"Men and brethren, what shall we do?"

[exchemist]

Who am I to judge another?
God knows those who love him.
If you are an observant Jew but lack the spirit of God's grace, are you saved?
If you are a pagan who yearns for this God given grace but have no opportunity to
read or hear scripture - does God condemn you for what you can't help?

That's rather what I think too. So being baptised into Christianity doesn't seem likely to be the only route.

 

[PruePhillip]

What connection does any of this have to my post?

Because you sought to show how silly the story of Noah and the flood sounds.
I gave an example of something else which people 12 months ago were still
saying had no archaelogical or historic foundation. Don't be rash to ridicule.

 

[PruePhillip]

That's rather what I think too. So being baptised into Christianity doesn't seem likely to be the only route.

If you KNOW Biblical scripture but you CHOSE some pagan, witchcraft or violent doctrines
then the bible says you will be judged on what you know - meaning you had no excuse. In
fact the bible says that the word is preached to many for this exact reason - people will have
no excuse about not knowing.
There's these cryptic (to me anyhow) verses about the Messiah preaching to those in prison
after His death. Some read this as saying He taught those who loved God, but know little about
the plan of God. I reserved judgement on that.

 

[exchemist]

Because you sought to show how silly the story of Noah and the flood sounds.
I gave an example of something else which people 12 months ago were still
saying had no archaelogical or historic foundation. Don't be rash to ridicule.

No I merely mentioned in passing that there is no evidence for a worldwide flood. And I admit that it was amusing to see all the theories about what gofer or gopher wood might be. (It's translated as "resinous wood" in my New Jerusalem bible, so that's yet another idea, presumably Fr. Wansborough's best guess.)

I do hope you are not trying to tell me that the airburst hypothesis at Tel al Hammam* is evidence of a worldwide flood.

*a hammam is a public baths. Hammond is (or was) a guy on Top Gear.

 

[CrochetOverCoffee]

Because you sought to show how silly the story of Noah and the flood sounds.
I gave an example of something else which people 12 months ago were still
saying had no archaelogical or historic foundation. Don't be rash to ridicule.

First, may I remind you that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence?

Second, this series of videos explains much of the science of the ark, dispelling many erroneous assumptions that make people think it's just a silly story. It's long, though, so if you're interested, you'll need about two hours free.

I hope you enjoy.

The Reality of Noah’s Ark

 

[exchemist]

If you KNOW Biblical scripture but you CHOSE some pagan, witchcraft or violent doctrines
then the bible says you will be judged on what you know - meaning you had no excuse. In
fact the bible says that the word is preached to many for this exact reason - people will have
no excuse about not knowing.
There's these cryptic (to me anyhow) verses about the Messiah preaching to those in prison
after His death. Some read this as saying He taught those who loved God, but know little about
the plan of God. I reserved judgement on that.

That seems fair enough, I agree.

But this discussion nicely illustrates why I fight shy of dogmatic pronouncements on questions like the one raised in the OP, which was " Why then do so many deny that either repentance or baptism are requirements of salvation?" From our discussion, the answer would seem to be it is because many would consider there are a lot of people to whom these requirements may not apply.

 

[PruePhillip]

No I merely mentioned in passing that there is no evidence for a worldwide flood. And I admit that it was amusing to see all the theories about what gofer or gopher wood might be. (It's translated as "resinous wood" in my New Jerusalem bible, so that's yet another idea, presumably Fr. Wansborough's best guess.)

I do hope you are not trying to tell me that the airburst hypothesis at Tel al Hammam* is evidence of a worldwide flood.

*a hammam is a public baths. Hammond is (or was) a guy on Top Gear.

Wot happened in 1650 BC might have been the end of a world wide flood
of Canaanite - Semite refuges into Egypt and the otherthrow of Lower
Egypt's Pharonic rule. Seems a strange co-incidence:
1650BC - destruction of the Jordan Valley, over 50,000 dead and agriculture destroyed
1650BC - Hyksos seize power Lwr Egypt.

 

[rational experiences]

If men said CH heavens spirit part of the body in the heavens is before us. Then it kept life safe. Christ the spirit body just belonging to earth as rock.

Pretty basic science advice for humans.

If it was sacrificed burnt out of the heavens as a body then causes were notified. Life attacked. Life says it should not be attacked.

CH gases however were still present. Just a body mass of it was the loss.

Science ...
they calculate CH as one state in the heavens. Cares less how much mass of it exists. A machine calculus claiming CH gas in fact in science means "the" CH gas whole body.

As you cannot do one humans ownership heavens CH gas as we live not in that scientific interview by a computer program...we live in oxygenated by nature's garden water.

Ice melts saviour. CH gases have been radiated fallout changed ever since God earth was unsealed and the UFO event of causes had not yet stopped.

Water baptised us from the causes sacrificed gas fallout.

To reason against scientists.

If a human was the first and only living life form. Then science would say a string.

Is how an egotists thinks.

Cares less for any other type of life or body or mass anywhere else. Just his thesis.

If men said an animal was a humans parent. They had sex to be a parent which is not an act of God.

So bible readers versus human science said I must accept evolution. We are one whole body after an ape.
Intelligent advice.

Otherwise I support the science machine destruction of natural life.

 

[DNB]

I'm sorry, I know I said I was done, but how is a confession a baptism?

Upon confession or repentance, you become endowed with the spirit of God the Father. I'm using that expression loosely, it means that you are now included into the Church of Christ. Don't apply an exclusive meaning to baptism, as in an external act or gesture. It was also used figuratively in the Bible to denote a baptism of power and results.
Baptism has several meanings:
Acts 1:22. beginning with the baptism of John until the day that He was taken up from us--one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection."
Acts 10:37. you yourselves know the thing which took place throughout all Judea, starting from Galilee, after the baptism which John proclaimed.
Acts 13:24. after John had proclaimed before His coming a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel.
Acts 18:25. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he was speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John;
Acts 19:3. And he said, "Into what then were you baptized?" And they said, "Into John's baptism." 4. Paul said, "John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus." 5. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying.

 

[rational experiences]

Tectonic carpenter O God earth history.

Not any man.

Ground split open earths chemicals salted the water as they converted in water the same moment.

Has no identification on bared earth ground to a rooted tree in bared earth.

The teaching of earths Rock relativity no man is God.

So in temple pyramid circuit. Jeru turning place of circuit Salem. Peace.

A story.

First it was peaceful.

Then temple blew up. Stone melted. Steps in temple own proof. Pyramids toppled. Science ended. Ground bared tectonic opened too chemically salted the ground.

Strange baren landscapes introduced. Dead sea from flooding above emerged.

History machine nuclear above ground sciences.

Earth gases beginnings as heavens. Consciousness human advice in the heavens first belonged underground. In the melt.

History of a metal in science is molten first by string. Liars said cold metal in earth's seams was first.

Machine life was cold metal by presence.

Volcano melt ∆o opened mountain was gods earth law.

Gases above.

Science tried to give life volcanic mountain gases creator on earth beginnings to living life.

The teaching about men who lie.

Machine given life by batteries. Clay pots water changed into wine as acidic. To operate the machines.

 

[CrochetOverCoffee]

Upon confession or repentance, you become endowed with the spirit of God the Father. I'm using that expression loosely, it means that you are now included into the Church of Christ. Don't apply an exclusive meaning
to baptism, as in an external act or gesture. It was also used figuratively in the Bible to denote a baptism of power and results.
Baptism has several meanings:
Acts 1:22. beginning with the baptism of John until the day that He was taken up from us--one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection."
Acts 10:37. you yourselves know the thing which took place throughout all Judea, starting from Galilee, after the baptism which John proclaimed.
Acts 13:24. after John had proclaimed before His coming a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel.
Acts 18:25. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he was speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John;
Acts 19:3. And he said, "Into what then were you baptized?" And they said, "Into John's baptism." 4. Paul said, "John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus." 5. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying.

Faith, confession and repentance are requirements of salvation, but they are not baptism, and they are not enough, alone or together, to save you. You must also be immersed, or baptized, in water. (From etymonline.com: Latin baptizare, from Greek baptizein "immerse, dip in water," also figuratively, "be over one's head" (in debt, etc.), "to be soaked (in wine).) And then you must live your life faithfully before God until death.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit, which resulted in spiritual gifts being bestowed on the recipients, was still not enough to save them, as in the case of Cornelius and his household. (Acts 10:44-48) They were still commanded to be baptized after the Holy Spirit fell upon them.

Later, in Acts 19, as quoted above, when they told Paul they had only received John's baptism, he had them baptized with water, and then he laid his hands on them to pass on the spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit.

And here is the point. Ephesians 4:4-6 states, "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." As God is one, there is only one saving baptism.

 

[DNB]

Faith, confession and repentance are requirements of salvation, but they are not baptism, and they are not enough, alone or together, to save you. You must also be immersed, or baptized, in water. (From etymonline.com: Latin baptizare, from Greek baptizein "immerse, dip in water," also figuratively, "be over one's head" (in debt, etc.), "to be soaked (in wine).) And then you must live your life faithfully before God until death.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit, which resulted in spiritual gifts being bestowed on the recipients, was still not enough to save them, as in the case of Cornelius and his household. (Acts 10:44-48) They were still commanded to be baptized after the Holy Spirit fell upon them.

Later, in Acts 19, as quoted above, when they told Paul they had only received John's baptism, he had them baptized with water, and then he laid his hands on them to pass on the spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit.

And here is the point. Ephesians 4:4-6 states, "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." As God is one, there is only one saving baptism.

Sorry COC, you are reading way too much into the texts. There are only two passages in Acts where water is explicitly stated as used in Baptism: Cornelius and the Ethiopian eunuch. All the rest, you assumed that baptism means water. The verses that I showed was enough to elucidate the fact that there were more than one type of baptisms.
Water baptism is not required for salvation, you also read into the text that it was - the examples of water baptism were descriptive, not prescriptive.

You were egregiously incorrect by stating that both Acts 19:3-6 and Ephesians 4:4-6 denote any usage or implication, of water in the intent of the author.

 

[Samael_Khan]

First, may I remind you that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence?

Using this reasoning we can say that anything exists or occurred which is a faulty foundation to rest our worldview on, which is why absence of evidence is SO important to build our knowledge on.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Mark 2:20 The days will come when the bridegroom is taken from you ...​

Mark 8:31 And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he said this plainly. ...

Mark 14:35 And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36 And he said, "Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt."​

Or consider Luke's Last Supper scene:

Luke 22:21 But behold the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table.22 For the Son of man goes as it has been determined; but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed!"​

That is, Jesus knows that he'll be "betrayed" but, he says, his fate has already been determined. So he doesn't catch the midnight donkey-train to Galilee ─ he stays where he is, where he can be found, so that things can go "as it has been determined".

And those verses are just a sample. In all four gospels he says he's on a suicide mission, he makes sure it ends in his death, and he succeeds.

Where do you say it says anything different?

(Incidentally, at no time does he explain why it's necessary for him to die, or what his death can achieve that God couldn't achieve just with one snap of those omnipotent fingers. Nor have I ever figured out a sensible answer to that question.)

I don’t disagree he knew he was going to be killed by the authorities; that event was foreshadowed throughout the Gospels, and arguably in parts of the Old Testament too. It’s the suicide mission interpretation I find unconvincing.

As for why Jesus had to die, don’t we all have to die? If you believe in the resurrection, then he died for us so that we could have everlasting life. If you think his death and resurrection are the most important part of the Gospel story, then he died for our sins. He was the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world. Or he was a peripatetic teacher whose radical message of love and brotherhood was perceived as a threat to the religious and political establishment of his day.

Either way, he had quite a lot to say before he died. So what’s more important; his life or his death? The man or the message?

 

[blü 2]

I don’t disagree he knew he was going to be killed by the authorities; that event was foreshadowed throughout the Gospels, and arguably in parts of the Old Testament too. It’s the suicide mission interpretation I find unconvincing.

What would you call it instead? Where you declare your mission is to die, where you put yourself in harm's way, where you reject chances to escape, where you make sure you die?

As for why Jesus had to die, don’t we all have to die?

Sure, but not by setting out a mission whose central purpose and determining characteristic is to get yourself killed.

If you believe in the resurrection, then he died for us so that we could have everlasting life.

Was everlasting life not available before then?

Hadn't the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks believed in various forms of an afterlife going back (at least for the first two) millennia before the earliest historical records of Yahweh at all?

Why would Jesus' dying ─ anyone's dying ─ be necessary to make everlasting life an option?

Why would it require belief in Jesus rather than belief in God?

I seriously don't understand any of this.

 

[exchemist]

Wot happened in 1650 BC might have been the end of a world wide flood
of Canaanite - Semite refuges into Egypt and the otherthrow of Lower
Egypt's Pharonic rule. Seems a strange co-incidence:
1650BC - destruction of the Jordan Valley, over 50,000 dead and agriculture destroyed
1650BC - Hyksos seize power Lwr Egypt.

No it couldn't. This must have all been gone over at length on countless other threads, but essentially:-

(a) it is not geophysically possible for there to have been a worldwide flood, as there is not enough water to raise ocean levels that much, and

(b) crucially, if there had been, it would have left evidence in the ground all over the earth which geologists or archaeologists would have seen. There is none.

The whole idea is totally ridiculous. If you have done any reading on this subject you will be aware that there are various hypotheses for a local , i.e. Middle Eastern, flood myth. I am aware of three:
i) flooding in the Tigris/Euphrates basin
ii) the inundation of the Black Sea basin at the end of the last Ice Age
iii) the progressive flooding of the Persian Gulf at the end of the last Ice Age.

These hypotheses have at least some degree of plausibility and, handed down through oral tradition, could easily have given rise to the flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the later story in the bible that is almost certainly derived from the same source.

The notion of a global flood has no such plausibility. At all.

 

[exchemist]

First, may I remind you that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence?

Second, this series of videos explains much of the science of the ark, dispelling many erroneous assumptions that make people think it's just a silly story. It's long, though, so if you're interested, you'll need about two hours free.

I hope you enjoy.

The Reality of Noah’s Ark

This hoary old cliché is greatly overused and is actually wrong. Absence of evidence most certainly can be evidence of absence. Unicorns are a classic example.

We use absence of evidence all the time to dismiss implausible hypotheses, and rightly so, or we would be credulous fools.

What absence of evidence is not is proof of absence. But then we live in a world of shades of grey, in which strict proof of anything is a luxury we do not generally have.

More on this topic here, if you have the time to wade through it . Evidence of absence - Wikipedia

 

[PruePhillip]

No it couldn't. This must have all been gone over at length on countless other threads, but essentially:-

(a) it is not geophysically possible for there to have been a worldwide flood, as there is not enough water to raise ocean levels that much, and

(b) crucially, if there had been, it would have left evidence in the ground all over the earth which geologists or archaeologists would have seen. There is none.

The whole idea is totally ridiculous. If you have done any reading on this subject you will be aware that there are various hypotheses for a local , i.e. Middle Eastern, flood myth. I am aware of three:
i) flooding in the Tigris/Euphrates basin
ii) the inundation of the Black Sea basin at the end of the last Ice Age
iii) the progressive flooding of the Persian Gulf at the end of the last Ice Age.

These hypotheses have at least some degree of plausibility and, handed down through oral tradition, could easily have given rise to the flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the later story in the bible that is almost certainly derived from the same source.

The notion of a global flood has no such plausibility. At all.

Remember, this is from the Sumerian texts. There was no concept of a 'world' as we know it.
The 'world' to these guys reached down to the horizon.
The world to Rome was their empire - not the barbarians, Africans or Parthians - just their empire.

 

[RestlessSoul]

What would you call it instead? Where you declare your mission is to die, where you put yourself in harm's way, where you reject chances to escape, where you make sure you die?
Sure, but not by setting out a mission whose central purpose and determining characteristic is to get yourself killed.
Was everlasting life not available before then?

Hadn't the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks believed in various forms of an afterlife going back (at least for the first two) millennia before the earliest historical records of Yahweh at all?

Why would Jesus' dying ─ anyone's dying ─ be necessary to make everlasting life an option?

Why would it require belief in Jesus rather than belief in God?

I seriously don't understand any of this.

He put himself in harm's way because he had a message for humanity; the more people heard the message, the more threatened the authorities felt by him. The only way to escape his destiny was to abandon his duty, forsake his dharma. To run away and hide. Which he didn't do; instead, he took our Karma on himself.

In Eastern religious traditions, it takes many Iives to escape the cycle of life and death, to work out our individual Karma and transcend the illusion of the material world. Christianity's USP is that Christ did all that heavy lifting for us. Well, not all of it; we still have to live, and to suffer, and to die. But thanks to the sacrifice of one man, we only have to do that once, if we believe in him, and if we keep his one commandment...

John 15:11-13

As for why it has to be that way, don't ask me. John Milton had a good go at answering it, in Paradise Lost. I'd recommend reading that; I think anyone interested in the influence of Christianity on the cultural history of modern Europe and America should read it, as well as any lover of literature. Though it is a challenge. I've just received a hardback edition with Gustav Dore illustrations, so I'm about to tackle the whole epic poem again. Hopefully the pictures will help.

 

[blü 2]

He put himself in harm's way because he had a message for humanity; the more people heard the message, the more threatened the authorities felt by him. The only way to escape his destiny was to abandon his duty

Duty to die? As I said, I've never understood why his death might be necessary. As you've said, neither have you.

Strange, hey?