Christian Forums
This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
-
-
[__ Science __ ] Did Man Really Land on the Moon?
- Thread starter AIG.com
- Start date
Apart from the cringe of "born again" and "our powerful god", a well written refutation of moon-landing deniers.
Why does Biblical teaching make you cringe? Red flag!
Douay-Rheims Bible
"Wonder not, that I said to thee, you must be born again." - John 3:7
NASB 1995
"Do not be amazed that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' - John 3:7
Red flag? Well, I confess that it is, but only in the sense of annoying this bull by an Evangelical Holy Cow. You might enjoy some jottings I’ve come across.
[…even the apostles weren’t messianic children of God until messiah had died. Before then, they were at the Sinai level, children of Sinai. The spirit lived with them, and later would be in them (NLT: Jhn.14:17). A there and then-ness (the Sinaitic covenant Jesus himself was living within) was contrasted with a future new birth/indwelling.
But, you might ask, didn’t Jesus represent a group who were already born anew, for didn’t he say, “We tell you what we know and have seen” (NLT: Jhn.3:11—emphasis added)? No. He himself was not born anew, nor would Nicodemus have been interested in what his motley assortment of disciples, who weren’t preaching new birth, happened to think—they weren’t the group, nor were the group born anew, but they knew and saw. In contrast to Nicodemus’ we know (3:2), Yeshua linked in with the prophets’ we know. What they had known and seen was what Nicodemus failed to grasp, hence some real amazement that an OT scholar neither knew nor saw this OT truth (3:10). Let’s get into this.
John reduced the actual conversation to its main points. Nicodemus represented some who respected Rabbi Yeshua, who launched into his main point, namely of a new kind of birth: γεννηθη ανωθεν/gennēthē anōthen. But ‘born anew’ (CEB: 3) in some contexts meaning born-again, tested Nicodemus. Puzzled, he asked if Jesus seriously meant being “born again…born a second time” (NCV: 4). Good humorously Yeshua twitted him for not seeing biblically that folk “must be born from above” (CEV: 7) to see the soon coming kingdom which John the Baptist and Jesus the Baptist (Jhn.3:22) had prophesied. He clarified his meaning as birth from above, spiritual, not a biological repeat. It might help to note that William Tyndale was not a born-again Christian, though he was born-anew, born-spiritually, a Christian. Check him out.
We should also see that Nicodemus, like Jesus’ disciples, were already in God’s kingdom as Sinai children. There was dawning a new form of kingdom—some deeper, truer definition that needed a new dynamic to enter, new eyes to see. That’s regeneration.]
While I cringe when contrary to Bible teaching the words of Nicodemus are put on the lips of Jesus, I don’t think that it’s a deal breaker. You mention the Rheims, but I doubt that the KJV would officially have stamped it unless the king’s Bishops and the Geneva had used it. For 1 Pt.1:23, Rheims led the way, but then KJV might have harmonised anyway—we cannot be sure. And Wesley swallowed both without ruminating, so while not funny the Nicodemian joke continues, and we must grin and bear it.
Red flag as in suspicious.
Ah, IC. It sure remains annoying to me that some some undermine Bible teaching with an Evangelical Holy Cow. I once trotted it out to some non-Christians, only 2B asked if I was teaching reincarnation, which was perhaps Nicodemus's point. There's an Egyptian myth that touches on that. I think we should be suspicious about a number of buzz ideas in the Christian market. Test all things; hold to the Bible.