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Missing link to Abraham?

Sorry Unred.

But it just seemed to me that the discussion was taking on an argumentative tone. If you know anything about me, I am not unaccustomed to an argument. I go looking for them on occasion.

Now, having said all that, I will say that I am in the midst of a debate with JM on Universalism. So don't take it personally if I don't respond to you in a timely manner. But if you wanted to discuss some things with me, I am all for it.

The book of Jasher is a fine book. It has some good information in it. For instance, when Jacob was blessing his children in his old age, he mentions a sword he took from someone in a battle he had. There is no mention of that battle in our Bibles. But in the book of Jasher, it gives the full story. Jasher does a good job of filling in some of the empty spaces in our Bibles.

But it has it's weaknesses. When the Egyptians started killing Hebrew children, Jasher tells a pretty amazing story that stretches my ability to believe to the breaking point. I consider that story to be suspect at best. That story has caused my shiny opinion of Jasher to become tarnished just a bit. I wouldn't press for it to become part of our Canon.
 
No problem. It’s easy to be misunderstood in writing. Even in scripture. That’s why the Holy Spirit was given to interpret it for us, right?

I agree that some of the stories in Jasher are hard to believe, but if we took all those out, we still would have a more complete record than Genesis alone. If you take a collection of scriptures and remove all the things that someone found implausible, you wouldn’t have much left. It seems to me that our Bible has been filtered through someone’s personal incredulous-ity detector and removed any questionable portions and stamped ‘infallible’ on it back along the history of the church sometime. Only God is infallible, and he changes his mind when conditions change. I don’t find God to be as unconditionally bound to his promises as some seem to want desperately to believe he is.

This is a quote from God, when he appeared to Isaac:
Genesis 26:3 “Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father;
4And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;
5Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.â€Â

Doesn’t that at least suggest to you that God honored his promise to Abraham because Abraham obeyed God? If he is our example of faith being counted for righteousness, wouldn’t his promise to us also be based on our obedience as well? Abraham believed what God said, and he did what God told him to do, therefore God kept the promise that he gave him conditionally. I don’t think we can call our promise of eternal life any less conditional. We have to believe what Jesus said and do what he tells us to do in order for our faith in him to count as righteousness. Otherwise, we don't really believe in him, do we?
:-?
 
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