shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
But Edward, I used to believe the things being stated here. I began praying for God to help me understand the Bible long before I even knew what a Christian was. After many years of Prayer God answered that request. Now let me ask you, are you trusting God? You reject what I say, and give as explanation the fact that many others here agree with your position. That seems to me to be trusting in the majority. Have you asked God if maybe He put me here to bring a truth to you that you hadn't realized? You said you don't feel anything in your spirit when you read my posts. Are you suppressing it? When you claim there is a God who consists of three coequal, coeternal, persons and then I present Scripture that says, "to us there is one God, the Father" that doesn't stir something in you to say hmmm... that doesn't fit with what I believe? Now, keep in mind, I just presented Paul's words. I didn't comment on them. They are his words. When you make the 3 in 1 claim and then see the words of Jesus Himself say to the Father, you are the only true God, that doesn't stir something in you to say, hmm... that doesn't fit with what I believe. Again, Jesus' words not mine. My friend, if you can read the words of Scripture that disagree with your beliefs and not think something is wrong with that belief it makes me question what you wrote above.
You see, it was when I beleived the mainstream Christian doctrines and then saw these types of passages that something was stirred inside of me. If the Bible is without error and conflicts with doctrine then the doctrine must be in error. When I believed the 3 in 1 God concept and saw passages such as these, I did have that stirring in me. I sought to find out the truth, because God is not a God of confusion, nor is He illogical. He is a God reason. Since He is a God of reason we cannot just accept illogical things and say, oh well, maybe I'll understand it someday. Anytime we accept something illogical we can no longer prove anything in that regard.
Here's another point that causes problems. You quoted Jesus' words saying the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth and used that as a reason to reject what I say. Let me ask you a question, who did Jesus say that to? Wasn't He speaking to His disciples? Did He say the Holy Spirit would lead all Christians into all truth? I don't believe that's what He said. Let me ask you another question, if the Holy Spirit leads all Christians into all truth, why don't we all believe the same? How can there be so many different beliefs if the Holy Spirit is leading all Christians into all truth? Are the vast majority simply wrong or lost? Who is being taught correctly? Is it the Baptists, the Methodists, maybe the Church of God, the Catholics, who? There are hundreds of denominations, which group is being lead into all truth and are all of the others simply lost. After all, they all believe they are following God and being lead into all truth.
You asked about us. Man is a soul that consists of the body of dust and the breath or spirit of life from God.
Regarding the man possessed by the legion of demons. Why was the name legion? Was it not because there were many. If there were many, they weren't one, they were many. But, you're equivocating on the use of spirit. In one sense you use it to denote the demons in the man and then change to the sense of unity. They are not the same thing.
Regarding what the people saw, we're not told. However, I would venture a guess and say they saw just the man. However, I would also suggest that demons aren't visable.
In the end, I've been where you are and held many of the same beliefs. However, as I said, I prayed to God and asked Him to Help me understand the Bible. He answered that prayer. I now have an understanding of the Bible as a whole. Do I understand every single thing? No. Do I understand the over arching themes and what God is doing through it? Yes. And, I can tell you, because God answered that prayer, modern Christianity is out in left field when it comes to understanding the Bible. Ever heard that anecdote where you tell someone a secret and then they tell someone else and they tell someone else, and by the time it gets back to you it hardly resembles what you told the first person? Well, that's what's happened to the faith. How many people do you know who have become a Christian strictly from reading the Bible? In other words, no Christian witnessed to them the only thing they had was a Bible. I would venture to say you probably don't know any. Typically people become Christians through other people witnessing to them. So, these people after being witnessed to become Christians. At this point before they ever start reading the Bible they've already been indoctrinated with the beliefs of the person witnessing to them. So, if the one witnessing says, "you have an immortal soul that will spend eternity in Heaven or Hell" that's what the new convert learns. The new convert then approaches the Bible with this belief. He never questions it because the witnessing Christian surely wouldn't lie. And, no, he didnt lie. He was simply passing on the information that he was taught. So, if this information is wrong it never gets questioned because surely a Christian wouldn't lie. People don't ever seem think, no, he wouldn't lie, but, maybe he's wrong. Maybe someone taught him wrong and he doesn't know it. This my friend is how error perpetuates. Then add in the fear of being called a heretic or excommunicated if you question the status quo and it's not hard to see how millions could be carried into left field. We've had about 2000 years of people dealing with the Gospel. Some manipulated it for gain, some got things wrong, some misunderstood etc. This has been going on for 2000 years. Unless we go back to the Bible with a blank slate and check our doctrines against the Scriptures we won't know. The Bible hasn't changed, but the faith has. All one has to do is a brief study of Church history to see that the faith has changed.
If you're a Protestant, you're proof. Up until the 1500's the Catholic church was essentially the Christian faith in the west. The Reformers went back to the Scriptures and compared the Catholic doctrines to the Scriptures and saw that the church was off base and that's what brought about the Reformation. There were drastic changes to the faith. Now, let me pose a scenario, what if the Reformers didn't correct all of the errors that had been added to the faith (they didn't). And worse, what if, in their zeal to fix the problem, they added additional errors (they did)? So, just because a majority of Christians believe something it doesn't make it true. The Reformers were a minority yet they were correct in many of the changes they made. In many areas they returned the faith to the origianl and away from the corruption it had suffered. We shouldn't think that it's all good now and we don't have any more issues. We do, a lot of issues. So, we have two doors before us, we can go with flow and follow the crowd, or we can be like the Reformers and challenge error where we see it.
People will say how could millions of Christians be wrong? It's simple. Tell someone a secret and they tell someone and they tell someone and on and on.
This post is really long so I won't get into presuppositions, but they also play a big role in how millions can be wrong. Ask people who aren't a Christian what happens to people when they die. The vast majority, that aren't atheists, will have some form of going to Heaven when they die. So, almost everyone who becomes a Christian already believes they're going to Heaven when they die. Since they already believe that, what do you suppose they'll see in Scripture?
