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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.825
Jesus went back into His own hometown where He had grown up, and His disciples followed Him there. When the Sabbath came, He went into the synagogue in Nazareth and began to teach as He had done elsewhere, and many of those who heard Him were astonished. Those in the Synagogue: Where did He gain this wisdom? And what are all these stories we’ve been hearing about the signs and healings He’s performed? Where did He get that kind of power? Isn’t this Jesus, the little boy we used to see in Joseph’s carpenter shop? Didn’t He grow up to be a carpenter just like His father? Isn’t He the son of Mary over there and the brother of James, Joses, Judas, Simon, and their sisters? Who does He think He is? ~ Mark 6: 1-6 (The Voice) |
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#47 |
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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.826
Do not discount the core message of the Christian faith without thoroughly questioning everything. Seek the truth. |
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#48 |
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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.827
The hiddenness of God Thus far, I hope I've demonstrated why there is no inherent conflict between science and religion. I've also suggested several ways in which science can point us towards belief in God rather than away from Him. But I don't want to stop there. I want to tackle another question which I think is often overlooked: why isn't the scientific evidence for God's existence clearer? Even if we think that there is very good scientific evidence that God exists (as I do), why isn't the scientific evidence for God's existence absolutely undeniable? ~ Neil Shenvi Read more…. http://shenvi.org/Essays/SAR/Hiddenness.htm |
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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.828
The first thing my family did when we moved was join the local church. The second was to go to the library and get library cards. ~ John Grisham You are welcome to join FB group for the daily dispatch: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1472074063049585/ |
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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.829
October, here's to you. Here's to the heady aroma of the frost-kissed apples, the winey smell of ripened grapes, the wild-as-the-wind smell of hickory nuts and the nostalgic whiff of that first wood smoke. ~ Ken Weber I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn't it? ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery I have been younger in October than in all the months of spring. ~ W. S. Merwin https://www.facebook.com/groups/1472074063049585/ |
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#51 |
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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.830
Christianity is realistic because it says that if there is no truth, there is also no hope; and there can be no truth if there is no adequate base. It is prepared to face the consequences of being proved false and say with Paul: If you find the body of Christ, the discussion is finished, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. It leaves absolutely no room for a romantic answer. ~ Francis Schaeffer |
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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.831
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” ~ John 8:12 (NIV) |
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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.832
“When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.” ~ C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters |
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#54 |
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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.833
The Screwtape Letters is series of messages from a devil named Screwtape to his nephew, a junior demon Wormwood training in the world, has Screwtape offering advice in order to draw a Christian away from God. Three passages: “Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s (God’s) ground…He [God] made the pleasure: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy [God] has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He [God] has forbidden." “In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I'm as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish.The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers--or should I say, nurses?--will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.” “I have looked up this girl’s dossier and am horrified at what I find. Not only a Christian but such a Christian – a vile, sneaking, simpering, demure, monosyllabic, mouse-like, watery, insignificant, virginal, bread-and-butter miss. The little brute. She makes me vomit. She stinks and scalds through the very pages of the dossier. It drives me mad, the way the world has worsened. We’d have had her to the arena in the old days. That’s what her sort is made for. Not that she’d do much good there, either. a two-faced little cheat (I know the sort) who looks as if she’d faint at the sight of blood and then dies with a smile. A cheat every way. Looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and yet has a satirical wit. The sort of creature who’d find ME funny!” ~ C.S.Lewis, The Screwtape Letters |
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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.834
What’s so great about Abram’s faith? Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. ~ Genesis 15:6 (NIV) The Bible makes Abram’s faith the model for us all. (See, for example, Ro 4; Gal 3; Heb 11; Jas 2.) The surprising thing is that Abram never saw a Bible, had no church, possessed no creed, took no sacrament, heard not even one of the Ten Commandments and perhaps knew little about life after death. Yet Abram’s faith shows us what really matters. He heard the voice of God and dared to simply believe he could trust him when he spoke. He risked his life, his security, his reputation, his future and even his son on the word that came from the God whom he could not see but in whom he believed. Can there be anything better to demonstrate that it is by faith, and faith alone, that we are saved? We now have the Bible, the church, the creeds, the sacraments and the Ten Commandments. But God still looks for the basics—God still looks for hearts that will risk all to trust in him. ~ BibleGateway Quest Devotional |
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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.835
If you think God gave commands to keep us from having fun, then you my friend are not thinking. |
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#57 |
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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.836
Jesus repeatedly told both His followers and those who didn’t believe in Him that He was not only fully human, but He was also God in human flesh. On one occasion, for example, He boldly declared, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The question is, was he telling the truth? Maybe Jesus lied when he said he was God. Perhaps he knew he was not God, but deliberately deceived his hearers. But there is a problem with this reasoning. Even those who deny his deity affirm that he was a great moral teacher. Jesus could hardly be a great moral teacher if, on the most crucial point of his teaching -- his identity -- he was a deliberate liar. Another possibility is that Jesus was sincere but self-deceived. We have a name for a person today who thinks he is God. Mentally disabled. But as we look at the life of Christ, we see no evidence of the abnormality and imbalance we find in a mentally ill person. Rather, we find the greatest composure under pressure. A third alternative is that his enthusiastic followers put words into his mouth he would have been shocked to hear. Were he to return, he would immediately repudiate them. No, modern archeology verifies that four biographies of Christ were written within the lifetime of people who saw, heard and followed Jesus. These gospel accounts contained specific facts and descriptions confirmed by those who were eyewitnesses of Jesus. The early writing of the Gospels by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, is why they gained such circulation and impact, unlike the fictional Gnostic gospels which appeared centuries later. Jesus was not a liar, or mentally disabled, or manufactured apart from historical reality. The only other alternative is that Jesus was being consciously truthful when he said he was God. ~ Paul Little |
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#58 |
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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.837
"For God so loved..." ~ First words of John 3:16 The New Testament originally written in GREEK. The basic reason why this language was chosen instead of Aramaic or Hebrew was that the writers wished to reach a broad, Gentile (non-Israelite) audience, not just a Jewish audience. The spoken tongue used by both the disciples and Christ was highly likely Aramaic, even though such a Semitic language was not the original one used by the Jews. Greek was the leading written and spoken language of the eastern Mediterranean world when Rome ruled the world during the New Testament period. Indeed, it remained the dominant language, especially in the large cities of Alexandria, Antioch, etc., until after the Arab Muslim conquest, long after the time the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 A.D. By the time of the New Testament church in the first century A.D., Hellenism had greatly influenced and changed the people and culture of Judea. Greek, not Hebrew, was the commonly used language of Palestine during the rule of the Roman Empire. The ability to speak this language was a needed skill in the Roman world as it was used as the standard way of communicating, carrying out business, and so on. Greek was written and used during the early church period to communicate between people who grew up in different areas of the world and whose native tongues were quite different. The well-known Jewish historian of the first century, Josephus, stated that the ability to speak Greek was very common. Some evidence that Christ spoke the Greek language does exist in the Bible. Jesus utilized at least two Grecian words for love in his well-known post-resurrection conversation with Peter regarding how much he loved him. He used the word AGAPE, which is a deep love and PHILEO, which is brotherly love toward someone we like (see John 21: 15 - 17). These words have no exact corresponding word either in Old Testament Hebrew or in Aramaic. AGAPE and PHILEO are two of the four works in Greek for love. It was a precise language. The Four Loves: Phileo Love The first love is called “phileo” love and that is the love that the city of Philadelphia was named after…brotherly love. This type of love is that friends have for one another. This type of love can also exist between brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and other family members but it is most frequently associated with a deep, abiding friendship…a love that is shared between the best of friends, Eros Love The next type of love is what is called in the Greek “eros” which is a romantic sexual love. You can probably see that is the root word for erotic. Stergein Love Most people probably have not heard of this type of love but they exhibit it without even knowing about it. This kind of love is what a sister and brother for one another and the kind that they have for their siblings and like phileo Agape Love This is the Greek word for love at its ultimate. It is the most self-sacrificing love that there is. This type of love is the love that God has for His own children. This type of love is what was displayed on the cross by Jesus Christ. In John 3:16 it is written that “God so loved (agapao) the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” Agape love is that which is always associated with the love of God and rarely does it occur when it involves one person in relations with another. The Greek word agape was hardly ever used in Greek-speaking societies but in the New Testament, it occurs 320 times. ~ Selected from an essay by Jack Wellman and the Bible Study Guide Search Facebook b o r d e r c r o s s and see other daily dispatches Last edited by the iron horse : 11-26-2017 at 11:21 AM. |
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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.838
“Truth is the most valuable thing in the world but often is hidden by a bodyguard of lies.” ~ Winston S. Churchill |
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Re: Sunday Dispatch
Sunday Dispatch.839
People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway. ~ Mother Teresa |
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