Atlantis

[TastyWheat]

Quote[/b] (Guest @ Mar. 18 2004,9:16)]Instead Churches are enormous manmade structures, placing a physical barrier between us and God.


Similarly, priests place a barrier between us and God. Jesus taught us how to communicate with God directly, without the need of mediators, through prayer. The notion of a Church where we are guided along through worship by a leader in front of the entire community (assuming the entire community goes to Church) contradicts Jesus, who says in Mathew 6:5-6 "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synogagues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father wich is in secret; and thy Father wich seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."

Two points:

1. The physical church building. I fail to see how it is a barrier between us and God. At times it may be a barrier between Christians and the rest of the world, but your point seems to escape me. At any rate, you may see the church building now as a stumbling block, but you must realize the tradition it comes out of. Though the medieval Christians were at times misguided by wealth and superfluous adornment, you must realize that at the heart those people wanted to make the bigness of God at least quasi-tangible! There is a sense a Christian gets when you enter a church that bespeaks of the magnitude of God, despite the fact that you realize it is just a building. Today, though church buildings take a variety of forms, we should recognize that the presence of God is there (that is, in a true Bible-believing church), despite the fact that we know a building is not necessary. Preaching in the fields is something that has always intrigued me, and perhaps I'll give it a shot some time. If it worked for John Wesley, why wouldn't it work for me?

2. Priests and teachers of Scripture, guiders of worship. If you make these sorts of statements about Jesus you should be willing to discount Paul completely too, to stay consistent. In Ephesians, the epistles to Timothy, and the Corinthians especially he discusses spiritual gifts and church-worship order. Never once does Paul speak of the Spiritnot giving a gift of teaching, never once does he say that there should not be ones who are gifted at discerning God's will. Some people are even gifted to lead worship!

Now, as far as prayer goes, you are correct - through Christ the curtain has been torn, and we no longer need a mediator for prayer. Having a Catholic priest guide your prayer shouldn't even be seen to contradict this, in my mind.

However, the equality of prayer and public worship in your statements is a bit unsettling. Though in both acts glory is given to God, you cannot lump them together and say that they both do not follow Christ's example. Jesus himself was a rabbi; if He had not come to teach us to begin with, how would we know that we could pray on our own? How would we even know what to pray? Futher, public worship is just that: it is a communal recognition of God's magnificence, and the worship leader is there not to take that glory, but to help guide Christians to proper thought and meditation. Now, if a worship leader is not doing that, there is obviously a problem.


*dismounts soapbox*

 

[Master~Plan]

Quote[/b] ]Sorry for the sarcasm, but the bible was written by men, it was illustrated by men, edited by men and printed by men finally it's distributed by men. In no way is the bible proof of any supernatural agency - it's just a big book. There are bigger books out there.

(*sigh* I feel a long post comming on...)
I say the Bible was written by God. We can say what we wan't, but that doesn't really lead anywhere. Heres what I have found to be objectively true. The Bible is composed of writtings from many physical authors. One of which is Isiah. Isiah was a prophet who wrote about many things that happened, and some that are yet to come. It is established that this book has been dated hundreds of years before the life of Jesus, by Christians, and nonchristians. Isiah wrote quite a few prophecies that would happen to the Messiah.(I think most are found in Isiah 53)
When the desciples wrote about Jesus life, it was shown that every prophecy about Jesus(the Mesiah in the old testament) came true.
Question: "The new testament wasn't written from 50-90 AD, how do we know the details didn't get added in later?"
The Pharisees hated Jesus, and wanted to do anything to destroy his teaching, and him. They killed him on the cross because they did not want him to be the Mesiah, and how could he establish a kingdom on earth if he is dead? They didn't know he was establishing a kingdom in heaven. I'll try to stay on track. If Jesus was not born in Bethlehem, if Jesus was not betrayed with a kiss, if Jesus was not born of a virgin, if Jesus didn't do any miracles, if any of the many prphecies in Isiah did not happen, the pharisees would have been relieved, and quick to point out the fallacies of the life of Jesus because they hated him so much. They would have pointed out any errors or fabrications in the Gospels quickly that were not consistent with prophecy. But because what the disciples wrote was true, they could not object to the validity of the new testament, they could only attack the logic.
Because the different writtings were brought together during the cannonization, this rules out the Bible having one physical author, who made predictions, and then later writting about how they came true.