Marty 2020 Loc: Banana Republic of Kalifornia

Whatever

Parky60 Loc: People's Republic of Illinois

Let me correct you on a few points. Hell IS real. Jesus talked about it more than he talked about heaven.
It may seem remarkable, but no Bible spokesman places more stress on hell as the final consequence of God’s judgment of condemnation than Jesus. God’s Son was the great theologian of hell.

However, one should not consider it strange that Christ has more to say about hell than anyone else. Jesus was the one who compared hell to the Valley of Hinnom near Jerusalem (also called “Gehenna”), a huge public rubbish dump where dead bodies and trash burned in continually smoldering fires; thus “Gehenna” took hold as a name for hell. Jesus also compared hell to a prison and to outer darkness. It was he who likened hell to “a fire” at least twenty different times.

A premier text about hell from the mouth of Jesus is Luke 16:19–31. The wider context of its teaching is the abuse of wealth. Yet when describing the other-worldly setting of this teaching, Christ expanded the doctrine of hell. The passage is about a rich man who played the ultimate fool by luxuriating in his wealth, ignoring true faith in God and service to humanity, until he found himself in hell for his godless selfishness.

The passage seems much like a parable, but it is not specifically called that. In this text, Jesus’s primary intent was not to describe details of the unbeliever’s afterlife, but the Lord did end up giving us an insider’s view of hell, encapsulating important details of what is taught on this subject elsewhere.

One foundational principle Jesus taught in the lesson of the rich man and Lazarus was that hell has no exit door. Father Abraham tells the writhing sufferer why his condition could not be remedied: “Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us” (Luke 16:26).

The divide between eternal heaven and everlasting hell is made hard-and-fast by God’s eternal decree. The word “fixed” in Luke 16:26 has about the same meaning as our phrase “cast in concrete.”

Luke 16 testifies that when an unbeliever becomes conscious of this tragic reality immediately after his own death, it is already too late to humble himself before the gospel of Christ and the cross, which he has spurned hundreds or thousands of times; it is too late to believe in Jesus as Lord; it is too late to beg for divine mercy.

Scripture extends the opportunity of grace for every human being’s full lifetime. We hear in 2 Peter 3:9 of the Lord’s vast patience: “. . . not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” Yet people will perish—once they have passed the doorway of death without knowing Christ.

Another principle Jesus taught in Luke 16:27–30 is that God’s Word gives humanity sufficient warning about how to avoid hell. The rich man grasped it when the remedy could no longer personally help him. He experienced his first-ever altruistic impulse as he pleaded for a messenger to warn his family so they might avoid his plight.

But he is told that testimonials from “Moses and the Prophets” are set before all living men (v. 29). God’s revealed Word can tell mankind all we need to know about our sin and a Redeemer’s grace. In Luke 11:28 Jesus declared, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” Do not miss a tremendous irony here. The rich man maintained that something more than God’s Word is needed—perhaps a miraculous sign. He went so far as to predict the exact type of miracle that would communicate better than God’s written Word: someone returning from the dead, to garner widespread public attention. What folly!

Not long after teaching this gospel lesson, the same Jesus who narrated Luke 16 arose from the grave. And what resulted? A minority of people in the immediate precincts of Jerusalem embraced him as their living Lord. However, the majority scoffed and turned back to perusing their sports pages or looked to the stock market reports to discover what was new on that particular routine day.

Unbelief determinedly shrugs off all historic proofs of Christ. The very One who was told that a family would surely respond to the supernatural wonder of a messenger from the grave became that miraculous messenger. And he is still being spurned.

Suppose the Bible told us nothing about hell. Would that really make the Scriptures more “loving,” or compassionate? Does concealing unpleasant truth demonstrate that you truly care more for others’ destinies? What we find in Luke 16 is that the unique spokesman who most insistently announced a dreadful alternative to gracious divinely authored salvation is the same great Lord who died and rose to save us from hell.

Scripture is resolute: there is no means of escape out of hell. However, the gospel of God’s love and mercy shows one way of escape before entering. Jesus told it in John 5:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

What a wonderful promise! But Jesus firmly declared that you can only pass from death to life in this life, before entering an irreversible chamber of unspeakable woe.

This means that what you do with Christ right now counts forever.

RascalRiley Loc: Somewhere south of Detroit

Parky you and I have no common ground on this. The Biblical Testaments were written around campfire or a hundred years after Christ.

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

I wasn't speaking of you in that post, as you've said you're not a Christian, Riley.

Is your belief in heaven, a heaven of your own imagination, or from another source?

There is only one God in the Biblical heaven, and He is sovereign. He does not officiate over a democracy.

"Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He exists, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Hebrews 11:6.

By live with "Christian principles," if you mean being a good (honest, courteous) person or doing good deeds, that is worth nothing in God's eyes. Speaking through the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 64:6), God said that all of unredeemed man's good works are like filthy rags to Him.

The word filthy is a translation of the Hebrew word iddah, which literally means “the bodily fluids from a woman’s menstrual cycle.” The word rags is a translation of begged, meaning “a rag or garment.” Therefore, “self righteous acts” are considered by God as repugnant as a soiled feminine hygiene product.

By "Christian," I was speaking of those who have repented (literally means "turned," and changed direction). Biblical repentance means responding to God’s love by being transformed in your convictions and in your actions. It means turning towards God and away from everything that dishonors Him.

A Christian is one who has repented and affirmed faith in Jesus Christ before Christian witnesses, and in obedience to Jesus' command, has been baptized in water as a public testimonial of that faith.

Salvation comes only as a result of God’s grace in response to an individual's faith (Ephesians 2:8–9). Then he proclaimed that “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10; 2nd Corinthians 3:5).

Salvation is not the result of any of our efforts, abilities, intelligent choices, personal characteristics, or any acts of service we may perform. However, as believers, we are “created in Christ Jesus for good works” - to help and serve others. While there is nothing we can do to earn our salvation, the result will be "through the strength that God provides," we will perform acts of service for others that glorify Jesus, and spread His gospel.

Zechariah 4:6 ...'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' says the Lord Almighty.

Marty 2020 Loc: Banana Republic of Kalifornia

Well put, covers the needed points.

Marty 2020 Loc: Banana Republic of Kalifornia

No current unbelievers can have common ground with believers. Ever!
What has to happen is for you, the unbeliever, to answer the call of the Lord. You’re probably ignoring it right now.
Eventually you will meet Jesus. It won’t go well for you then, 1000 ish years from now,

RascalRiley Loc: Somewhere south of Detroit

Fortunately, I am no longer a Christian.

Marty 2020 Loc: Banana Republic of Kalifornia

If you are not a Christian now, do you think you were?

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

Then you never were..., for those whom Jesus receives, He instantaneously baptizes with the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ, at the moment of belief; They are instantaneously indwelt and sealed by the Holy Spirit at that moment (Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:8; Acts 1:5).

John 10:27-29
[Jesus said] "My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me.
I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand.
My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand."

John 14:16 "And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever..."

1st John 2:19-20
"They went out from us, but they did not belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But their departure made it clear that none of them belonged to us.
You, however, have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth."

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

I recognize that as Biblical Truth.

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

That is a unique perspective on your part.

In today's world, I don't know any dedicated Christians to whom every day is not a challenge, and sometimes multi-challenges.

Those who are God's beloved are under persecution from Satan and his minions (both human and demonic), 24/7.

It is the peace of Jesus Christ that allows us to remain joyously anchored in His Scriptures, as we pray for wisdom.

There is literally never a dull day.

You have been mis-advised.

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

"Written around a campfire?" Surely, you jest?

The Apostles lived in homes with wooden furniture. Jesus was a carpenter.
A typical home in the Galilee section in Israel was built of basalt (dark volcanic rock) and had either one or two stories.

Excavated foundations of a two-room house in Nazareth, circa 1st century A.D. revealed that the house wall was made of a combination of both hewn wrought stones and unhewn stones, the wrought stones being used for corners (cornerstones) and as headers and stretchers at fixed intervals; the space between them was filled by rough stones embedded in mortar.

Sometimes walls were plastered over with mud and straw after completion. The door frame was built of shaped stones and covered by a wooden door. A courtyard, located between various rooms of a family's housing complex, was paved with stones.

Roofs were often made of wooden beams topped with tree branches and covered with clay. When it rained, the clay absorbed water, sealing the roof. Sometimes people did their work on their roofs, which required repairing every year. (Matthew 24:17; Mark 13:15; Acts 10:9.)

A typical Galilean kitchen contained a domed oven for heating and cooking when the weather was cold. The oily pulp of pressed olives, small tree branches and dried animal dung were used as fuel.

Common kitchen utensils included hand grinders for making flour, cooking pots, reed or palm-leaf baskets for gathering and storing food, a broom, and stone water jars. Small gardens, vineyards with grapes and olive trees, and some small livestock provided most of the people's food. (Luke 15:8.)

The entire New Testament was written between, at the earliest: 45 A.D. for Mark's gospel - to the last book written, Revelation, completed by the Apostle John by 96-97 A.D..

So the New Testament was written in its entirety in a span of 52 years, beginning 15 years after Jesus ascended back to God the Father, whence He came, and these writings/Scriptures were being circulated among the earliest congregations inside Israel and new churches in Greece, and in Asia Minor (now Turkey) before the end of the 1st century.

In 1961, the world's first expression of proto-writing was found hidden in a natural crevice and wrapped in a straw mat in a cave in Israel identified as the Nahal Mishmar hoard, containing 442 different objects: a collection of 429 copper artifacts, six of hematite, one of stone, five of hippopotamus ivory, and one of elephant ivory.

The Nahal Mishmar copper hoard unearthed in the Judean Desert in 1961 is a milestone in research on ancient technology in general and metallurgy in particular. The proto-writing is tridimensional: the entire artifact is coded.
The collection is dated to having been produced in pre-Israel Canaan ca 4,000 B.C., which was 6,000 years ago, and 2,000 years before God brought Abram to Canaan, changing his name to Abraham, and promising him the land of Canaan as a permanent possession for his posterity...

Writing was thus, by the time of Abraham, well developed and well known.

Marty 2020 Loc: Banana Republic of Kalifornia

The nahal mishmar copper was prediluvian or post?

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

If these artifacts were created before the flood, they would have been buried beneath hundreds of feet of silt and mud.

Moses tells us that iron-working actually predates the flood since Tubal-Cain forged bronze and iron (Genesis 4:22).

Apart from the Book of Genesis, written in the 15th century BC, Moses mentions iron in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers. Thus, combined with the Book of Job, we can see that the cultures along the King’s Highway, from the Gulf of Aqaba to Syria, would have been familiar with smelting and processing iron, however, producing copper isn't mentioned...

I have no definitive answer, but it appears they're post-diluvian, because "Items in the hoard belong to the Ghassulian culture and the Nahal Mishmar hoard is the only hoard of this culture. It is probable that the copper used for producing them was mined in Wadi Feynan."

The hoard consisted of 442 decorated objects made of copper and bronze (429 of them), ivory and stone, including 240 mace heads, about 100 scepters, 5 crowns, powder horns, tools and weapons. Archaeologist David Ussishkin has suggested the hoard was the cultic furniture of the abandoned Chalcolithic Temple of Ein Gedi, near Masada and the Qumran Caves, a Ghassulian public building dating from about 3500 BCE which was excavated from 1956 to 1964, and is partially restored.

It lies on a scarp above the oasis of Ein Gedi, on the western shore of the Dead Sea, within modern-day Israel. Archaeologist David Ussishkinhas described the site as "a monumental edifice in terms of contemporary architecture."

Due to the dry climate numerous textile and plaited remains were found at the site. Many of these copper objects were made using the lost-wax process, one of the earliest known uses of this complex technique. Carbon-14 dating of the reed mat which was used to wrap the objects points that it was used circa 3500 B.C.E., which was 5,500 years ago During this period the use of copper became widespread throughout the Levant which also led to social changes in the region."

That time period would seem to cover the flood, but it was not mentioned as a factor, as it said the temple had been "abandoned" for unknown reasons.

I did find this story that is proof of nothing regarding the specific tools at nahal mishmar, but it is one more proof of the gigantic flood.

Ship probes land below Black Sea submerged 7,000 years ago and linked to biblical disaster
US World Environment
Tim Radford, science editor
Wed 13 Sep 2000 21.19 EDT

"Marine archaeologists have found the first evidence of a people who perished in a great flood of the Black Sea that has been linked with the story of Noah's ark.

Using robot underwater vehicles more than 300ft below the sea's surface, they have begun to map a rolling landscape, fed by meandering streams and marked with wattle and daub houses, that was flooded more than 7,000 years ago.

The Black Sea was once a freshwater lake, well below sea level. About 7,000 years ago, according to geological evidence, the rising Mediterranean sea pushed a channel through what is now the Bosphorus, and then seawater poured in at about 200 times the volume of Niagara Falls. The Black Sea would have widened at the rate of a mile a day, submerging the original shoreline under hundreds of feet of salty water.

Nearly 100,000 square miles were inundated. Sea shells on the beaches of the modern Black Sea are of marine origin, but deep below the surface there are layers of shells of freshwater molluscs, mute witnesses to the shoreline of the ancient lake.

Dr. Ballard began exploring the Black Sea in the Hull registered ship Northern Horizon, and used side-scanning sonar to look for interesting shapes on the seabed over a 200-sq-mile area, 12 miles off the Turkish coast, near Sinop.

Video cameras mounted on underwater robot submarines were put to use to find a structure characteristic of human habitation."

Above an area submerged too deeply for human divers, the sonar instruments revealed details of the landscape. On September 9 they sent robot scouts down to objects which looked like beams and branches, debris that might have been the stiffening for wattle and daub homes.

They found a rectangular area up to 12ft by 25 ft, over which an ancient mud and wooden house had collapsed, and they found tools of highly polished stone, together with fragments of ceramics.

"What we are looking at is a culture that is definitely thousands of years old," said Fred Hiebert, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who was also on the ship. "The flood is an event that is geologically known, and for us to find a structure in 150 metres (492.126) of water means that these people were definitely living there before it flooded, so it is pre-Greek.

They did not find tools of metal there, however, again, Moses first told us that it was a descendant of Cain named Tubal-Cain who instructed other craftsmen how to forge instruments of bronze and iron before the flood.

Marty 2020 Loc: Banana Republic of Kalifornia

Thanks I appreciate your response and the time it took you.