Deuteronomy (for the christians)

[Kegluneq]

Could somebody explain this.
BibleGateway.com - Passage*Lookup: Deuteronomy 13
So who believes this stuff?
My dad's girlfriend dismissed this King James rather quickly I believe. Why is that?

By the way I don't mean to bash anybody or their religion and am admitting I am somewhat uneducated about this religion. My intentions are to discuss why people have or still do believe in things like this, and what separates people who believe this and people who don't.

[Dogenzaka]

Okay.

Basically in this passage, God is warning the people against false prophets/false teachers/liars who claim they are of God. You know, we have lots of those today. Like that guy in the 70's who claimed he was the returning Messiah and ended up having an entire cult kill themselves. God is simply warning the Israelites (and believers today) that if a false teacher/liar whatever says something and it comes true, to not follow him no matter what. That God is testing your faith, to see if you truly doubt him or believe the false teacher/prophet.

Back in those days, blasphemy was a sin punishable by death (Jesus was killed simply for "blaspheming").
That's why he says the blasphemer, or liar/opponent of God must be put to death for his sin, saying he basically urges mutiny against God in his lies.

Sin, is punishable by death in God's eyes. God is basically saying in v. 6-10 to not listen to anyone who comes to you and urges you to worship the false gods and idols they worship, because they are not real. He says that the person should be killed, because he tried to turn you traitor against the God that delivered them from the oppression of the Egyptians.

"Every man, woman, and child in Israel will hear what's been done and be in awe. No one will dare to do an evil thing like this again."

Many of the things of the Old Testament are meant to be read and appreciated and applied to our lives for the significance they had back then. Stories of wisdom and proverb and knowledge. This is just a warning from God to the Israelites about blasphemers, and it can be applied to our life today as to not follow the lies of false prophets and idol worshipers.

Keep in mind, Deuteronomy was written in a time where the world was extremely wicked, and where death occured much more naturally and regularly than it does today. Back then, people would bring their children to executions of criminals. Today it's taboo to let your children watch a movie with violence or sex. Things were much more brutal back then.

And God was a very just and wrathful God, because his people were disobeying the commandments he had set down, and sinning (which = is punishable by death of the soul and body), so it was a very serious offense to be a liar when it came to being a prophet, etc. That's essentially why Jesus was killed. The Pharisees were convicted by their transgressions, and felt no regret in trying to kill Jesus because they believed he was a liar.

You take each of these things that God commanded, and you remember, meditate, and apply them to your daily life.
This passage of Deuteronomy spoke to me saying that I need to not heed the words of the false prophets and idol worshipers. There have been sooo many people come, especially in the last century, claiming to be the returning Messiah. But the Bible depicts the signs of this event and so when those happen I will know when the true one comes, understand?

The Bible is something that is very very intricate, it's why so many people study it for years and years. You have to look at it from different perspectives, from the culture, people, and times, God's perspective, sin, etc. A parable about sticks, birds, oil and fish that might not make sense to you probably made perfect sense to the people who were hearing it from Jesus, because they were simple bite-sized chunks of wisdom they could understand. Similar to how some Confuscious proverbs need explanation before you really understand them.

Anyway, yeah, that's my explanation.
If you want an easier, more modern version of the Bible to read that's easier to understand, I'd suggest choosing "The Message" translation up in that select bar on that webpage.

[Dogenzaka]

(For some reason it won't let me edit my post O_o)

PS: Deuteronomy happens to have my favorite verse. Deut. 31:6 where God says "Be strong. Take courage. Don't be intimidated. Don't give them a second thought because God, your God, is striding ahead of you. He's right there with you. He won't let you down; he won't leave you."

I went to the museum yesterday. They had old manuscripts of the New Testament (from 100 AD, although the gospels were probably written around 30 AD with the epistles soon after Jesus' death). The Book of Galations was pretty cool, because it had a strong, firm penmanship, suggesting that an exceptionally professional scribe had written it. They also had the Book of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls shipped there from Israel. It was really cool to see a document (with still clearly visible lettering :D) that was over 2,000 years old.

[Kegluneq]

So you're a christian?
Just wonderin.
Alrighty then, questions(I'll number them) ,
1.did God really say all that stuff, and how do you know?
2.Why would God need to test people of their faith in him?
3.What are Gods "superpowers"? (excuse the language I just like saying it like that)
4.Why was/is God so aggressive towards a person's point of view? We are his children and he should know us well.
5.My brother (a Christian) wonders, if god wouldn't wanted unquestioning loyalty from us, wouldn't he make us so that we couldn't think of different religions or couldn't think against us?
6.Why would a loving god ever want to send his children to eternal hellfire?
7.Why is gaiety a sin?
8.What is the possibility of people making this stuff up?
9.Isn't the New Testament just trying to mold itself to fit us today?
10.Did god ask for a New Testament?

These are just some of my many unanswered questions.
My dads girlfriend just preached to me and insulted me every time I asked one. Not even answering it.

[Dogenzaka]

Oh wow xD curious are we?
It's late here....and these are questions with many answers.
PM me for my AIM or something if you ever want to chat a bit more personally. For now I'll just post a short answer.
If you read the Bible, it becomes much easier to comprehend.

1. The Bible describes itself as God's word. That God told these men what to write. Ever heard of a ghost writer? Like these people were the pen, and he was the person. The Bible is full of prophesies that were made thousands of years before they ended up occuring (thousands about the Messiah/Jesus which he ended up fulfilling even outside of a person's control), historical truths supported by other sources, nuggets of wisdom and stories of how the kingdoms of Israel, Egypt, and other nations came to be.

2. God says he tests those who believe in him to strengthen them, and he rewards them for their faith. When Jesus called out to Peter from the boat in the Sea of Galilee and asked him to walk on the water with him, he was doing fine as he looked at Jesus, but when he took his eyes off of him he began to sink beneath the waves. Jesus pulled him out and asked him why his faith was hindered. It's a metaphor of how losing our faith in God will cause us to be swarmed by the storms and troubles of life. God tests, teaches, and disciplines his children like any loving father does for their child.

3. Hehe. Super powers? Well, considering he's God, the Bible describes him as being able to do anything and everything since he created all and has been here always and will always be. The one thing he can't be, because he's perfect, is sin, and that's because sin is the opposite of perfection. That's where the word originates from, "missing the mark" in other words. Since God is truth, love, light, purity, perfection, and none of these originate without him, he cannot be with sin or of it. This is how the whole story of creation got interesting, because when man introduced sin into the world, it caused a separation from us and God.

4. Aggressive towards a person's point of view? I'm not sure what you mean by that. Can you elaborate?

5. God made us very intelligent, indeed. You see, however, God, according to the Bible, is love, and created us because he wanted to love us and for us to love him. We let sin enter humanity, though, and with that, humans became corruptible and evil. We began to murder, lie, cheat, lust, envy, boast, and just make the world a miserable place. Some humans ended up, instead of worshiping the true God that created them, began to construct statues, idols, and begin to worship false gods. An example of this would be the Greeks, the Romans, and other pagans or religions you might think of. God here, in the scripture you asked about, commanded the Jews not to fall to their lies and to worship the false gods, but because we have free will, some people chose to, some people chose not to.
You may be asking why we have free will. Why God didn't just create us with a static, unwavering automatic love and devotion to him.
Well, because that's not love. Love isn't forced; robots cannot love. They just do what they are programmed. God gave us a choice to love him or not, and each human has a choice.

6. Well first of all, the punishments of the second death, hell, etc. were not created for us. It was created for the angels. You see, before God made humans, there was an angel named Lucifer/Satan that rebelled and wanted to be better and more important than God. He convinced others to rebel with him. God punished Lucifer/Satan for trying to disown and destroy the God that created him, and He banished 1/3rd of the angels in heaven, along with Lucifer/Satan into an eternal place of punishment. Afterwards, heaven was now a place of peace and holiness again. When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (because Lucifer/Satan disguised as a serpent tempted them to eat it and that God lied), they disobeyed God, and with that sin entered humanity, because once again, God is perfection and Adam and Eve disobeyed perfection. Unfortunately, the law is that the punishment for sin is death (of the soul and the body). This already happened to the fallen angels (now known as demons). God told Adam that because he had sinned, he will slave and toil and work for his food and shelter the rest of his life, and that Eve shall go through great pain in birthing children. He banished them from the Garden of Eden, and told them that one day surely they would die (body-wise. That's why all of us humans die someday). And with that, humans lost the covenant and connection we had with God. Until of course, Jesus Christ, the Messiah promised in the prophesies is born and pays the price of death for the entirety of humanity, so that mankind can once again commune with God. However, if sins are not accounted for and forgiven, that sin causes that person to die of the soul as well in eternal punishment. That's why Jesus Christ died for people's sins, so people could choose not to go to hell and be forgiven of their sins. There are those, who of course, reject the sacrifice, and their sins remain their debts.

7. What is gaeity? If you mean homosexuality, in Leviticus God says that homosexuality is a sin. The reason why is because the Bible describes sex as a gift, a pleasurable act between a married man and a woman that is a gift from God. Through this wonderful and pleasurable gift, humans can bear children. When man became sinful, along with the other sins, he perverted and polluted sexuality. Pagans began to have sex with their family members like brothers and sisters, with the same gender, with children, with animals, with various people, when God specifically said that his intention of sex and marriage was to be an unbroken bond between a husband and wife.

8. Very very little. The overwhelming amount of prophesies that came true, historical artifacts and sources, the unanimous agreeance between a lot of scientists about there being absolutely no explanation for the creation of the universe other than something having created it, and the plain lack of logic for so many people spread over hundreds of years to pour blood, sweat and tears into writing, scribing and preserving the stories and words of God for hundreds to thousands of years for the sake of just saying "lol gotcha", and more. If you message me on AIM, since I go to a church in which I learn a wealth about theology, apologetics, Biblical history and archaeology, I can show and explain you a wide variety of cool truths about the Bible. Considering just yesterday I saw the Book of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls....a manuscript over 2,000 years old, and it maintains the same words as the Bible I have now in 2008, really testifies to me as to just how much the scribes though it was important people read this.

9. The New Testament trying to mold itself to fit the modern day person? It was written within the 1st century. Though its intentions were for it to be read and kept until the end of time. Jesus and the apostles do clarify and speak upon a wealth of laws, wisdom, stories and groundrules for the church, but they are intended to stand valid today.

10. The New Testament is simply a compilation of the gospels (the four books describing Jesus birth, to death, to resurrection), epistles (or letters) from Paul and others to the different churches, visions by John of the last days of the earth before God judges all things before bringing an end to death and suffering, and books like Acts that describe the movement of the church. It's an important part of the Bible that describes and clarifies the new covenant humans have with God now that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world so that humans have the choice to go to heaven and be eternally in commune with God once again. In the days of the Old Testament, you had to ritually sacrifice an animal to atone for your sins (though it just covered them up, it didn't remove the sin) and you prayed in the temple, among other things. When Jesus (also called the Lamb of God...because he is the basically "animal sacrifice to end them all") died for the sins of humanity, the ground shook and the veil in the temple was torn, signifying that now anyone could enter God's presence and pray to him from wherever, and that the animal sacrifices of the past are no longer necessary because God removed the sin, he didn't just cover it up. He promised Jesus, the Messiah, to the Jews as a savior and a redeemer of the Jewish people, of sin, of mankind. So yes, the New Testament is extremely important.

I'm sorry about your dad's girlfriend. While there are many of us nice, helpful Christians, there are those who are just frankly mean or even in some cases misrepresent what Jesus preached about, which is being kind and loving to the sinner and neighbor. Maybe she was just having a bad day. I pray she cheers up.

But many of your unanswered questions will be answered if you just pick up the Bible (or you can go to that website you linked me to) and just start reading!
So many people question and ask about the Bible without actually reading it entirely for themselves. Of course it can take a while, and you're supposed to read it even after you finish because you always uncover something new and fresh when you read a passage or something and see it a way you didn't before (like any book sometimes). But anyway, there are different things you can look up based upon what you want to read. Psalms and Proverbs are very poetic books in the Bible, offering MUCH wisdom for decisions in everyday life, and many Christian songs today are based off of the poems in Psalms. The first few books of the Bible really lay down the history of Israel and how everything occurred, the epistles from Paul like Colossians, Corinthians, Galatians, etc. really give you good advice on how to live. Paul's letters were used as examples in law schools apparently because he's such a convincing writer and his thought-process is very logical. Every book gives you a different nugget you can apply to your life, and there's a lot of symbolism and metaphor. Yet you look at it as a book entirely and throughout the many many authors from Moses to Paul over hundreds of years it's astounding how it all fits together like pieces of a puzzle.

Hope that helps.
PS: If you're really interested, a really good movie is called The Passion of the Christ. It came out a few years ago. It's rated R, because, frankly, the death of Jesus was a brutal one, but it's very well-made, with good acting, a heart-tugging plot (and mother son moments between Jesus and Mary), and I highly suggest you rent it or something. It's something I think everyone should see at least once..

[Kegluneq]

Uh. No offense but I did see the Passion...I sorta...laughed...sorry... but I do at alot of bad things so heheh..... also...I guess I never actually took the time to think people actually believed this stuff.....-_- I really don't mean to offend you.
Oh yeah one more question.
I heard this from somebody else, I watch his videos against religion.......on youtube...-_-...Yeah well anyway I guess his question is
why is it that nobody at the time of Jesus' death was recording this stuff, why is it that these things have always been "passed along"?

[Dogenzaka]

Uh. No offense but I did see the Passion...I sorta...laughed...sorry... but I do at alot of bad things so heheh..... also...I guess I never actually took the time to think people actually believed this stuff..... I really don't mean to offend you.

Why do you think people made the movie if no one believed in it? They made it so people would believe in it. Because it happened.
Even if it was someone I didn't know, I wouldn't have laughed at the death he went through. The Bible describes it as even worse, that he was beat "unrecognizable". Scourging at that degree back then was known to having ripped pieces of internal organs out.

Did you really not know people didn't believe in this? The Bible is the most popular book in all of humanity. It's likely the largest religion (although I don't believe it to be a religion, perse, I'll explain some other time) on earth. A lot of people believe in it.

why is it that nobody at the time of Jesus' death was recording this stuff, why is it that these things have always been "passed along"?

My guess as to why the people who were killing him had no reason to record the event, because they figured it was a routine criminal crucifixion like any other criminal. They don't believe anything made him special. Although some of them turned and begged for forgiveness when they saw what they had done.

And as for his disciples, well, what do you think? If your friend is being executed, are you up there mourning and consoling your family/friends and watching the event, or do you bring a notepad and pen to describe the events in detail as they happen? Usually, people write about things after they happen, after they're somewhat emotionally recovered. Besides, considering Jesus died around 30 AD, the gospels and epistles were written well around 30-50 AD, and in fact we have manuscripts from the New Testament from 100 AD (which I saw in person two days ago). As soon as Jesus resurrected, he commanded his disciples to spread the good news to the people of the world before he comes back, and so came along Paul, his epistles to the churches, John, Peter, Timothy, etc.
We do have third party sources confirming the existence of people in that time as well, like the letters from a Roman guard talking about Jesus, and the plaques in Israel that have the name "Pontius Pilate" on them.

Regardless, the story was never really "passed along" like some bedtime story. The gospels and New Testament were written by disciples of the apostles, people very very close to them, most likely under their leadership. Copies were then made, like when the church began to assemble the books of the New Testament. In that day, scribeship was one of the most revered and time-consuming jobs available. Religious scribes took their job extremely seriously; if they made one mistake in the hand-written copying of letters, the copy was burned and they had to start over. No erasers back then. Until the invention of the printing press, Bibles were short in supply and treasured, and it was of the utmost importance to preserve its authenticity as it was copied. It's not like a folk tale. Rather, someone wrote about these events, and those writings have been preserved through time. Of the manuscripts I saw two years ago, the translations matched modern day translations exactly, from the Book of Isaiah well over 2,000 years old, to the 100 AD manuscripts of Galatians, Luke, Philippians, etc. so I have nothing to worry about when it comes to significant loss in translation.