Confirmation Scripture Quotes

Most of us are not really approaching the subject [scriptures] in order to find out what Christianity says: we are approaching it [them] in the hope of finding support from Christianity for the views of our own party.

Why is it so hard to get people to study the Scriptures? Common sense tells us what revelation commands: 'Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God'--'Search the Scriptures'--'Be ready to give to every one a reason of the hope that is in you.' These are the words of the inspired writers, and these injunctions are confirmed by praising those who obey the admonition. And yet, for all that we have the Bible in our houses, we are ignorant of its contents. No wonder that so many Christians know so little about what Christ actually taught; no wonder that they are so mistaken about the faith that they profess.

In [the] early days, Muslims did not see Islam as a new, exclusive religion but as a continuation of the primordial faith of the ‘People of the Book’, the Jews and Christians. In one remarkable passage, God insists that Muslims must accept indiscriminately the revelations of every single one of God’s messengers: Abraham, Isaac, Ishamel, Jacob, Moses, Jesus and all the other prophets. The Qur’an is simply a ‘confirmation’ of the previous scriptures. Nobody must be forced to accept Islam, because each of the revealed traditions had its own din; it was not God’s will that all human beings should belong to the same faith community. God was not the exclusive property of any one tradition; the divine light could not be confined to a single lamp, belonged neither to the East or to the West, but enlightened all human beings. Muslims must speak courteously to the People of the Book, debate with them only in ‘the most kindly manner’, remember that they worshipped the same God, and not engage in pointless, aggressive disputes.

God is not angry with you and never has been. He loves you with an everlasting love. Salvation is not a question of “turn or burn.” We’re burning already, but we don’t have to be! Redemption! The life and death of Christ showed us how far God would go to extend forgiveness and invitation. His resurrection marked the death of death and the evacuation of Hades. My hope is in Christ, who rightfully earned his judgment seat and whose verdict is restorative justice, that is to say, mercy. Hope. That is my bias, and I believe that Scripture, tradition, and experience confirm it. I

Since the accuracy rate for the fulfillment of Bible prophecy so far has been 100%, we can be confident that it will continue to be so. No other religion in the world has such confirming evidence to inspire its faith.

known as the Wesleyan Quadrilateral: “Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason.

Personal relationships are paramount in life. At their best they can confirm the highest ideals we have about human life. Relationships are how we learn about ourselves. How we evolve, both as individuals and communities. How we learn about the world around us. Relationships are the most accessible source of inspiration. They can bring us to our knees; they can move us close to heaven. Personal relationships are our sacred text, our scripture.

As you endeavor to increase in learning, please remember that the doctrines and principles of the restored gospel should be considered in their totality. In other words, attempting to understand a doctrine or principle by examining a single scripture or prophetic statement in isolation from all else that has been revealed on the subject is generally misguided. True doctrines and principles are emphasized repeatedly in the standard works, by the prophets and apostles, and through the illuminating and confirming power of the Holy Ghost.

And, when I had travelled through these three chief points of the word of God, about the space of five years or more, I was caught in my present practice, and cast into prison, where I have lain above as long again to confirm the truth by way of suffering, as I was before in testifying of it according to the scriptures, in a way of preaching.

We have sometimes escaped from grave dangers not by any wisdom or foresight of our own, but by the intervention of unforeseen circumstances. So both the revelation of Scripture and our own individual experiences confirm the wisdom and good providence of God. He watches over His people from the earliest moment of their lives. He overrules and guards them through all their blind wanderings and leads them in a way that they know not.

Certainty is an unrealistic and unattainable ideal. We need to have pastors who are schooled in apologetics and engaged intellectually with our culture so as to shepherd their flock amidst the wolves. People who simply ride the roller coaster of emotional experience are cheating themselves out of a deeper and richer Christian faith by neglecting the intellectual side of that faith. They know little of the riches of deep understanding of Christian truth, of the confidence inspired by the discovery that one’s faith is logical and fits the facts of experience, and of the stability brought to one’s life by the conviction that one’s faith is objectively true. God could not possibly have intended that reason should be the faculty to lead us to faith, for faith cannot hang indefinitely in suspense while reason cautiously weighs and reweighs arguments. The Scriptures teach, on the contrary, that the way to God is by means of the heart, not by means of the intellect. When a person refuses to come to Christ, it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God’s Spirit on his heart. unbelief is at root a spiritual, not an intellectual, problem. Sometimes an unbeliever will throw up an intellectual smoke screen so that he can avoid personal, existential involvement with the gospel. In such a case, further argumentation may be futile and counterproductive, and we need to be sensitive to moments when apologetics is and is not appropriate. A person who knows that Christianity is true on the basis of the witness of the Spirit may also have a sound apologetic which reinforces or confirms for him the Spirit’s witness, but it does not serve as the basis of his belief. As long as reason is a minister of the Christian faith, Christians should employ it. It should not surprise us if most people find our apologetic unconvincing. But that does not mean that our apologetic is ineffective; it may only mean that many people are closed-minded. Without a divine lawgiver, there can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments. This means that it is impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can one praise brotherhood, equality, and love as good. For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say that you are right and I am wrong. No atheist or agnostic really lives consistently with his worldview. In some way he affirms meaning, value, or purpose without an adequate basis. It is our job to discover those areas and lovingly show him where those beliefs are groundless. We are witnesses to a mighty struggle for the mind and soul of America in our day, and Christians cannot be indifferent to it. If moral values are gradually discovered, not invented, then our gradual and fallible apprehension of the moral realm no more undermines the objective reality of that realm than our gradual, fallible apprehension of the physical world undermines the objectivity of that realm. God has given evidence sufficiently clear for those with an open heart, but sufficiently vague so as not to compel those whose hearts are closed. Because of the need for instruction and personal devotion, these writings must have been copied many times, which increases the chances of preserving the original text. In fact, no other ancient work is available in so many copies and languages, and yet all these various versions agree in content. The text has also remained unmarred by heretical additions. The abundance of manuscripts over a wide geographical distribution demonstrates that the text has been transmitted with only trifling discrepancies.

He has sent the Scripture down to you [Prophet] with the Truth, confirming what went before: He sent down the Torah and the Gospel earlier as a guide for people’ (3: 3–4). Indeed it urges the Christians and the Jews to practise their religion (5: 68, 45, 47). They are given the honorific title of ‘People of the Book’, and the Qur’an appeals to what is common between them: ‘Say, “People of the Book, let us arrive at a statement that is common to us all: we worship God alone, we ascribe no partner to Him, and none of us takes others beside God as lords”’ (3: 64).

One of the richest veins of truth is that found in the words of the Lord to Joseph Smith while he was in Liberty Jail. After Joseph’s initial prayer, which begins Doctrine and Covenants 121, the Lord answers, “My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment” (v. 7). We have all probably had enough experience with life and the Lord’s timing to realize that a small moment for the Lord may be quite a long one for us. His perspective is always focused on the eternal; ours is more short-sighted. One of the aspects of mortality with which we must deal is this: All of life itself may be “a small moment.” The necessary thing to hold to is the confirming belief that at the end of the small moment, our adversity ends. We do not go into eternity—if that is the required limit of time—or on with our lives trailing the stinging dust of past storms. The wind ceases, the air clears, we draw a deep breath, and we walk on. One of the Psalms, attributed to Moses, speaks beautifully of the Lord’s timing: “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. . . . So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalm 90:4, 12). We need wisdom when counting the days of our adversity.

to human nature as it was created. So some time after the creation, there must have been a fall. Confirmation for this view was sought in the Scriptures, and some found it in the story of the lustful angels that sexually assaulted mortal women in Genesis 6:1-4. But this interpretation of the origin of sin was largely replaced by finding the fall in the story of Adam and Eve. According to Williams, the fact that there were two different explanations of the fall in ancient Israel is a confirmation that neither story is the real source or basis of the doctrine ofa fall. Moreover, the interpretation of the two accounts as stories of a fall belongs to popular Jewish religious thought, rather than to the official teachers. According to Williams, the stories are the clothing for the previous

46 - The Obstacle of Bookish Bedevilment Read the scriptures but do not persist in being obsessed with them. If one were to be obsessed with the scriptures forming conjectures with its meaning, relying on one’s preconception, the mistake is great, discard the scriptures, without argument, while it is a big mistake, similarly obsession with the scriptures, not seeking a wise master, is an even bigger mistake, discarding books and obsession with them are all wrong. If one were to be obsessed with books for Tao, one has been inflicted with bookish bedevilment, in not seeking a wise master the great task is jeopardized, one must study carefully, distinguish the right and wrong, seek out a wise master to confirm them, only then can one come to understand Tao. 四十六、书魔关 读经书而不可偏执经书也。若执经书以意猜度，依己偏见，误之甚矣，弃经书，全不理论，固是大错，若执经书，不求明师，更是大错，弃书执书皆非也。若执书为道，中了书魔，不求明师则误大事，必须细心钻研经书，辨别邪正，访求明师以证是非，方能明道。

From Moses' point of view, he was now permanently separated both from what he regarded as his homeland, Egypt, and also from the people he now identified with as his own, Israel. Consider, then, the spiritual challenge that was his. He was a failure as a deliverer of his people, a failure as a citizen of Egypt, unwelcome among either of the nations he might have called his own, a wanted man, a now-permanent resident of an obscure place, alone and far from his origins, and among people of a different religion (however much or little Midianite religion may have shared some features with whatever unwritten Israelite religion existed at this time). His character, as we have seen, was clearly that of a deliverer. His circumstances, however, offered no support for any calling appropriate to that character. It would surely require an amazing supernatural action of a sovereign God for this washed-up exile to play any role in Israel's future. Moses knew this, and his statement, “I have become an alien in a foreign land,” resignedly confirms it 152

The holy Scriptures speak of us as fallen creatures: in almost every page we shall find something that is calculated to abate the loftiness and silence the pretensions of man. “The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” “What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous[5].” “How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water[6]?” “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside; they are altogether become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no not one[7].” “Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin[8]?” “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it.” “Behold, I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin hath my mother conceived me.” “We were by nature the children of wrath, even as others, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.” “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!”—Passages might be multiplied upon passages, which speak the same language, and these again might be illustrated and confirmed at large by various other considerations, drawn from the same sacred source; such as those which represent a thorough change, a renovation of our nature, as being necessary to our becoming true Christians; or as those also which are suggested by observing that holy men refer their good dispositions and affections to the immediate agency of the Supreme Being.

The intimate link existing between Yahweh and the Kenites is strengthened by the following observations: 1. The first mention of Yahweh (neither Elohim nor Yahweh-Elohim) in the book of Genesis is related to the birth of Cain: 'Now the man knew his wife Even, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, "I have produced a man with the help of the LORD"' (Gen. 4.1). This may be a symbolic way to claim that the 'discovery' of Yahweh is concomitant to the discovery of metallurgy. 2. Enosh is mentioned in Genesis as the first man who worshipped Yahweh: 'To Seth also a son was born, and he names him Enosh. At that time people began to invoke the name of the LORD' (Gen. 4.26). Interestingly, Enosh is the father of Keynan (= Cain). Again, the worship of Yahweh appears to have been linked to the discovery of metallurgy. 3. The Kenites had a sign (taw) on their forehead. From Gen. 4.15, it appears that this sign signalled that Yahweh protects Cain and his sons. From Ezek. 9.4-6, it seems that, at the end of the First Temple period, a similar sign remained the symbol of devotion to Yahweh. 4. The book of Jeremiah confirms the existence of a Kenite worship of Yahweh as follows:'Jonadab son of Rechab shall not lack a descendant to stand before me [Yahweh] for all time' (Jer. 35.19). This fidelity of smelters and smiths to the initial Yahwistic tradition may explain why the liberators of Judah, Israel and Jerusalem are depicted as smiths in the book of Zechariah (Zech. 2.3-4). When considered together, these data suggest that Yahweh was intimately related with the metallurgists from the very discovery of copper smelting. (pp. 393-394) from 'Yahweh, the Canaanite God of Metallurgy?', JSOT 33.4 (2009): 387-404

it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true. If a sermon promises health and wealth to the faithful, it isn’t true, because that theology makes God an absolute monster who only blesses rich westerners and despises Christians in Africa, India, China, South America, Russia, rural Appalachia, inner-city America, and everywhere else a sincere believer remains poor. If it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true. If doctrine elevates a woman’s married-with-children status as her highest calling, it isn’t true, because that omits single believers (whose status Paul considered preferable), widows, the childless by choice or fate or loss, the divorced, and the celibate gay. If these folks are second-class citizens in the kingdom because they aren’t married with children, then God just excluded millions of people from gospel work, and I guess they should just eat rocks and die. If it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true. Theology is either true everywhere or it isn’t true anywhere. This helps untangle us from the American God Narrative and sets God free to be God instead of the My-God-in-a-Pocket I carried for so long. It lends restraint when declaring what God does or does not think, because sometimes my portrayal of God’s ways sounds suspiciously like the American Dream and I had better check myself. Because of the Haitian single mom. Maybe I should speak less for God. This brings me to the question at hand, another popular subject I am asked to pontificate on: What is my calling? (See also: How do I know my calling? When did you know your calling? How can I get your calling? Has God told you my calling? Can you get me out of my calling?) Ah yes, “The Calling.” This is certainly a favorite Christian concept over in these parts. Here is the trouble: Scripture barely confirms our elusive calling—the bull’s-eye, life purpose, individual mission every hardworking Protestant wants to discover. I found five scriptures, three of which referred to

Scripture and Tradition Scriptural exegesis was no mere school exercise. The New Testament text became the battleground for the fierce debates over the nature of Jesus, God and man, that were waged in the fifth century and exegesis was the weapon that all the combatants wielded with both skill and conviction.23 The scriptural witness, often couched in familiar, popular, and even homely language, had to be converted into the abstract and learned currency of theology, the language of choice of the Church’s intelligentsia. Scripture, as it turned out, was merely the starting point. The steering mechanism was exegesis, and behind the exegesis, the helmsman at the rudder, stood another elemental principle: tradition.24 Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each possessed a Scripture that was, by universal consent, a closed Book. But God’s silence was a relative thing, and his providential direction of the community could be detected and “read” in other ways. Early within the development of Christianity, for example, one is aware of a subtle balance operating between appeals to Scripture and tradition. It was not a novel enterprise. By Jesus’ time the notion of an oral tradition separate from but obviously connected to the written Scriptures was already familiar, if not universally accepted, in Jewish circles. Jesus and the Pharisees debated the authority of the oral tradition more than once, and though he does not appear to have denied the premise, Jesus, his contemporaries remarked, “taught on his own authority,” not on that of some other sage. He substituted his authority for the tradition of the Fathers. Thus Jesus was proposing himself as the source of a new tradition handed on to his followers and confirmed by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. The Christian view that there was a tradition distinct from the Scriptures may have begun with the early understanding of Scripture as synonymous with the Bible—serious exegetical attention did not begin to be paid to the Gospels until the end of the second century—whereas the “tradition” was constituted of the teachings and redemptive death of Jesus, both of which Jesus himself had placed in their true “scriptural” context.25 Thus, even when parts of Jesus’ teachings and actions had been committed to writing in the Gospels, and so began to constitute a new, specifically Christian Scripture, the distinction between Scripture in the biblical sense and tradition in the Christian sense continued to be felt in the Christian community.26

Archaeological research done in Bible lands has amazingly confirmed the reliability and historicity of the Scriptures in so many areas. Every part of the Bible that could be checked by archaeology now provides the most positive proofs for the accuracy of the Bible.

All normative judgments about worship must be avoided. Attempts to use biblicism as a guideline, as we shall see, tend to be abandoned in the course of time or lead to biblicism of only certain portions of scripture. After all, there is more biblical authority for snake handling (Mark 16:18) than there is for confirmation! Historically, attempts to deduce norms for worship from scripture fail because the Bible was not written for such a purpose.

Faith is the confirmation of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality, perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses.

But does Philippians 2:7 teach that Christ emptied himself of some of his divine attributes, and does the rest of the New Testament confirm this? The evidence of Scripture points to a negative answer to both questions. We must first realize that no recognized teacher in the first 1,800 years of church history, including those who were native speakers of Greek, thought that “emptied himself” in Philippians 2:7 meant that the Son of God gave up some of his divine attributes. Second, we must recognize that the text does not say that Christ “emptied himself of some powers” or “emptied himself of divine attributes” or anything like that. Third, the text does describe what Jesus did in this “emptying”: he did not do it by giving up any of his attributes but rather by “taking the form of a servant,” that is, by coming to live as a man, and “being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8). Thus, the context itself interprets this “emptying” as equivalent to “humbling himself” and taking on a lowly status and position. Thus, the NIV, instead of translating the phrase, “He emptied himself,” translates it, “but made himself nothing” (Phil. 2:7 NIV). The emptying includes change of role and status, not essential attributes or nature.

Ministers are set as guides and teachers, and are represented in Scripture as lights set up in the churches; and in the present state meet their people from time to time in order to instruct and enlighten them, to correct their mistakes, and to be a voice behind them, when they turn aside to the right hand or to the left, saying, “This is the way, walk in it;” to evince and confirm the truth by exhibiting the proper evidences of it, and to refute errors and corrupt opinions, to convince the erroneous and establish the doubting.

DAY 25: What specific instructions did Paul give Timothy that would apply to a young person? A young person seeking to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ can find essential guidelines in 4:12–16, where Paul listed five areas (verse 12) in which Timothy was to be an example to the church: 1. In “word” or speech—see also Matthew 12:34–37; Ephesians 4:25, 29, 31. 2. In “conduct” or righteous living—see also Titus 2:10; 1 Peter 1:15; 2:12; 3:16. 3. In “love” or self-sacrificial service for others—see also John 15:13. 4. In “faith” or faithfulness or commitment, not belief—see also 1 Corinthians 4:2. 5. In “purity” and particularly sexual purity—see also 4:2. The verses that follow hold several other building blocks to a life of discipleship: 1. Timothy was to be involved in the public reading, study, and application of Scripture (v. 13). 2. Timothy was to diligently use his spiritual gift that others had confirmed and affirmed in a public way (v. 14). 3. Timothy was to be committed to a process of progress in his walk with Christ (v. 15). 4. Timothy was to “take heed” to pay careful attention to “yourself and to the doctrine” (v. 16). The priorities of a godly leader should be summed up in Timothy’s personal holiness and public teaching. All of Paul’s exhortations in vv. 6–16 fit into one or the other of those two categories. By careful attention to his own godly life and faithful preaching of the Word, Timothy would continue to be the human instrument God would use to bring the gospel and to save some who heard him. Though salvation is God’s work, it is His pleasure to do it through human instruments.

We are sometimes told that the final authority for us as Christians should be Christ, and not the Scriptures. It is suggested that Christ would have us accept only the portions of Scripture that comport with his life and teaching; that certain aspects of biblical history, chronology, and cosmology need not bother us because Christ would not have us be bothered by them. The idea put forward by many liberal Christians and by not a few self-proclaimed evangelicals is that we are to worship Christ and not the Scriptures; we must let Christ stand apart from Scripture and above it. “But who is this Christ, the Judge of Scripture?” Packer asks. “Not the Christ of the New Testament and of history. That Christ does not judge Scripture; He obeys it and fulfills it. By word and deed He endorses the authority of the whole of it.”6 Those with a high view of Scripture are often charged with idolatry for so deeply reverencing the word of God. But the accusation is laid at the wrong feet. “A Christ who permits His followers to set Him up as the Judge of Scripture, One by whom its authority must be confirmed before it becomes binding and by whose adverse sentence it is in places annulled, is a Christ of human imagination, made in the theologian’s own image, One whose attitude to Scripture is the opposite of that of the Christ of history. If the construction of such a Christ is not a breach of the second commandment, it is hard to see what is.”7 Jesus may have seen himself as the focal point of Scripture, but never as a judge of it. The only Jesus who stands above Scripture is the Jesus of our own invention.

This perpetual hurry of business and company ruins me in soul if not in body. More solitude and earlier hours! I suspect I have been allotting habitually too little time to religious exercises, as private devotion and religious meditation, Scripture-reading, etc. Hence I am lean and cold and hard. I had better allot two hours or an hour and a half daily. I have been keeping too late hours, and hence have had but a hurried half hour in a morning to myself. Surely the experience of all good men confirms the proposition that without a due measure of private devotions the soul will grow lean. But all may be done through prayer—almighty prayer, I am ready to say—and why not? For that it is almighty is only through the gracious ordination of the God of love and truth. O then, pray, pray, pray!—William Wilberforce

12:38 This verse confirms that the Israelites of the exodus (and thereafter) were actually a mixed people ethnically—something that most Christians are unaware of. The verse would best be translated as follows: “A huge ethnically diverse group also went up with them, and very many cattle, both flocks and herds.”84 To what was Moses referring? To the fact that many other persons who were not descended from Abraham or Israel joined the Israelites as they left Egypt. These people had observed the miraculous work of Yahweh, Israel's God, and had become convinced that conversion to him and life among his people would represent their best hope for the future. In this regard they were predecessors to Ruth, who declared to Naomi, “Your people will be my people and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16).85

Question: Will there always be a church upon earth? Answer: Yes. This is evident, first of all, from the promises of God. "Upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matt 16:18). If ever the church would be eradicated, the gates of hell, that is, the might of the devil, would have prevailed against her. This, however, will never occur, and thus the church will always remain. This is also evident in Matt 28:20, where we read, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." The apostles would not live that long, but their spiritual seed (that is, their children, the one generation after the other), and the Holy Scriptures recorded by them, would remain. Christ promises His assistance to these all the days until the end of the world, and in these children and by their writings they still live and speak. Thus the church continues to exist and will always remain in existence. Secondly, this is also confirmed by the offices of the Lord Jesus. As Prophet, Priest, and King, He will endure forever. There can, however, be no body without a head, no king without subjects, no teaching prophets without pupils, no priest without a people for whom he prays, and no bridegroom without a bride. "Thou art a priest for ever" (Ps 110:4); "And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed" (Dan 2:44); "For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" (1 Cor 15:25-26). Thirdly, add to this experience that the Bible reveals to us the church from Adam to Christ, and after Christ, during the time of the apostles. Both church and secular history bear witness to the fact that the church has existed from the time of the apostles until now. Since she still exists, we therefore conclude that she will continue to exist in spite of all those who wish the contrary.

The book of Exodus is bifid in composition, meaning that its material is presented to the reader in two main parts. A first part tells the story of God's rescue of the people of Israel from Egypt and his bringing them to Mount Sinai (chaps. 1–19), and a second part describes his covenant with them, made as they encamped at Mount Sinai (chaps. 20–40). Many possible subdivisions are found within these two major halves of the book (as, indeed, this commentary takes note of), but it is hard to miss the basic division of stories of Israel on their way to Sinai and accounts of God's covenant provision for them (including confirmations of and threats to that covenant relationship) after they are there.1 Exodus may thus be divided into two broad topics: (1) deliverance of a group of people from submission to their oppressors to submission to God and (2) the constitution of that group as a people of God. Put another way, Exodus is about rescue from human bondage and rescue from sin's bondage.2 Yet another way to think of the two parts of the book is through the idea of servitude: in Egypt, Israel was the servant of pharaoh; at Sinai they became God's servants.

He taught me that I could be a thinking person and still believe that God's word can stand the test of time and criticism of man, that science confirms Scripture, and that you don't have to duck hard questions. I learned that I didn't have to defensively protect God or His Word, but that I could truth both.

If confirmed by further investigations, the identification of Yahweh as the Canaanite god of metallurgy may have significant implications for the way we approach the history of Israel and the emergence of monotheism. First, the worship of Yahweh suddenly emerging with the Israelite Alliance becomes an Iron Age movement, the popularization of the beliefs of the Canaanite smelters. In this case, the novelty of the Israelite Alliance consists of the transformation of the (initiatory) cult of the Canaanite guild of copper smelters into a public cult. Second, the uncompromising attitude observed in Israel towards deities other than Yahweh becomes a resurgence of a very ancient tradition, that of the Canaanite smelters, challenging the current gradualist view of emergence of monotheism from monolatry and henotheism. Third, it seems that many of the biblical writings include traces of very ancient traditions, including those of the Canaanite metallurgists from the Bronze Age. Their identification and their comparison with other metallurgical traditions may be a tool that can be used in the identification of the various strata of redaction of the biblical texts. (p. 403) (from 'Yahweh, the Canaanite God of Metallurgy?', JSOT 33.4 (2009): 387-404)

Theology is not promoted by culture but by the belief in God’s revelation as an event beyond all human history, to which Scripture bears witness and which finds confirmation in the Confessions of our Church. Only a theology that clings inexorably to these most essential presuppositions can help build up a Church that really stands unshaken amidst all the attacks of the spirit of the age. And such a Church alone will be the salt of the earth and the light of the world; any other Church will perish along with the world.

Finally, Sacred Tradition is also necessary because some truths of the faith are expressed in a completely definite form in Scripture, while others are not entirely clear and precise and therefore demand confirmation by the Sacred Apostolic Tradition.

The Holy Scripture is called the Book of the Old and of the New Testament. When a notary has drawn a contract or other deed, when a testament is confirmed by the death of the testator, there must not be added, withdrawn, or altered, one single word under penalty of falsification. Are not the Holy Scriptures the true testament of the eternal God, drawn by the notaries deputed for this purpose, duly sealed and signed with his blood, confirmed by death? Being such, how can we alter even the smallest point without impiety? “A testament,” says the great Ulpian, “is a just expression of our will as to what we would have done after our death.”898 Our Lord by the Holy Scriptures shows us what we must believe, hope for, love and do, and this by a true expression of his will; if we add, take away or change, it will no longer be the true expression of God’s will. For Our Lord having duly expressed in Scripture his will, if we add anything of our own we shall make the statement go beyond the will of the testator, if we take anything away we shall make it fall short, if we make changes in it we shall set it awry, and it will no longer correspond to the will of the author, nor be a correct statement. When two things exactly correspond, he who changes the one destroys the equality and the correspondence between them. If it be a true statement, whatever right have we to alter it? Our Lord puts a value on the iotas, yea, the mere little points and accents of his holy words. How jealous then is he of their integrity, and what punishment shall they not deserve who violate this integrity! Brethren, says S. Paul,899 (I speak after the manner of man), yet a man’s testament, if it be confirmed, no man despiseth, nor addeth to it. And to show how important it is to learn the Scripture in its exactness he gives an example. To Abraham were the promisesmade, and to his seed. He says not and to his seeds as of many, but as of one; and to thy seed, who is Christ. See, I beg you, how the change from singular to plural would have spoilt the mysterious meaning of this word. The Ephrathites [Ephraimites] said Sibolleth, not forgetting a single letter, but because they did not pronounce it thickly enough, the Galaadites slew them at the fords of Jordan.900 The simple difference of pronunciation in speaking, and in writing the mere transposition of one single point on the letter scin caused the ambiguity, and changing the janin into semol, instead of an ear of wheat expressed a weight or a burden. Whosoever alters or adds the slightest accent in the Scripture is a sacrilegious man and deserves the death of him who dares to mingle the profane with the sacred.

Interesting evidence of the essential link between Yahweh and copper metallurgy is provided by the story of the first 'encounter' between Moses and Yahweh on Mt Horeb, near the 'burning bush' (Exod. 3), where it is related that Moses is involved in the mission to deliver the sons of Israel from Egyptian tyranny. It is also stressed that Moses had to perform a 'prodigy' in order to demonstrate that he acts in the name of Yahweh (Exod. 4.5). This prodigy is depicted as the reversible transformation of a matteh into a nahash (Exod. 4.2-5). The term matteh is generally understood as designating a wood-made staff, but this meaning is probably secondary. From Isa. 10.15 and Ezek. 19.13-14 it appears that a matteh was formerly a copper scepter hung up on a wooden staff.&sup32; The term nahash is generally translated as 'serpent'. However, the closeness existing in Hebrew between nahash ('serpent') and nehoshet ('copper') suggests that nahash may also designate copper.&sup33; Accordingly, the prodigy performed 'in the name of Yahweh' becomes the transformation of a copper artifact (matteh, the scepter) into melted copper (nahash, the serpent). It is interesting to notice that such a 'prodigy' (occuring not so far from the camp of Jethro the Kenite) happens after Moses threw his matteh on a hot source, the 'burning bush', which may be a poetic evocation of live charcoal. If the reversible matteh-nahash conversion is considered in the book of Exodus as a specific sign of Yahweh, this implies that this deity was intimately associated with copper melting, at least in the period prior to the Israelite Alliance. (pp. 395-396) from 'Yahweh, the Canaanite God of Metallurgy?', JSOT 33.4 (2009): 387-404 [32]: The term matteh is explicitly used to designate the wooden staff in Exod. 17.16-23. But the initial meaning is revealed in Isa. 10.15, when it is asked, 'Shall the axe vaunt itself over the one who wields it, or the saw magnify itself against the one who handles it? As if a rod should raise the one who lifts it up, or as of a staff should lift the one who is not wood!' It a matteh cannot be hung up without a wooden staff, it is clear that it is not the wooden staff itself but something that is fitted with it. Furthermore, in his lamentation about the destruction of Israel, Ezekiel mentions the fact that the staff supporting the matteh will burn and will provoke a qeyna (Ezek. 19.13-14), a term designating the smelting of copper (and by extension its melting). This strongly suggests that the matteh is a copper-scepter. In some cases, traces of wood have been found in the inner space of the scepter, confirming that such items were probably borne upon wooden staffs. [33]: The term nahash is also used to designate copper in languages closely related to Hebrew (Ugaritic, Aramaic, Arabic). In the book of Chronicles, the term nahash is used once to designate copper: Ir Nahash was a town founded by a descendant of Celoub (Caleb), a clan of metalworkers (1 Chron 4.11-12), so that it designates the town where copper was smelted or worked.

Interesting evidence of the essential link between Yahweh and copper metallurgy is provided by the story of the first 'encounter' between Moses and Yahweh on Mt Horeb, near the 'burning bush' (Exod. 3), where it is related that Moses is involved in the mission to deliver the sons of Israel from Egyptian tyranny. It is also stressed that Moses had to perform a 'prodigy' in order to demonstrate that he acts in the name of Yahweh (Exod. 4.5). This prodigy is depicted as the reversible transformation of a matteh into a nahash (Exod. 4.2-5). The term matteh is generally understood as designating a wood-made staff, but this meaning is probably secondary. From Isa. 10.15 and Ezek. 19.13-14 it appears that a matteh was formerly a copper scepter hung up on a wooden staff.&sup32 The term nahash is generally translated as 'serpent'. However, the closeness existing in Hebrew between nahash ('serpent') and nehoshet ('copper') suggests that nahash may also designate copper.&sup33 Accordingly, the prodigy performed 'in the name of Yahweh' becomes the transformation of a copper artifact (matteh, the scepter) into melted copper (nahash, the serpent). It is interesting to notice that such a 'prodigy' (occuring not so far from the camp of Jethro the Kenite) happens after Moses threw his matteh on a hot source, the 'burning bush', which may be a poetic evocation of live charcoal. If the reversible matteh-nahash conversion is considered in the book of Exodus as a specific sign of Yahweh, this implies that this deity was intimately associated with copper melting, at least in the period prior to the Israelite Alliance. (pp. 395-396) from 'Yahweh, the Canaanite God of Metallurgy?', JSOT 33.4 (2009): 387-404 [32]: The term matteh is explicitly used to designate the wooden staff in Exod. 17.16-23. But the initial meaning is revealed in Isa. 10.15, when it is asked, 'Shall the axe vaunt itself over the one who wields it, or the saw magnify itself against the one who handles it? As if a rod should raise the one who lifts it up, or as of a staff should lift the one who is not wood!' It a matteh cannot be hung up without a wooden staff, it is clear that it is not the wooden staff itself but something that is fitted with it. Furthermore, in his lamentation about the destruction of Israel, Ezekiel mentions the fact that the staff supporting the matteh will burn and will provoke a qeyna (Ezek. 19.13-14), a term designating the smelting of copper (and by extension its melting). This strongly suggests that the matteh is a copper-scepter. In some cases, traces of wood have been found in the inner space of the scepter, confirming that such items were probably borne upon wooden staffs. [33]: The term nahash is also used to designate copper in languages closely related to Hebrew (Ugaritic, Aramaic, Arabic). In the book of Chronicles, the term nahash is used once to designate copper: Ir Nahash was a town founded by a descendant of Celoub (Caleb), a clan of metalworkers (1 Chron 4.11-12), so that it designates the town where copper was smelted or worked.

How then does a Christian, or anyone else, choose among the various claims for absolute authorities? Ultimately the truthfulness of the Bible will commend itself as being far more persuasive than other religious books (such as the Book of Mormon or the Qur’an), or than any other intellectual constructions of the human mind (such as logic, human reason, sense experience, scientific methodology, etc.). It will be more persuasive because in the actual experience of life, all of these other candidates for ultimate authority are seen to be inconsistent or to have shortcomings that disqualify them, while the Bible will be seen to be fully in accord with all that we know about the world around us, about ourselves, and about God. The Bible will commend itself as being persuasive in this way, that is, if we are thinking rightly about the nature of reality, our perception of it and of ourselves, and our perception of God. The trouble is that because of sin our perception and analysis of God and creation is faulty. Sin is ultimately irrational, and sin makes us think incorrectly about God and about creation. Thus, in a world free from sin, the Bible would commend itself convincingly to all people as God’s Word. But because sin distorts people’s perception of reality, they do not recognize Scripture for what it really is. Therefore it requires the work of the Holy Spirit, overcoming the effects of sin, to enable us to be persuaded that the Bible is indeed the Word of God and that the claims it makes for itself are true. Thus, in another sense, the argument for the Bible as God’s Word and our ultimate authority is not a typical circular argument. The process of persuasion is perhaps better likened to a spiral in which increasing knowledge of Scripture and increasingly correct understanding of God and creation tend to supplement one another in a harmonious way, each tending to confirm the accuracy of the other. This is not to say that our knowledge of the world around us serves as a higher authority than Scripture, but rather that such knowledge, if it is correct knowledge, continues to give greater and greater assurance and deeper conviction that the Bible is the only truly ultimate authority and that other competing claims for ultimate authority are false.

Moreover, Synod in agreement with our Confession maintains that “the sacraments are not empty or meaningless signs, so as to deceive us, but visible signs and seals of an inward and invisible thing, by means of which God works in us by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Article XXXIII), and that more particularly baptism is called “the washing of regeneration” and “the washing away of sins” because God would “assure us by this divine pledge and sign that we are spiritually cleansed from our sins as really as we are outwardly washed with water”; wherefore our Church in the prayer after baptism “thanks and praises God that He has forgiven us and our children all our sins, through the blood of His beloved Son —Page 172— Jesus Christ, and received us through His Holy Spirit as members of His only begotten Son, and so adopted us to be His children, and sealed and confirmed the same unto us by holy baptism”; so that our Confessional Standards clearly teach that the sacrament of baptism signifies and seals the washing away of our sins by the blood and the Spirit of Jesus Christ, that is, the justification and the renewal by the Holy Spirit as benefits which God has bestowed upon our seed. Synod is of the opinion that the representation that every elect child is on that account already in fact regenerated even before baptism, can be proved neither on scriptural nor on confessional grounds, seeing that God fulfils His promise sovereignly in His own time, whether before, during, or after baptism. It is hence imperative to be circumspect in one’s utterances on this matter, so as not to desire to be wise beyond that which God has revealed.

Christ speaks to us through the Bible. He confirms to us that the history in the Bible is accurate. He reveals that we’ll never find any conflict between Scripture and what can be observed in science. Faith comes when He speaks. Christ authors our faith.

5. Sound Teaching As teaching that conformed to the words of Jesus, a mentor drew from the Hebrew Scriptures, the teachings of Jesus, and the early writings that circulated throughout the churches that were later confirmed as Scripture.

In a society where all beliefs are tolerated, our message stands out as unique. Other groups can appeal to tradition and philosophy, but we can establish our message from Scripture, and it is confirmed by miracles, signs, and wonders. When people listen to other philosophical and religious discourses they may be entertained, affirmed, or intellectually stimulated, but when they hear the gospel they experience conviction, anointing, and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

Whenever I was too straitly pressed with objections and arguments against any of my sentiments, and when doubts began to arise in my mind, to put off the uneasiness occasioned by them, my constant practice was to recollect, as far as I could, all the reasonings and interpretations of Scripture on the other side of the question; and when this failed of affording satisfaction, I had recourse to controversial writings. This drew me aside from the pure Word of God, rendered me more remiss and formal in prayer, and furnished me with defensive armour against my convictions, with fuel for my passions, and food for my pride and self-sufficiency.

THE FIRST means that nature provides for us to distinguish between good and evil, in laws as in everything else, is our own good judgment. Paul confirms this when he says “I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say” (1 Cor. 10:15), or when he says later “Judge ye in yourselves. Is it seemly that a woman pray unto God unveiled?” (1 Cor. 11:13). Our Savior Himself required that the Jews exercise this faculty (Luke 12:56, 57), and Scripture commends the Bereans for it (Acts 17:11). Whatever we do, if our own secret judgment does not consent to it, the same is sin, even if it be permissible, and therefore St. Paul says, “Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (Rom. 14:5).

The witness of Sacred Tradition is indispensable for our certainty that all the books of Sacred Scripture have been handed down to us from Apostolic times and are of Apostolic origin. Sacred Tradition is necessary for the correct understanding of separate passages of Sacred Scripture, and for refuting heretical reinterpretations of it, and, in general, so as to avoid superficial, one-sided, and sometimes even prejudiced and false interpretations of it. Finally, Sacred Tradition is also necessary because some truths of the faith are expressed in a completely definite form in Scripture, while others are not entirely clear and precise and therefore demand confirmation by the Sacred Apostolic Tradition.

The Orthodox Church of Christ is the Body of Christ, a spiritual organism whose Head is Christ. It has a single spirit, a single common faith, a single and common catholic consciousness, guided by the Holy Spirit; and its reasonings are based on the concrete, definite foundations of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Apostolic Tradition. This catholic consciousness is always with the Church, but, in a more definite fashion, this consciousness is expressed in the Ecumenical Councils of the Church. From profound Christian antiquity, local councils of separate Orthodox Churches gathered twice a year, in accordance with the 37th Canon of the Holy Apostles.18 Likewise, often in the history of the Church there were councils of regional bishops representing a wider area than individual Churches and, finally, councils of bishops of the whole Orthodox Church of both East and West. Such Ecumenical Councils the Church recognizes as seven in number. The Ecumenical Councils formulated precisely and confirmed a number of the fundamental truths of the Orthodox Christian Faith, defending the ancient teaching of the Church against the distortions of heretics. The Ecumenical Councils likewise formulated numerous laws and rules governing public and private Christian church life, which are called the Church canons, and required the universal and uniform observance of them. Finally, the Ecumenical Councils confirmed the dogmatic decrees of a number of local councils, and also the dogmatic statements composed by certain Fathers of the Church — for example, the confession of faith of St. Gregory the Wonderworker, Bishop of Neo-Caesarea,19 the canons of St. Basil the Great,20 and so forth.

We don’t need visions to believe that heaven is for real; we know it from the Scriptures, and especially through Jesus. We don’t need miracles to confirm that God loves us; we know it from the Scriptures, and especially through Jesus. We don’t need great wealth, or freedom from suffering, to tell us that God is for us; we know it from the Scriptures, and especially through Jesus. As Paul was later to write, Scripture has been inspired by God, so that we ‘may be thoroughly equipped for every good work’.

18th April, 1872.—I pray the good Lord of all to favour me so as to allow me to discover the ancient fountains of Herodotus, and if there is anything in the underground excavations to confirm the precious old documents (Ä ²¹²»1±), the Scriptures of truth, may He permit me to bring it to light, and give me wisdom to make a proper use of it.

The word mediates the glory, and the glory confirms the word.

Everyone cannot elevate or even revelate at the same time and/or season; an appointment to elevation can result from being specially chosen...like fruit that is ready, ripe and refined for its pleasurable taste. Even scriptural wisdom documents that "Many are called, few are chosen." Those chosen 'few' may deeply sense that at the core function of elevation is an acension both to and from a higher positioned calling for it...a destiny appointment that will be met without haste...separation has the ability to confirm that elevation has its own appointment...prompted by the foreknowledge of a most SUPER natural selection.

When I have considered also the truth of His resurrection, and have remembered that word, Touch Me not, Mary, etc., I have seen as if He had leaped out of the grave’s mouth, for joy that He was risen again, and had got the conquest over our dreadful foes.  John xx. 17.  I have also in the spirit, seen Him a man, on the right hand of God the Father for me; and have seen the manner of His coming from heaven, to judge the world with glory, and have been confirmed in these things by these scriptures following, Acts i. 9, 10, and vii. 56, and x. 42; Heb. vii. 24 and ix. 28; Rev. i. 18; 1 Thess. iv. 17, 18.

Also besides these teachings of God in His word, the Lord made use of two things to confirm me in this truth; the one was the errors of the Quakers and the other was the guilt of sin; for as the Quakers did oppose this truth, so God did the more confirm me in it, by leading me into the scripture that did wonderfully maintain it.

The narrative pushes us, its readers, to consider our response to Jesus. With whom are you identifying, Herod or the magoi? Take care not to answer too quickly. Herod would have self-identified as a religiously observant Jew. He consistently presented himself in this way and viewed his project to rebuild the temple as a powerful example of his commitment to Israel’s God.28 (See again the drawings of Herod’s temple on the insert following page 64.) He intensified his guilt, however, by using Scripture to locate the child. This act confirmed his knowledge that he was setting himself against God and his purposes in order to maintain his own rule and dynasty. His knowledge of God and Scripture led him not to submission and worship; instead, he prized self-preservation and self-rule above anything else, even God. He would not bow to the authority of a different Judean king, whether that king had God’s approval or not. Herod chose resistance and opposition to Jesus and God’s plan. Herod powerfully illustrates the fact that it’s not enough to identify outwardly with God’s people. It’s not enough to give sacrificially of your funds and energy to build God’s house (or temple) and to help others worship. It’s not enough to learn about God and his plan through his Scriptures. Every one of us is confronted daily with a choice of our will: Whom will we serve? For whom will we live? This is not the kind of decision that can be made once and for all (“I gave my life to God when I was a child”) or that can be determined by past or even present performance (“I have gone to church every Sunday for the last twenty years and regularly give money to the church”). It’s the kind of decision we must make afresh every day, and that entails more (but not less) than mere outward actions. For whom are you living today?

there is real wisdom in closely examining anything we believe we’re hearing from God. This is true whether a word comes directly to us or if it’s delivered through another person. That way, confirming Scripture and counsel can help to alleviate confusion about what God is and isn’t saying.

Whereas Anabaptists are neither spirited or principled to injure or hurt your government nor your liberties; but rather these be the means to preserve your churches from apostasy, and to provoke them to their primitive purity, as they were in the first planting; in admission of members to receive none into your churches but visible saints, and in restoring the entire jurisdiction of every congregation complete and undisturbed. We are hearty and full for our Presbyterian brethren’s equal liberty with ourselves; O that they had the same spirit towards us! But O how it grieves and affects us, that New England should persecute! Will you not give what you take? Is liberty of conscience your due? And is it not as due unto others who are sound in the faith? Amongst many Scriptures, that in the fourteenth of Romans much confirms me in liberty of conscience thus stated. To him that esteemeth any thing unclean, to him it is unclean.

The human capacity for self-deception is astounding. This is taught by Scripture (Jeremiah 17:9) and confirmed by psychology. Some people are highly skilled in deceiving others. However, their duplicity pales in comparison with the endlessly creative ways in which each and every one of us deceives our self.

I was very confused many times because Christians would shame me and say I needed to pray for them. As I began to ask Papa God about praying for the programmers, the very next day, He revealed in Scripture my answer that confirmed that I should not pray for them. Jeremiah 7:16 says, “So do not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them; do not plead with me, for I will not listen to you.

Take care that thy faith is of the right kind--that it is not a mere belief of doctrine, but a simple faith, depending on Christ, and on Christ alone. Give diligent heed to thy courage. Plead with God that he would give thee the face of a lion, that thou mayest, with a consciousness of right, go on boldly. Study well the Scriptures, and get knowledge; for a knowledge of doctrine will tend very much to confirm faith. Try to understand God's Word; let it dwell in thy heart richly.

The thing that personally confirms more to me of the truthfulness of Scripture is the fact that I had to be exposed to the most radical higher criticism. The more I check out the problems of Scripture, the more amazed I am at the uncanny, minute, intricate symmetry of the entirety of that Book.

As William Bouwsma pointed out, the late medieval and early Renaissance crises of representation did not stall out at their skepticism of the old systems but rather progressed to an even more urgent defense of objective boundaries and quantifiable truths. In “The Secularization of Language in the Seventeenth Century,” Margreta de Grazia has shown how this pursuit of certainty led to a skepticism about language itself that dissociated words from God and deverbalized God’s message, prompting thinkers from Thomas Sprat of the Royal Society to Hobbes, Robert Hooke, Galileo, and Newton to seek certainty in mathematical knowledge; quantifiable, identifiable substances; and trial, experiment, and experience. As Puritan propagandist Vavasor Powell put it in the middle of the seventeenth century, “Experience is like steel to an edged tool, or like salt to fresh meat, it seasons brain- knowledge, and settles a shaking unsetled soule.” Paralleling more secular quests for certainty, the Puritan quest for grounding religious knowledge in a literalist reading of Scripture focused ever more intensely on manifest, genuine experience confirming salvation and the personal application of scriptural truth. The spontaneous “pouring out of the heart” in prayer was just such an evidentiary experience.

As William Bouwsma pointed out, the late medieval and early Renaissance crises of representation did not stall out at their skepticism of the old systems but rather progressed to an even more urgent defense of objective boundaries and quantifiable truths.27 In “The Secularization of Language in the Seventeenth Century,” Margreta de Grazia has shown how this pursuit of certainty led to a skepticism about language itself that dissociated words from God and deverbalized God’s message, prompting thinkers from Thomas Sprat of the Royal Society to Hobbes, Robert Hooke, Galileo, and Newton to seek cer- tainty in mathematical knowledge; quantifiable, identifiable substances; and trial, experiment, and experience.28 As Puritan propagandist Vavasor Powell put it in the middle of the seventeenth century, “Experience is like 42 Rituals of Spontaneity steel to an edged tool, or like salt to fresh meat, it seasons brain- knowledge, and settles a shaking unsetled soule.” Paralleling more sec- ular quests for certainty, the Puritan quest for grounding religious knowledge in a literalist reading of Scripture focused ever more intensely on manifest, genuine experience confirming salvation and the personal application of scriptural truth. The spontaneous “pouring out of the heart” in prayer was just such an evidentiary experience.

If you want to have the joy of the Lord then you must be in fellowship with His people, around His table. If you want to grow in godliness, then you must be under the teachings of the Scriptures and held accountable by the body of believers. If you want to honor the Lord your God and confirm your election, then you must be faithful to love His Law, obey His Word, and produce the fruit of righteousness.

WHAT IS COVENANT THEOLOGY? The straightforward, if provocative answer to that question is that it is what is nowadays called a hermeneutic -- that is, a way of reading the whole Bible that is itself part of the overall interpretation of the Bible that it undergirds. A successful hermeneutic is a consistent interpretative procedure yielding a consistent understanding of Scripture in turn confirms the propriety of the procedure itself. Covenant theology is a case in point.

Luther had outfoxed his enemies; he had made the speech he was to have been prevented from making, and by his account at least von der Ecken was furious and shouted at him. He had not answered the question. The imperial officer attacked with a litany of names, heresies already condemned in the past that Luther was now resurrecting as if they were new discoveries. Heretics had always claimed the support of scripture against the church, he said. The worst heresies were those in which a little error was mixed with a lot of true doctrine-perhaps a slap against those in the room like Glapion who had said that Luther's books contained much good. Luther was a man who could stumble and err, and scripture could not be interpreted by one fallible man. We cannot draw things into doubt and dispute that the Catholic Church has judged already, things that have passed into usage, rite, and observance, things that our fathers held onto with firm faith, for which they suffered pain and torture, for which even thousands suffered death rather than reject one of them! And now you want to seduce us from the way to which our fathers were true! And what would the Jews and Turks and Saracens and the other enemies of our faith say when they heard about it? Why, they would burst into scornful laughter! Here are we Christians beginning to argue whether we have believed correctly until now! Do not deceive yourself, Martin. You are not the only one who knows the scripture, not the only one who has struggled to convey the true meaning of holy scripture-not after so many holy doctors have worked day and night to explain holy writ! Do not set your judgment over that of so many famous men. Do not imagine you know more than all of them. Do not throw the most sacred orthodox faith into doubt, the faith that Christ the most perfect lawgiver ordained, the faith that the apostles spread over the world, the faith confirmed by miracles, the faith that martyrs strengthened with their red blood ... You wait in vain, Martin, for a disputation over things that you are obligated to believe with certain and professing Von der Ecken's assumption was one of the great medieval myths, a myth taken for granted for so long that only when it was sternly questioned did those who accepted it see how fragile it was. The myth was that history was a positive and progressive force, shaped by divinity, and that revelation became more certain and more detailed with the passage of time. It seems clear from this speech that von der Ecken recognized the fragility of the assumptions that give faith plausibility and how Luther's attack threatened to bring them all down. In a room now filling with darkness, the voice of the imperial orator must have been a cry against a greater darkness that von der Ecken saw creeping over the world. If Luther was right, was anything certain? How could one man set himself against history?

John Goldingay warns against treating the Bible as a defence-document to undergird our existing beliefs: “A test whether this is so is to ask when was the last time one changed one’s mind (or better, one’s behaviour) because of something one read in Scripture. In general, we all use Scripture to confirm rather than to confront [our beliefs], merely to ‘replicate ourselves.

Scripture assumes, and experience confirms, that human beings are naturally inclined to some form of religion, yet they fail to worship their Creator, whose general revelation of himself makes him universally known.

We can follow this covenantal theme like a scarlet thread through the entire Scripture. It began with Adam, and we can follow it through Noah and Shem until the promise is confirmed in Abraham. After Abraham, we trace the thread through Isaac, Jacob, and David and finally to its culmination in the promised seed, in Yeshua the Messiah. In Romans 15:8, Paul said Yeshua was a minister to the Jewish people to ‘confirm the promises made unto the fathers.’ Let me read you what he said to the Galatians:

A prophetic word is a special inspired message or word that a person receives in his or her inner spirit after a season of fasting and extended prayer or, at times, through an inspired utterance from Scripture and occasionally confirmed by a vocal gift from another believer.

Ah yes, “The Calling.” This is certainly a favorite Christian concept over in these parts. Here is the trouble: Scripture barely confirms our elusive calling—the bull’s-eye, life purpose, individual mission every hardworking Protestant wants to discover. I found five scriptures, three of which referred to salvation rather than a job description (Rom. 11:29, 2 Peter 1:10, and Heb. 3:1).

A cornerstone in this theology is that the condition of the Church will always be getting worse and worse; therefore, tragedy in the Church is just another sign of these being the last days. In a perverted sense, the weakness of the Church confirms to many that they are on the right course. The worsening condition of the world and the Church becomes a sign to them that all is well. I have many problems with that kind of thinking, but only one I’ll mention now—it requires no faith! We are so entrenched in unbelief that anything contrary to this worldview is thought to be of the devil. So it is with the idea of the Church having a dominating impact before Jesus returns. It’s almost as though we want to defend the right to be small in number and make it by the skin of our teeth. Embracing a belief system that requires no faith is dangerous. It is contrary to the nature of God and all that the Scriptures declare. Since He plans to do above all we could ask or think, according to Ephesians 3:20, His promises by nature challenge our intellect and expectations. “[Jerusalem] did not consider her destiny; therefore her collapse was awesome” (Lam. 1:9). The result of forgetting His promises is not one we can afford.

6 But after arepenting, and humbling himself sincerely, through faith, God ministered unto him by an holy bangel, whose ccountenance was as lightning, and whose garments were pure and white above all other whiteness; 7 And gave unto him acommandments which inspired him; 8 And agave him power from on high, by the bmeans which were before prepared, to translate the Book of Mormon; 9 Which contains a arecord of a fallen people, and the bfulness of the cgospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles and to the Jews also; 10 Which was given by inspiration, and is confirmed to aothers by the ministering of angels, and is bdeclared unto the world by them— 11 Proving to the world that the holy scriptures are atrue, and that God does binspire men and call them to his choly work in this age and generation, as well as in generations of old; 12 Thereby showing that he is the asame God yesterday, today, and bforever. Amen.

Reading the Bible isn’t about confirming our ideas and experiences and going away satisfied. It’s about being challenged, called into question. Part of the point of the Gospel stories is to upset our habits, to set before us something utterly different from our world, to push us into thinking about something absolutely new. We aren’t the judges of Scripture; it judges us. Its task is to astonish us; it doesn’t say to us what we want to hear, but says to us what must be said if we are to hear and respond to the truth of the gospel.

Losing weight and regaining health does not mean eating smaller portions of the same unhealthy food. The "Plan A" Diet is the optimal diet to choose for the rest of your life. Research confirms that God's "Plan A" diet should become yours as well.

Option 3: Confirming signs related to the promise of what will be done to the nations. In incantations seeking to rid a person of the consequences of offense, the torch and oven are two in a series of objects that can serve as confirmatory signs. This same incantation series also occasionally speaks of the person who is swearing an oath in connection with their participation in the incantation as holding an implement of light and/or heat. The strength of this option is that it fits best the context of land promise. The problem is that it offers little connection to the cutting up of the animals. The parts of the animals would refer to the nations to be dispossessed. The only example of ritual participants passing between the pieces of several cut-up animals occurs in a Hittite military ritual. In response to their army’s defeat, several animals are cut in half (goat, puppy, piglet—as well as a human), and the army passes through the parts on their way to sprinkling themselves with water from the river to purify themselves; the idea is that this will ensure a better outcome next time. As with Achan’s story in Jos 7, they fear that some offense of the soldiers has caused them to be defeated. The obvious problem is that the context of the Hittite ritual has no similarity to the context in Ge 15. In summary, the torch and censer figure frequently in a variety of Mesopotamian ritual contexts, and multiple examples can be found of rituals that involve passing through the pieces of a single animal—but these two elements never occur together. There are plenty of examples of oaths with division of animals, but never passing through the pieces. There are plenty of examples with self-curse, but never by a deity. It is therefore difficult to combine all of the elements from the context of Ge 15 into a bona fide ritual assemblage. The context refers to a “covenant” (15:18), and therefore an oath (by Yahweh) could easily be involved. If there is purification, it would have to be purification of the ritual or its setting, for neither Abram nor Yahweh require purification. Since the pieces cannot represent self-curse, the only other ready option is that they represent the nations, but it is hard to imagine in that case what the force of the ritual is. ◆

23 And it came to pass after they had fasted and prayed for the space of two days and two nights, the limbs of Alma received their strength, and he stood up and began to speak unto them, bidding them to be of good comfort: 24 For, said he, I have repented of my sins, and have been redeemed of the Lord; behold I am born of the Spirit. 25 And the Lord said unto me: Marvel not that all mankind, yea, men and women, all nations, kindreds, tongues and people, must be born again; yea, born of God, changed from their carnal and fallen state, to a state of righteousness, being redeemed of God, becoming his sons and daughters; 26 And thus they become new creatures; and unless they do this, they can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God. 27 I say unto you, unless this be the case, they must be cast off; and this I know, because I was like to be cast off. 28 Nevertheless, after wading through much tribulation, repenting nigh unto death, the Lord in mercy hath seen fit to snatch me out of an everlasting burning, and I am born of God. 29 My soul hath been redeemed from the gall of bitterness and bonds of iniquity. I was in the darkest abyss; but now I behold the marvelous light of God. My soul was racked with eternal torment; but I am snatched, and my soul is pained no more. 30 I rejected my Redeemer, and denied that which had been spoken of by our fathers; but now that they may foresee that he will come, and that he remembereth every creature of his creating, he will make himself manifest unto all. 31 Yea, every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess before him. Yea, even at the last day, when all men shall stand to be judged of him, then shall they confess that he is God; then shall they confess, who live without God in the world, that the judgment of an everlasting punishment is just upon them; and they shall quake, and tremble, and shrink beneath the glance of his all-searching eye. 32 And now it came to pass that Alma began from this time forward to teach the people, and those who were with Alma at the time the angel appeared unto them, traveling round about through all the land, publishing to all the people the things which they had heard and seen, and preaching the word of God in much tribulation, being greatly persecuted by those who were unbelievers, being smitten by many of them. 33 But notwithstanding all this, they did impart much consolation to the church, confirming their faith, and exhorting them with long-suffering and much travail to keep the commandments of God. 34 And four of them were the sons of Mosiah; and their names were Ammon, and Aaron, and Omner, and Himni; these were the names of the sons of Mosiah. 35 And they traveled throughout all the land of Zarahemla, and among all the people who were under the reign of king Mosiah, zealously striving to repair all the injuries which they had done to the church, confessing all their sins, and publishing all the things which they had seen, and explaining the prophecies and the scriptures to all who desired to hear them. 36 And thus they were instruments in the hands of God in bringing many to the knowledge of the truth, yea, to the knowledge of their Redeemer. 37 And how blessed are they! For they did publish peace; they did publish good tidings of good; and they did declare unto the people that the Lord reigneth. Mosiah Chapter 28 The sons of Mosiah go to preach to the Lamanites—Using the two seer stones, Mosiah translates the Jaredite plates.

One group of early Christians, the Bereans, stood out from the rest. “They received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11). They checked in scripture to confirm what Paul taught them was true. They were so committed to this that they did it daily. It’s a mistake for us to accept the message of Christian teachers just because they’re humorous, dynamic, on television or radio, or have written books. The content of their message must be true, and it’s good for us to validate it from our own study. Bible teachers should never be offended that people do this; they should encourage it.