Because of the emphasis placed on the Church in the selection of the canon and as authoritative interpreter, and taking some of the of the humanist challenges to heart, scriptural theologians began to articulate new theories of inspiration. In this the Jesuits took the lead. They were concerned that the patristic and early medieval theory of verbal dictation that is, that the Holy Spirit dictated every single word to the author of an inspired bookwas untenable. Seeing that, by and large, the Protestants had picked up on the verbal dictation theory, the Jesuits began a process of refining their arguments. At the University of Louvain, Jesuit authors began to contend that inspiration did not extend explicitly to the words themselves. Following an idea by Sixtus of Siena, the Jesuit Leonard Lessius (15541623) proposed that the sacred writings were the products of human authors alone, and that only later did the testimony of the Holy Spirit confirm that they were inerrant. This meant that when the Church declared a book canonical, it was guaranteed to be without error. This was called the theory of negative assistance (where the Holy Spirit merely protected an author from gross error) or of subsequent approbation (simply a declaration that a text was inerrant because of the authority of the Church).

Date: Mar 18, 2018

The Formation of the Bible Cannon

Date: Mar 21, 2018

Rev 22:19 And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

Date: Mar 23, 2018

I get this a lot on secular websites recently from Roman Catholics+

"You are using the Bible to try and show us the errors of the Catholics, while WE are the ones who gave you the Bible!"

I usually respond with something along the lines of: "Were you not aware until now, of the fact that the Holy Spirit gave us the Bible, and it was all done by around 100AD, long before the RCC ever became an organization?

If there are better responses, I'd love to hear them!

And thanks for the video!!

Date: Mar 23, 2018

Three questions if you are sure RCC gave us the Bible.

1.The last Bible Writer died on Patmos in first century AD, The RCC became an active entity 538 AD, how did Christianity grow so much so fast if without a Bible between 100 AD and 537 AD ?

2. How many Catholics did Protestants kill for having a received text Majority Text Bible between 538 AD and 1798 AD ?

3. Why did the Douay Rheims not use the Majority Text, and why after Vatican II did the RCC build the NIV to bring Jews, Pentecostals, Protestants, and other groups together and refuse the Majority Text that Jesus and the Apostles used ?

Here's my card - http://tenbookbucketlist.blogspot.com

Date: Apr 1, 2018

Most Catholics believe that Jesus gave the keys to Peter, so believe that their church started around 30AD. It is true that a council (Nicea?) in 325AD or something like that, met, and agreed on the books in the generally agreed-upon canon today.

I don't think any Protestants killed Catholics for having a received text Majority Text Bible.

Number three is a very good question!

.

I wonder if anyone reading this has any info on how to respond to Catholics who say "We are the ones who gave you the Bible!"?

Date: Apr 5, 2018

webmaster wrote:
I wonder if anyone reading this has any info on how to respond to Catholics who say "We are the ones who gave you the Bible!"?

In the middle ages it was the RC church claim that they gave the Bible and they are the only ones entitled to interpret it. Unfortunately in our days you might hear even from SDA theologians this idea that Rome gave us the Bible. To such a one I think that I would answer: "You may have your Bible from Rome, but MY BIBLE comes from God". And I think that I have some ground to say that. Textus Criticus (the critical text), which is used as the basis for the vast majority of translations, is considered by Catholic scholars a vindication of their beloved Vulgate, while they hate bitterly KJV and Textus Receptus on which the protestant translations were based to this day.

Date: Apr 5, 2018

Textus Receptus and Majority Text.

Date: Apr 15, 2018

https://www.ministrymagazine.org/archive/2012/03/who-decided-which-books-should-be-included-in-the-bible

This is an article written by an BRI representative and published in Ministry. I don't know if anyone has enough patience to go through it but ... does this look sound to you?

Date: Jun 1, 2018

From Christian Theologies of Scripture: A Comparative Introduction (edited by Justin S. Holcomb):

Because of the emphasis placed on the Church in the selection of the canon and as authoritative interpreter, and taking some of the of the humanist challenges to heart, scriptural theologians began to articulate new theories of inspiration. In this the Jesuits took the lead. They were concerned that the patristic and early medieval theory of verbal dictation that is, that the Holy Spirit dictated every single word to the author of an inspired bookwas untenable. Seeing that, by and large, the Protestants had picked up on the verbal dictation theory, the Jesuits began a process of refining their arguments. At the University of Louvain, Jesuit authors began to contend that inspiration did not extend explicitly to the words themselves. Following an idea by Sixtus of Siena, the Jesuit Leonard Lessius (15541623) proposed that the sacred writings were the products of human authors alone, and that only later did the testimony of the Holy Spirit confirm that they were inerrant. This meant that when the Church declared a book canonical, it was guaranteed to be without error. This was called the theory of negative assistance (where the Holy Spirit merely protected an author from gross error) or of subsequent approbation (simply a declaration that a text was inerrant because of the authority of the Church).

Date: Jun 5, 2018

Wow! That's exactly where we are today in the Seventh-day Adventist Church!

We claim to believe the Bible, yet we say that the words are not God's words.

And doing so, we've fallen right into the trap of the Jesuits!

Amazing!

Today I read Ezekiel 3.

No one who reads that chapter and believes it can possibly believe the words in the Bible are from men, and only the ideas are from God.

Date: Jul 21, 2018

webmaster wrote:
Wow! That's exactly where we are today in the Seventh-day Adventist Church!
We claim to believe the Bible, yet we say that the words are not God's words.
And doing so, we've fallen right into the trap of the Jesuits!
Amazing!
Today I read Ezekiel 3.
No one who reads that chapter and believes it can possibly believe the words in the Bible are from men, and only the ideas are from God.

The greatest irony here is not with liberals as much as it is with those of the conservative camp. While having almost some kind of paranoia when it comes to the jesuits, they swallow blindly this kind of jesuitical ideas, thinking that they are defending EGW or "the faith" by doing this. You are making some good points regarding these guys in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-EM9u2ETgc

Date: Jul 27, 2018

Ed Sutton wrote:
3. Why did the Douay Rheims not use the Majority Text, and why after Vatican II did the RCC build the NIV to bring Jews, Pentecostals, Protestants, and other groups together and refuse the Majority Text that Jesus and the Apostles used ?

...the Majority Text that Jesus and the Apostles used ?

You're kidding, right, Ed? You know there was no Majority Text in their time. At best they had the LII. (Septuagint)

Date: Aug 23, 2018

This week I got more blowback from David Read, Gerry Wagoner, and Eugene Prewitt over at Fulcrum7.

Eugene wrote an article where he spoke approvingly of "God's words". I pointed out that he said before he didn't believe the words are from God, only the ideas, and he wrote a response about how he will bow to the ideas of God !!?

These double-speakers profess to believe in "God's words', "words of God", and even "inspired words", when writing about their faith on other matters, but when pressed if they really believe the words are "God's words", they trot out the one quote from Selected Messages and the Foreword to the 1888 Great Controversy to show that they really do NOT believe the words in the Bible are "God's words".

I think God has something to say about two-faced believers.......

Really, why shouldn't every Christian be proud and upfront about stating that they DO believe in all of God's words?

Date: Oct 13, 2018

webmaster wrote:
This week I got more blowback from David Read, Gerry Wagoner, and Eugene Prewitt over at Fulcrum7.
.................................................................................................................................................
I think God has something to say about two-faced believers.......

But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. (Matt. 15:13-14)

Date: Apr 7, 2019

For anyone interested, here is a book which is focusing mainly on the role played by John the Apostle in finalizing the canon:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/jeffrey-a-weakley/how-god-gave-us-the-canon-of-the-scriptures-what-they-dont-want-you-to-know/paperback/product-23964645.html?fbclid=IwAR3uhOw37-RzQqcN-523QIxqcoP7QEWnZItzBRedUg08h4DjO63khMZaEb0

Among other things you may find an interesting quote from Caius [A.D. 180217.], an author who was writing about the heretic sects which rejected the canon:

The sacred Scriptures they have boldly falsified, and the canons of the ancient faith they have rejected, and Christ they have ignored, not inquiring what the sacred Scriptures say, but

laboriously seeking to discover what form of syllogism might be contrived to establish their impiety. (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5, p. 1063)

This is not the part quoted in the book. There are other sources testifying of an early firmly established canon in it. From Caius it quotes something he is telling about the inspiration. After mentioning the various falsified copies of Scriptures not agreeing one with another, he says:

For either they do not believe that the divine Scriptures were dictated by the Holy Spirit, and are thus infidels; or they think themselves wiser than the Holy Spirit, and what are they then but demoniacs? (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5, p. 1063-1064)

Date: Apr 25, 2019

Thanks for the powerful quote, and the link, which I'm looking at right now....

I love this review by somebody there: "This is great news. I always thought that the Catholics put it together as they say. But Not True. Every Preacher should have this book and also to their congregations so everyone will know where The Word of GOD came from and how it was put together. "

I get that all the time from Catholics, as they think they are the ones who decided what got into the Bible and what didn't.

Looks like this book shows the facts of the matter, that the Holy Spirit decided it, in spite of the Roman Catholic Church leaders.

Date: Jan 26, 2020

Because the protestant Bibles today have the same list of books as they used to, few people realize that today's Protestants have rejected the canon. First of all, their critical text of the modern Bibles is made up from manuscripts with a canon different than the one left to us by the apostles. Than, the initial position of the reformers regarding the inspiration, transmission and preservation of the text of Scripture was abandoned and replaced with theories which have their origin in Counter-Reformation's efforts to make of no effect the concept of "Sola Scriptura" ("The Scripture and the Scripture alone"). The 3rd episode of "Reformation's Fountain of Life" shows how these ideas sprung up from the idea that the church decided the canon and thus, the church is the one to authenticate Scripture. Entitled "The Heirs of the Keys of the Kingdom", the episode is mainly in Romanian with English subtitles (you will need to choose between Romanian and English subtitles from the Settings):

https://youtu.be/iGgTYAX7vmM

In the context of Counter-Reformation, the Jesuits picked up an uninspired book which the Catholic Church declared to be Scripture to show that the inspiration doesn't extend to the words themselves. This paved the way for the historical criticism of the Bible. Opposed to the protestant principle the Bible interprets itself, this method means that, when you interpret the Bible, you will do it the same way as when you analyse any other piece of literature. When doing the critical analysis of Shakespeare for instance, the critics will look into what influenced him when he wrote, his education, the cultural and historical context in which he wrote, his life, his philosophy etc. When you do this instead of using the Bible as its own dictionary, the supreme authority of the Scripture is destroyed and basically scholasticism takes its place. And, since scholasticism is controlled by the Jesuits, and the Jesuits are subject to their head - the pope ... you should know where that will lead! In short, the change in the way Protestants look at the Bible paved the way for their return to Rome.

And even more to the point: rejecting the canon means to reject the Bible as the Word of God.
 
 

Date: Feb 15, 2020

We must keep ourselves pure and study the Word and believe it and work it into our lives and follow Jesus.

Salvation is an individual thing and we are responsible for ourselves.

As God has allowed for the wheat and the tares to grow together until the harvest we must be careful not to avenge anyone or get into heated debates.

If you plant the seed, maybe God will grow it.

Then, pray and maybe those whom you once saw as an opponent will some day be with you in belief.

Date: May 10, 2020

nb wrote:
Salvation is an individual thing and we are responsible for ourselves.
As God has allowed for the wheat and the tares to grow together until the harvest we must be careful not to avenge anyone or get into heated debates.
If you plant the seed, maybe God will grow it.

A few quotes from last week's SSL q-ly:

"Thats the key purpose of hermeneutics: to convey accurately the meaning of Bible texts and to help us know how to apply properly the texts teaching to our lives now. As the text in Luke above shows, Jesus did this for His followers."

So, according to SSL, Jesus thought His disciples hermeneutics. What is that? Well, on the same page (May 4), you are told what that is:

"The Greek word hermeneuo, from which we have the word hermeneutics (biblical interpretation), is derived from the Greek god Hermes. Hermes was considered to be an emissary and messenger of the gods, and as such was responsible for, among other things, translating divine messages for the people."

Hermeneutics has to do with how you interpret what is considered sacred texts (or messages). When you apply this to the Bible, you place the oracles of the Almighty Creator on the same level with heathen literature inspired by the devil. In paganism what is called divine revelation comes through enlightenment and mystical practices. The enlightened ones are the one entitled to tell you the real meaning of the oracles from their gods. What does this have to do with the Protestant principle that the Bible is its own interpreter? Here is a pretty good video where the two are put in contrast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZb2U_8RjZI&list=PLzbdlq5iwX7Lc0KXRxJx4aICI7LSg3cQj&index=4

The man talking here connects hermeneutics with contextualization and the SSL does the very same thing:

"Thats the key purpose of hermeneutics: to convey accurately the meaning of Bible texts and to help us know how to apply properly the texts teaching to our lives now."

"A background knowledge of Near Eastern culture is helpful for understanding some biblical passages. For example, Hebrew culture attributed responsibility to an individual for acts he did not commit but that he allowed to happen. Therefore, the inspired writers of the Scriptures commonly credit God with doing actively that which in Western thought we would say He permits or does not prevent from happening, for example, the hardening of Pharaohs heart. Methods of Bible Study, section 4.p."

Well, I've done a course with GC's IWM (Institute for World Mission) back in 2007. The core teaching there was contextualization - how to do mission in a certain cultural context and how to adapt your principles and your message to that culture. I'm telling you, these people who teach this are sneaky but are not shy. Now they sell this poison to the whole denomination. I know the truth will stand whatever the schemes of the devil are. But I know that he wants as many as he can to fall into his snares and share his eternal damnation with him. Should we just sit and watch the show in silence?