell has gotten bigger than what it was: 'Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure: and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.' (Isaiah 5:14) It would be very hard to argue a case of who goes to heaven without using the holy scriptures, because you can only go on your own feelings and thoughts which change from person to person. In other words, you would not have any evidence to back up your claims. So I can only really see a debate being possible if both sides had something in the way of evidence to go by.

{Sorry, delayed response as I haven't been on} If you have a child/children who go on to make their own videos please share! The gang and I would love to see some. :-) I forgot that most of you would notice the accent. Haha. Love hearing accents myself. He said that he didn't know he was there. I think that he was concentrating so hard on reading out the story that he didn't realise. I'm not even sure how he was holding his story to read it, and his pictures in the other hand, as well as turning over the pages on his own either. (He filmed it by setting up the ipad on our small child size picnic table.)

Thankyou, I will pass on the comments and hopefully he will be further encouraged and inspired :D

Yesterday my son made a short film of a story that he had written. (He's not a big creative writer.) He had written a short story, and I had asked him to write out a good copy, but he didn't want to do that. Being busy with a sibling and still wanting to keep him engaged and encouraged, I asked him to record it instead. I was thinking that he would just speak it into his iPod and record it as an audio, but he filmed it on the iPad instead. He drew pictures to illustrate it as well (which made me happy.) Anyway, check out younger brother in the background. He was totally oblivious to him being there..

Teannika was the first username that I ever came up with. (I was in high school at the time.) I was trying to create one by using combinations of my real name. But because all three of my names are very common, I kept getting the 'already taken' message. I was frustrated at the time because I wanted to get on with using the username, rather than wasting my time trying to come up with one. So to resolve the matter, I took my first two names and shuffled up the letters to make a new name for myself.

A church that I once attended years ago, (an independant Baptist church in Australia), simply had a box at the back of the church that a person could pop an envelope of money in annoymously if they were led to. There was no collection during the service. I liked that set-up.

I agree. Many/most religions today would have a tithing requirement because most religions are based on doing good works. Tithing is a good work that can be easily observable, especially if the church organisation is requiring knowledge about what their people are giving. Some churches set up an automatic deduction to come out of accounts on a regular basis. Interesting question to ask solascripture, I'll be following this thread.

I am happily using WWE2 for two of my children, one is in Grade 3 and the other in Grade 5. I find that it still benefits my Grade 5 daughter. (And a bonus is that they both enjoy doing the lessons.)

Apologies for a late reply, I have had a few days off from the forum. I've nothing to add at this point as I am on a completely different wavelength in regards to scripture, salvation, tradition, and the early churches and so on. But thankyou for the responses. I can better see where you are coming from.

Thankyou Milovany (and others). I read your replies yesterday, but then today I went back to read from the start of thread again! I am slowly getting my head around Orthodox, as compared to Catholicism. My immediate heritage is Catholicism. My great grandmother on my father's side was Catholic, and so was my grandfather until he converted. On my mother's side, she was also born into a Catholic family, but adopted out of it at a young age. My husband was brought up strict Catholic, and the large majority of his family are all large Catholic families. So I am on the Catholic mind-track, and trying to understand Orthodoxy from there. Regarding Mary having other children, from my point of view there is no personal interpretation involved, because I just have to read and believe the scripture as it stands. In the verse that I quoted "firstborn" implies that there were other children born afterward, or else the word is unnecessary and meaningless to begin with. (And this term is used in Luke as well.) A very clear set of verses answer the question to who Jesus was. Those in the synagogue knew him personally and identified him. 'And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?' (Matthew 13:54-56) I haven't looked up the other versions to compare because I don't use them as they are from a different line of manuscripts. I know the bible manuscript lineage better than I know the historical church lineage. But both are closely related. One line is from Alexandria, the other from Antioch. And that is why there are great doctrinal differences between different churches still today. Because there were differences right back then as well. So my perpective is that the traditions that you may be referring to as holy traditions being passed down from men in the church, may still not be true if the particular man being quoted as a church father etc wasn't really one. I also do not believe that any man after the apostles should be quoted as if their beliefs are inspired like scripture is. Then we would be picking and choosing which men we wanted to believe when it came to all sorts of doctrinal issues, based on what we thought was true to begin with. (But I do however understand your point of view of acknowledging the church history of your church as the true line of church history, so I see no inconsitency with your own beliefs and conclusions.) I have started to find my own lineage of historical beliefs from the early church period. I fit in with the premillennial groups of believers. And those who believed and practiced adult baptism. There are names for these groups that I can give you, but I would need to look them back up again. And anyway, this is your thread not mine, so it's not really relevant. But this has helped my understanding a great deal better, so thankyou. I also think that I am on a similar wave length on bishops running the early local churches as well. I reread my early posts and can see how awkwardly I expressed the early church structure. Sometimes it can take me a while to get a coherent thought out.

For myself, if I see a contradiction in the scriptures to what the tradition teaches, then I go with the scripture on the point. I see it as God having the final say that way. (For this reason I believe that Mary had many children, because my bible says that. And I believe that the scripture holds true to those eye-witness accounts. Ie. A verse in my Bible, (the AV1611), that is in support of Mary having other children is: 'And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.' (Matt 1:25) KJV. I'm happy to agree to disagree, no big deal on that point. I just wanted to share an example of my person perspective, how I too see that the firsthand eye-witness accounts are the final authority also, except that in the end I am relying on scripture, rather than other sources. So we are both saying that we are relying on eye-witness accounts, but still arriving at different conclusions). Regarding the tradition of Holy Scripture - I was reading up on the evidence that we have for the New Testament Holy Scriptures being in use by the priesthood of believers (1 Pet 2:5) of the early church, and these writings were quoted and accepted long before the Council at Carthage (AD 387). The priesthood of believers were organised and a part of local churches. The understanding of what was the truth, and what was genuine, would have been subject to the acceptance of the body of Christ as a whole. The epistles (letters) were written by ordinary men, and would have been written on papyrus because it was cheap and available. When they were written, they would naturally have began to be collected and put into book form, as many copies were made and passed on between church to church, individual to individual. To start with, we have the scriptures themselves which tell us of Paul's epistles being accepted by the body of Christ, the church: '...even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; As also in all his epistles,.. as they do also the other scriptures...' (2 Peter 3:16-17) The 27 books of the New Testament can all be found long before the Council of Cathage (397) had an offical meeting to declare what was officially accepted as 'Holy Scripture'. This is the reason that I hold for believing that the body of Christ had already settled and organised what was genuinely from God. They recognised it, and they knew it. 'The body of Christ' is what I am referring to as the church (not the Catholic Church that was non-existent at that time. No offence intended - just my belief. I don't believe that there was any other name given to it). So in this respect, I agree with Milovany that the tradition was eye-witness accounts that knew who was who! They knew who had written what, and they knew if they really were regarded as true Apostles. (The Bible that I read today, the AV1611, still has the subtitle that Paul wrote 'Hebrews'. Even if the books that were "officially" chosen at Carthage are based on requirements such as if the author was an Apostle, this is proof that even then they had to accept that Paul was the author, to accept the book to be genuine). The manuscript evidence for the 27 books already being accepted as scripture include: Polycarp (69 - 155) quotes Matthew, Luke, John, Acts, and ten of Paul's epistles. The forger of 2 Clements - quotes Matthew, Mark Luke and John. He shows familiarity with Acts, Revelation, and six Pauline epistles. Irenaeus (125-192) quotes the four gospels, Acts, and thirteen Pauline epistles. Clement of Alexandria (150-217) quotes four gospels, Acts, the Pauline epistles, 1 Peter, 1 John, Hebrews, Jude, James and Revelation. Tertullian quotes them as well (150-200) From these accounts alone we find that all 27 books are in use before 200 AD. The Old Latin Version and The Old Syriac versions are quoted about 150-180 AD. The proof exists for us still today that even though the originals may have only lasted about 50 years due to handling and materials, thousands of handwritten copies were made of these writings and accepted as scripture in the early NT churches. The Christians around 100-325 AD had a small book that displayed the Syrian text type found in Asia Minor. (I'm not going to type out the rest of the witnesses now..) {Please note: I am mainly typing this out for my own learning as I'm currently studying this all out as I go. So please feel free to add anything that I may have missed, or you think that I have misunderstood.}

The New Testament was penned by Christians, yes. However they were Jews not Gentiles before they got saved. These-days, I personally do not believe that Luke was a Gentile, even though I was taught this growing up. It is a teaching of tradition that says that Luke was a Gentile. I do not believe it can be supported scripturally however. The main reason is because we are told that the oracles of God were entrusted to the Jewish people: 'What advantage then hath the Jew? Or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were commited the oracles of God.' (Romans 3:1-2) There are no other Gentiles penning the scriptures. This brief study looks at some of the common arguments from both sides - http://www.maxddl.org/Luke%20-%20Gentile%20or%20a%20Jew.pdf

double post.

I have to apologise, I have only just seen and caught up on all the comments made in response to my post. I was wondering how I missed them, but I remember now that when I came to check in on this thread I had to jump off the computer. And I forgot to come back! :-) Thankyou for all of your responses.

I always try to buy a Bible in giant print without any commentary so that it's easy to read. It will still have two columns, but that is all. (I've only purchased them in KJV though.) Again, I don't know about the NRSV, but for the KJV I have printed off pages from an online Bible on the internet for free. They print out in one column only, with each verse beginning on a new line. (Preview the chapter by clicking on the printer icon at the top of the page). Here is the link: http://www.thywordistrue.com/bible.php

Far out. I'm so so sorry to hear this. Like previous posters I can't even express more than that... I will be keeping you in my thoughts. And just praying that you can find comfort and peace in the hard days ahead.

I've been defending Jews. I don't want any Jew harmed or persecuted under the name of Christianity. (As I keep saying, it is not the biblical thing to do - so how can it be true Christianity doing it?)

There is more to me! I've really got to go and get things done. We start back our school term this week, and I have some planning to do. I just keep getting too tempted to come back and reply. Need some more self-control.

The case that I thought worthwhile fighting against is Albeto's case blaming Christianity for murdering Jews. I don't believe all Christians believe this, that's what I was standing for. And I am happy to leave it there. :)

I don't believe Catholicism is the true unadulterated version of true Christianity. (It's my belief, yes) I do believe a Catholic person can be saved. Catholics generally don't believe that what I believe is true for salvation. It goes both ways as I said, Catholics have told me that I'm not saved.

I don't believe that a true Christian in the Bible would ever want to have a Jew murdered. I don't see any biblical support for that.

I should clarify, I am not saying Anti-semitism doesn't exist within Christianity. I agree it does. But I am not owning it in my own belief system. My belief system doesn't hate and persecute Jews. Could it be understood that based on anti-semitism alone is one good reason why I don't wish to be associated with certain Christian belief systems?

I'll try. But I would be lying if I said I was Catholic and included myself in their religion and saw it as true Christianity. It goes both ways that also. As I referred to earlier, Catholics have martyed Christians in the past. It's not one-sided. My comment is about a religion, not about any one individual.