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January 28, 2021 Commented Hi Mohammed, I think those are valuable insights. Thank you for leaving a comment!

May 9, 2020 Commented Hi Curtis, Thanks for commenting here. My apologies for taking so long to notice and reply! You ask a good question. The answer is that the Bible doesn't actually say that. Being his "hands and feet" is a nice metaphor but it doesn't come from the Bible. You might be interested in this post, which goes into much more detail: http://www.onefaithonechurch.com/we-are-his-hands-and-feet-because-we-are-the-body-of-christ-oops-mixed-metaphors/

March 29, 2019 Commented This is a fair comment. Thank you. Indonesia is a country with millions of people, and different experiences in different places. Actually this article is really about Christians in the West, who think they are being "persecuted" when someone just doesn't want to hear about Christian ideas. There are Christians who really are persecuted - some are in Indonesia, some in India, some in the Middle East, and so on, but in all those places there are also peaceful areas. Thank you for reminding us that we can, and should, all live as good neighbours.

January 21, 2019 Commented Hi Bart, Thank you! I have now corrected that. Nice catch.

December 8, 2018 Commented Hi Lynda, I'm afraid I don't think I can help much with this question. ANZAC Cove in Gallipoli is a bit of a drive from any towns. I'm not sure if there are any churches around, for example on the other side of the peninsula, but there are not many churches at all in Turkey. The country is almost all Muslim, so there are Mosques everywhere, but churches are pretty rare. I hope that's helpful. Kind regards, Kevin

November 30, 2018 Commented Hi Piet, Thanks for your thoughts. This so-called creed has been represented as a document of Contantine. It is, in that context, a fraud. It is, as you acknowledge, a misquote of a document that has nothing to do with Constantine, just as I documented. As to your distinction between "Catholicism" and "Christianity", whatever you mean by those terms, it is anachronistic at best, and pure fiction at worst. At the time this creed was written there were one or more Christian church traditions (Eastern and Greek, for example), each potentially calling themselves "catholic" in the sense of being universal. In any case, whatever you think you mean by your use of those terms doesn't have any bearing on this creed, where it came from, and what it achieved. You are entitled to your own view about who is and who isn't a "true believer", but this article deals with historical and evidentiary facts, as best they can be known. It has nothing to say about Judaism being better or worse than any other faith. Any hysteria you find here has been brought by the reader. Try reading it again. May God bless your evident passion for all that is His.

January 26, 2018 Commented Hi Saji, Thank you for taking the time to comment! I see that you're saying the believer is not a son by birth, but by adoption instead. How do you reconcile that with such ideas as these?

But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become sons of God, born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of a husband, but born of God.

- John 1:12-13

Amen, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’

- John 3:5 ... and so many others. Where scripture is explicit, we are obliged to accept what it says. Where it is ambiguous, then we can start wondering. Scripture is absolutely explicit that nobody can be part of the Age to Come without being born into the family of God. But scripture is less clear about "υἱοθεσία" (usually translated "adoption", but it probably should not be) - a word used only by one author in the Bible, and used in a way that if it was intended to mean what you suggest, it would contradict Jesus' own words. So I would suggest that the inspired writer cannot possibly have meant what you are suggesting. If he did it would mean he was saying the opposite of what Jesus said, and that is not what Paul does. So what we must do is attempt to learn what Paul did mean by υἱοθεσία. As I say in the article, I suggest it is a reference to inheritance. More specifically, coming into an inheritance.

December 30, 2017 Commented Hi Craig, Thanks for dropping by and spending the time to make a comment! I understand what you're saying. It's essentially what most Bible commentators are also saying. My point above is just that it's not what the Bible is saying... Romans 5 uses terms like trespass, wrath, and sin to describe the "problem", and words like gift, reconciliation, and justification to describe the "solution". In the whole chapter there was plenty of room to use the word "curse", and Paul uses that word plenty elsewhere. He most specifically did not employ that term in Romans 5. Why not? The reason is that he's not talking about a curse. He is talking about sin and death as a pattern of natural (and/or supernatural) consequences. He is saying that in Christ, through grace, those consequences are mitigated. But he doesn't talk about a curse here because there isn't one. In the article above I talk about the fact that in the Bible a "curse" is a very specific thing. It is not just a casual term used to describe something "bad". To curse someone is to exclude them, cutting them off, usually from some sort of inheritance. So I confidently assert once again, that the Bible does not say Adam and Eve were cursed. I also, in the article above, point out why it literally could not happen, just as Balaam could not curse Israel. I recommend working through that logic to see why the New Testament so carefully avoids labeling it a "curse". This is, of course, good news. It means that God always had a redemption plan for humanity. A general curse would mean there was no such plan.

December 15, 2017 Commented Hi Kim, Thank you for taking the time to comment. Constantine's faithfulness to Christoan values is not at issue. Claiming to be Christian does not make someone morally good. Hitler claimed to be a Christian. This article is about a document which gets ascribed to Constantine flasely, in an attempt to depict Constantine as anti-Jewish. The document has nothing to do with Constantine, and he never persecuted Jews. He legalised Christianity and did not interfere with Jewish worship in any way.

September 27, 2017 Commented I apologise I had not seen your post on the site. I have just seen it and answered it, then seen this 🙂

September 27, 2017 Up vote answer Irresistible Grace and Free Will

+10

September 27, 2017 Answered Irresistible Grace and Free Will

November 30, 2016 Commented Thank you for your interest in the subject, Esther. To just touch on some of the points you raise, I would encourage you to look at context when making observations like "Deuteronomy states explicitly that there is just ONE law for all – the Israelite and the stranger". Of course it does, but the context is life within the covenant community of Israel. That law was never designed for others, as scripture says: "He has revealed his word to Jacob, his laws and decrees to Israel. He has done this for no other nation; they do not know his laws. Praise the Lord." - Ps 147:19-20. Sabbath, and the whole Sinai Covenant, was exclusive to the Israelites who emerged from Egypt. It never affected any of the patriarchs and they had not even heard of some of it's most distinctive elements - Sabbath, Temple, etc. But this is a post about Constantine. He became a Christian, as it is well documented. He wan't well educated in theology, but he did convert, and he set about to decriminalise Christianity and commend it to his subjects. He did not, however, ban or attack Judaism. These are historical facts. People have tried, with fradulent documents like the one I cite above, to claim Constantine was something else, but any sensible assessment of the data shows that those claims are specious.

November 20, 2016 Commented I thank you for making a contribution to the conversation. I admit that it is virtually unintelligible, but the parts I can understand I can comment on. It bears mentioning (again) that Constantine merely decriminalised Christianity. He did nothing to Jews, nor Judaism. So that really can't be "the larger point", I'm afraid. I suggest that the larger point is that this document has been deceptively modified to make it appear to be something it is not, and has been falsely ascribed to Constantine. There can be no such thing as a "Christian before Jesus". Christians take their title from "Christ", specifically Jesus, the Christ. Many Christians were of pagan origin, of course, and that's an important feature of Christianity - that God is not the God only of the Jews, but of the whole world. Whether someone was a pagan or a Jew before they were a Christian does not affect their status as a Christian. If we are to take monotheism seriously, then the one God must god of all, not just the god of the Jews. It may be helpful to note that Sunday convocation is a celebration of the Ressurection, an historical event locatable on the calendar as happening on the morning of the day after the weekly Sabbath. It has nothing to do with any sun god, except that it happens to fall on the same weekday, but then, *every* weekday was associated with some Greco-Roman god or other. As for Esau's birthright, it has nothing to do with me. I am not descended from Esau, nor from Abraham as far as I can tell. I simply share Abraham's faith - the faith which God affirmed as righteousness while Abram was yet an uncircumcised pagan from Ur of the Chaldeans. That is my connection to the story of Israel, just as it is for any non-Jewish Christian. It has nothing to do with Esau. Your concern for YHWH's Shem being proclaimed throughout the world is ironic. This is something Christianity has done and Judaism has not. Christianity has spread the Israel story and its associated monotheism across the globe, including the Shema itself. Indeed it was Christian powers which recreated the modern state of Israel, post WWII. I'm not sure who the "Edomite nations" are supposed to be so I can't comment on that. I am unaware of any nation on earth being defined according to its genealogy any more, including Israel, in fact, let alone Esau. So I don't know who is being "warned" here. Thanks again for taking part in the conversation.

October 26, 2016 Commented I have not asked you to argue, so please don't feel compelled to do so. In fact I have not asked for a conversation at all. This is my blog site where I post my thoughts and I have generously hosted your comments also, and even responded to them out of a sense of service to you. Thank you for that rather limited "blessing", which actually appears to be a veiled curse... I do understand that this is the best you can manage, convinced as you are that as a Gentile I am a second-class human. Of course, as a gentile I am exactly like Abraham who did not get what he "deserved", but what was promised and believed. It was those who received the law that perished in the wilderness for unbelief and rebellion... at least, according to Moses... I am not interested in converting to Judaism, and I have no desire to convert you from it. I am only interested in truth. It is folly to discuss "messianic prophecy" in the text if you are not prepared to actually read the text and accept what it says. Whatever you think of messianic prophecy will, like your views expressed so far, be informed by sources outside the text, "hints" of things you bring to the text yourself, and a "Jewish mind", which apparently comprehends language in some alternative way as to change the meaning. I don't want to upset your faith, which seems to be a strong set of convictions. It just obviously contradicts the writings of Moses and of the New Testament writers, so I'm not equipped to engage with it. I will just restrict my comments to what the text says. If you'd like to discuss what the text actually does say, we will have some common ground for a conversation. Otherwise I wish you well in your faith journey wherever it leads.

October 25, 2016 Commented This is the kind of strange response I get when I talk about what the Bible plainly says. I'm told to ignore it and instead look at "hints". I'm told I lack a "Jewish mind", which would allow me to understand the text to mean something other than what it says. I'm told that reading it in Hebrew makes the meaning completely different. Unfortunately all of those arguments are untenable. I am happy to go word-by-word through the Hebrew in any verse where you suggest the Hebrew says something different to the English sufficiently to change the meaning of a passage. For example, is there a Hebrew phrase which makes Genesis chapter 15 come before chapter 12? Or Mt Sinai before Abraham? I agree that Gentiles are grafted into the vine, but that vine is not from Moses. It is from Abraham, and Christ is the seed to whom the promises of that vine belong. Every essential matter of faith predates Mt Sinai, predates Moses, and even predates circumcision. No wonder a "Jewish mind" finds it scandalous. The "Jewish mind" apparently does not believe Moses. To believe Moses is to understand the New Testament.

October 25, 2016 Commented Thanks for your thoughts. I'm able to read what the book actually says, so I've got plenty to go on. Does thinking "like a Jew" mean changing what Moses so carefully recorded? I'm repeating Moses' teachings. Why contradict him? It is all written plainly enough for both Jews and non-Jews to read. Everyone is entitled to draw their own conclusions about what it says, but it does still say what it says, and that's not negotiable. At least we agree on the main things - the Gentiles are only required to abide by the Noahic covenant, as was Abraham. That's what the New Testament says too. That's also what I've been saying, and yet I'm being told I'm wrong? God obviously requires no more than the Noahic obligations. Abraham is proof of that. That's why the Jerusalem council also agreed to burden the believers no more than that in Acts 15... because Moses taught this!