Good that you clarified, your comments could easily be understood that way. In James 2, the meaning of "faith without works is dead" is not that the faith was never real but rather that the faith is barren, akin to the Luke 13 situation. That is why James was "fertilizing" those he was addressing (they were not helping the poor, engaging in favoritism, gossiping among other grave sins) with the hope that they would repent and bear fruit worthy of their calling. Notice that what they were engaging in would be more than enough to cause any mainstream church member today to say that they were "never saved"/"faulty from the first", but nowhere in the letter does James preach the Gospel to them. Instead, he tells them to repent, not once questioning their salvation...
James 2 is hypocritical double talk that denounces favoritism then condones the willingness of the character Abraham to murder his own son, just to gain the favor of Bible God. Fine life principles not. Shameful.
%5 Have you thought about these 2 or 3 things Maverick ??[1]Dr Stanley has studied the Bible all of his long life + your Bible study time is how many decades?? [2] With salvation point, named the new birth, [ born again/born above]; what makes you think anyone can be ''unborn??'' Death is not being ''unborn'' [3]Samson lived like hell much of his life, study that. Are you aware Samson is still in Hebrew hall of fame: + spent plenty of time in prison?? Thanks
[1] Should the Pharisees have rejected the disciples/church because they (the Pharisees) had studied the Scriptures for much longer than the disciples had? (I'm not saying that Stanley is a Pharisee, only referencing your argument re time spent in study. He seems sincere. But sometimes even the most sincere of men can be sincerely mistaken.) [2] Death is indeed of a different nature than being unborn, it is worse than being unborn, since it is the destruction of what was once born/alive. But regardless, "unborn" does not exist in Scripture, it is an illogical construct and hence a red herring. Spiritual death on the other hand is plenty found in Scripture, with many warnings pointing to its reality: Galatians 6:8 and Romans 8:13 for example. [3] Samson is quoted as an example of faith, not as an example of how one should live out one's life. Are you aware of Hebrews 10:26-31 which comes just before the chapter you quote, Hebrews 11? The issue here is not that grave sin can be forgiven, indeed it can. The point is that a return to grave sin after one has been forgiven, i.e., a lack of repentance/obedience, does eventually result in spiritual death (see also John 15:6)
That is incorrect to say "unborn" does not exist in Scripture. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart" Jeremiah 1:5 There can be no doubt the generations of authors who wrote and re-wrote scripture were very well aware of the human propensity towards fear, including that described as 'spiritual death'. First generate anxiety , then provide a solution. Create the demand to supply. A fictional dread, a religious faith. Even unto the unborn.
Saturday / October 5, 2019 I thought I finished in May, but as it turns out, it was more like August or September before the job was truly complete (assuming that it is, in fact, now finished). Hopefully, I will return to memorizing the 30 Life Principles later today, but for now, I want to begin preparing for the organization of a concise curriculum, the topic of which will be the Bible. Accordingly, I would like to start by stating what the Bible is as simply as possible, which will probably be along the lines of the following... Let’s begin instruction by identifying what is the essence of the Bible, the theme that runs through its entirety, which is: Yahweh’s reconciling humankind to Himself. And since God accomplishes this through His Word, His Son, the second person of the Godhead...types, shadows, and symbols of Yeshua Hamashiach are seen throughout the Jewish Bible, the Tanakh (the Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim), which Christians refer to as the Old Testament; with God’s Word, the Messiah, appearing in person, in the flesh, in the second half of Scripture, which Christians refer to as the New Testament. So in this sense, the essence of the Bible, the theme running throughout its entirety, is: the Savior, the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. Consequently, if one fails to recognize this—that this world is simply the stage on which God is reconciling humanity to Himself though His Son, the Messiah—then one has failed to recognize the whole purpose of existence.
The Bible: Lesson #1 So then, the Bible is the story of the Messiah—of the Creator reconciling humankind back to Himself. How fitting then that the first spiritual principle listed by Dr. Charles Stanley (paraphrased) is the God’s top priority for every believer is the intimacy of our relationship with Him—the intensity of which directly affects the impact our lives will have in this world. Having now memorized the above, I think I ought now memorize 2 Corinthians 5:17-19 and Colossians 1:15-23... "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation." The English Standard Version "We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body. "He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross." The Message Bible
The Bible: Lesson #2 If the first lesson on the Bible will be to clarify its being the story of God’s plan to reconcile mankind to Himself through the Messiah, it follows, to my way of thinking, that the second lesson ought either explain exactly who this God is, or detail why the Bible, which claims to reveal the world’s spiritual truths, should even be believed in the first place. After giving it a little thought, I decided that sharing what cause one might have for bothering to give the Bible any consideration at all should come next—but only in the briefest of terms. This could be approached from a number of angles, but having already mentioned the Messiah, it might be best to continue placing the focus there… Given that time travel is, at present, only the stuff of science fiction, we have no example of world events, or the exploits of public figures, being recorded generations in advance, and then witnessed as history unfolds. This is why news outlets describe things that take place after they happen and not before. Imagine what might have been avoided if it were otherwise. Pearl Harbor would be a good example. If a network news program had a reputation for reporting on the news before it happened, its ratings would shoot through the roof. It would be the one source of information everyone would tune in to watch and listen to every single night. But wait…the Bible does report on news events before they happen! It is the only written account to be found anywhere on the planet that relates world events and the exploits of public figures generations in advance so people can watch them unfold as time passes. The Messiah said as much… “Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’” Luke 24:44-47 We also see this earlier in the same chapter of Luke… "And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” Luke 24:27 Moreover, the Messiah alludes to this in the Book of John… “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me…” John 5:39 The countless details, numerous prophesies that foreshadowed the life of the Messiah, are easy enough to look up and find—that he would come out of Bethlehem, that his soul would not be abandoned in Sheol, etc. The Bible even identifies historical figures like Cyrus the Great by name, spelling out what Cyrus would do in the future multiple generations before he was born. Ezekiel 20:34 and Isaiah 11:11-12 prophecy of God’s returning Israel to the land of Palestine; Jeremiah 32:44 is an account of Jews repurchasing the land; and Isaiah 66:8 hints at the fact that Israel would be born in a day, which happened on May 14, 1948. These are just a few of many, many more examples which, considered as a whole, ought to give one pause if debating whether or not to take the Bible seriously.
Pearl Harbor would be a very bad example. On November 7, 1937 the Los Angeles Examiner published a prescient map predicting how Imperial Japan could attack the United States during World War II. Created by Howard A. Burke, the map imagined a Japanese attack on the US that closely predicted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour four years later on December 7, 1941. Burke rightly noted that Japan’s first target would be Hawaii, and the US fleet docked at Pearl Harbour. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/map-of-how-japan-could-attack-us-world-war-ii-2016-5 News outlets 1 Bible 0 So does The Simpsons.
The Bible: Lesson #3 So if I were to write a Bible curriculum right at this moment, the first lesson would be to define the Bible as God's broadcast to human beings revealing to everyone that this universe was created as an arena in which God is reconciling humankind to Himself through the second Person of the Godhead, Yeshua Hamashiach—that this is the whole purpose of existence. The second lesson would be to touch on, if only for an instant, why one might have any cause whatsoever to trust anything the Bible might have to say. The third lesson would be a description of God, an explanation of who God is, which I will only begin to explore in this post (even though I have not yet begun to memorize the above passages from 2 Corinthians and Colossians, which I should probably do first). According to Wikipedia... In Christianity, the doctrine of the Trinity states that God is a single being who exists, simultaneously and eternally, as a communion of three distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Within Islam, however, such a concept of plurality within God is a denial of monotheism and foreign to the revelation found in Muslim scripture (i.e., blasphemy—my notation). An article written by Arnold Fruchtenbaum begins with the following... "Christians are, of course, entitled to believe in a trinitarian conception of God, but their effort to base this conception on the Hebrew Bible must fly in the face of the overwhelming story of that Bible. Hebrew Scriptures are clear and unequivocal on the oneness of God... The Hebrew Bible affirms the one God with unmistakable clarity. Monotheism, an uncompromising belief in one God, is the hallmark of the Hebrew Bible, the unwavering affirmation of Judaism and the unshakable faith of the Jew." Whether Christians are accused of being polytheists or tritheists or whether it is admitted that the Christian concept of the Tri-unity is a form of monotheism, one element always appears: one cannot believe in the Trinity and be Jewish. Even if what Christians believe is monotheistic, it still does not seem to be monotheistic enough to qualify as true Jewishness. Rabbi Greenberg’s article tends to reflect that thinking. But personally, I don’t really struggle with the concept of a Holy Trinity, for reasons different than I have heard expressed by anyone else, which has to do with the concept of a team. When I look at the Los Angels Chargers, I see one football team. Yet, for me to expect to encounter one player constituting the entire team would be totally ridiculous by virtue of the definition of the term. There are 53 men on a professional football team’s roster, with 46 being active on game day—and if you had only one, you would no longer have a team, which is defined as a number of persons forming one side in a competition. To think that three persons make three Gods is just as much a fallacy as thinking that three Chargers makes three teams—the fallacy of faulty analogy. Who gets to define the term God? It can’t be us. People have come up with all kinds of crazy ideas about gods, some which have passed away (How many people still worship Zeus?) and others which have had lasting power. So the only way I can really know the truth about God is to go to the source. But even though God entered our domain in person… "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me." …there are not only people who deny that God is who He is, there are even many people who deny that God exists at all! So, I am not inclined to look to people for a description of God, be they Jew, Muslim, or Zoroastrian. I want to hear from God directly, which I have reason to believe can only be accomplished through Judeo-Christian Scripture (see Lesson #2). Unlike Major League Baseball, where there are 30 teams with 15 in the National League and 15 in the American League, there is only one true God, so it is He who gets to explain to me exactly who He is. If He says He is three Persons—Yahweh, Yeshua Hamashiach, and the Holy Ghost—and that they are the one true God, the Creator of the universe, that’s good enough for me. God is three-in-one . . . by definition.