Bull. You didn't answer because you knew the implications of the answer.
No, David. IT WAS NOT RHETORICAL!!!!
Being righteous is not a work of the flesh, following the law IS!!!
Church and believers are not to judge, God and Christ will judge.
- Thread starter DFT_Dave
- Start date
Why do I keep giving this fool my time?!! Nothing anyone ever says penetrates. He's not responding, he's just repeating himself and pretending not to understand that points we are making. I'm done wasting my time chasing this jerk around in circles. He's a liar anyway. Who cares what he thinks about anything?
Believe whatever you want Dave. Have a nice life.
Believe whatever you want Dave. Have a nice life.
Having the answer, which you know will also be my answer, means you can go a head and explain the implications. You don't need me to say what is already obvious what my answer is. I think you like giving orders, when you can just make your argument. You don't need my submission before you make your point. Taking the opposing view to Mid Acts does not mean Mid Acts is wrong. The opposing view may not be correct. By having a debate we can compare both views and let everyone decide for themselves.
The works of the law alone were never believed to save anyone, the sacrifices in the Temple atoned for the sins for Israel, Jesus death on the cross atones for everyone as the final sacrifice. The works of the law that pertain to Temple life and practice, etc. are no longer needed, but the moral laws contained in the law are what Paul calls the works of the flesh. We were created to do good works--Ephesians 2:10. Doing good works is not sinning or a work of the flesh, it's boasting of your good works in order to be seen of men, and exalting yourself over others is a sin and a work of the flesh. According to Jesus the Pharisees were not wrong for telling the people to observe the law, the works of the Pharisees were not the works of the law, their works were that they were not doing the law, "they say, and do not", they are " full of hypocrisy and iniquity."
Matthew 6:2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men.
Matthew 23:1 Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, 2 Saying The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: 3 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not do after their works: for they say, and do not...all their works they do for to be seen of men...28 you appear righteous unto men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
--Dave
Right Divider
Body part
Did someone make such a claim?
Temporarily.
FOR SIN. Please complete the sentence.
Are you unaware that there were other sacrifices that were not for sin?
Again, you're trying to make a distinction so that you feel good about your behavior.
You think that you are some kind of "moral law keeper". You're not.
Only once we are already deemed saved.
Doing "good works" is NOT "keeping the moral law".
It's also not "keeping the moral law".
Sure
BINGO!!! Jesus told Israel to keep the law.
Indeed, they were self-righteous. But Jesus made it clear that when the Pharisee said "keep the law" that they were correct.
Keep the law, but don't boast about it. So what's your point?
You quote it, but you're blind to what it says.
"2 The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: 3 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do;"
I.e., KEEP THE LAW.
Last edited:
Terms of service: You agree to "not" use the Service to submit...any Content which is defamatory, abusive, hateful, likely to offend.
Who do you think you are calling me, or anyone here, a fool, a jerk, and a liar? The three of you are driving people away from this website because it's not enough that you believe your views are right, but because you like to denigrate everyone who does not agree with you in the process.
I understand the points you're making. I respond with the opposite view that says your points are wrong and give you the reasons why, and I don't disagree with everything you are saying. And stop using my name every time you post to me, that's condescending.
--Dave
What are you even talking about?
Our forum's rules are here:
The Current UPDATED TOL Ten Commandments
TOL is entering its 25th year. The following rules are the most current commandments for our forum. Follow these rules and you will be a happy camper here on TOL. Break these rules and you will likely be banned. Keep in mind TOL is a biased forum, leaning very far to the Christian right, and...
theologyonline.com
A truthsmacker.
You're being a fool, a jerk, and a liar.
Why shouldn't you be called out on it?
Truth is never a matter of popularity.
And Jesus, the Truth, said, "if they hate Me, they will hate you also."
Throwing a tantrum because you're failing to convince anyone of your beliefs isn't a good look, Dave.
I no longer care at all about anything you think or say. You're stubborn and dishonest and a waste of my time.
Like I said, just go believe whatever you want. You're going to anyway, so why bother with the pretense? Just convince yourself of whatever it is you need to believe about someone else's teaching in order to reject it in favor of whatever it is that tickles your fancy and go on with your blissful existence, convinced that you've investigated the alternatives to your favored worldview. Why anyone gets an ounce of satisfaction from such self-deception, I don't know and couldn't live with myself, but, once again, I no longer care and will not waste any more time with someone who is hell bent on misunderstanding everything that anyone says to them.
This thread is all the proof that is needed that both accusation are true.
You flagrantly lied about not actually believing the Earth was flat, which you did, and probably still do, and the idiotic back and forth about "rhetorical questions" is proof that you're an intentional jerk.
Live with it or repent.
Last edited:
I wonder whether Dave would have ever noticed, without me pointing it out here, that the one he accuses of teaching that one can "sin with impunity" was the one calling him on the carpet about lying? Probably not.
In any case, I've been working on the following essay in response to this whole topic. Whether Dave ever reads it and gets anything out of it is beyond my control. I didn't create it for him. I learn by writing. It is my desire to know, for my own sake, that I know not only what I believe, but why I believe it. This "sin with impunity" charge always gets my heart rate up because it's so false from so many different directions. Dave, and others that have similar reactions to our doctrine, seem to think that Mid-Acts hamartiology amounts to pretending that sin doesn't exist.
Full disclosure: I passed this through an AI for editing sake. It made a few modest alterations but not enough to alter the meaning of anything. That is to say, the only things it changed had to do with spelling, grammar and slight wording alterations for "flow".
Righteousness Apart from the Law: Why We Do Not Teach That Believers Can Sin with Impunity
People throw this charge at us all the time, and it is pretty predictable. If we are not under the law anymore, if every sin is already forgiven, if our righteousness is only in Christ and not in how well we perform, then what is to stop a person from just doing whatever they want and calling it grace?
The problem with that question has to do with what it presupposes. The law was never the thing that made people righteous or produced real moral living in the first place. Scripture calls the law holy, just, and good, but its main job was never to transform anyone. It was there to expose sin, to name it clearly, and to hold the sinner accountable. It could diagnose the disease, but it could not provide the cure. It never gave the life or power needed to actually obey what it demanded. If the law could have produced righteousness, Israel’s track record would have proven it. Instead, it proved the exact opposite. All those perfect commands still could not create the obedience they required.
A Mid-Acts view just takes this seriously and follows it all the way through to its logic conclusion. The believer is not under the law because the law was never meant to make us righteous to begin with. It was like a mirror. It showed us what was really there, but it had no power to change what it reflected. It could command, threaten, and condemn, but it could not impart life. And without life, real righteousness is impossible.
Once you are placed in Christ, everything changes. Righteousness is not something you chase anymore through effort and discipline. It is something you already possess because you are joined to Him. You do not stand before God based on how well you measure up to a standard. You stand there on the basis of how well Christ measured up to THE standard. You stand before God based on Christ's righteousness, which is now counted as yours. Your whole identity has shifted, and so has the ground of how you relate to God and to right and wrong.
That is usually when the objection comes up almost automatically. If the law is gone, then morality goes with it. Anything goes! But what actually disappears is not morality, but rather the mistaken idea that morality was ever rooted in the law in the first place. Law reflects morality. It does not create it.
Morality is about what actually sustains and promotes life. It is about what lines up with the way reality is built. Evil is what corrupts, twists, and eventually destroys. That is not some made-up definition that depends on a written code. Life itself is the standard. Actions are moral or immoral based on whether they build up that life or tear it down. (To answer some who might insist the God is the standard - You aren't following the logic. God Himself is Life Itself. (see Deuteronomy 30:15, Proverbs 11:19 and elsewhere.)
When the law says do not murder, do not steal, do not commit adultery, it is not inventing moral truth out of nowhere. It is pointing out behaviors that destroy trust, relationships, and life itself. The command is descriptive before it is prescriptive. It is telling the truth about how things really work, and warning us away from what carries real consequences. Once you see that, taking the law away does not remove morality. It removes the middleman and puts you in direct contact with reality. The question stops being which rule applies here and becomes what actually leads to life vs. what leads to destruction?
This is why love ends up being so much more than just avoiding the "thou shalt not" list. Love is not rule-keeping. It acts and moves with real intention toward the good of the other person in ways that protect and build life. It deals with reality instead of checking boxes. A guy might not steal because he is afraid of getting caught or punished. That does not say much about whether he actually cares about people. But another man who works hard, provides, and gives of himself for others, that is coming from a different place. He is operating out of an understanding of what is genuinely good, not just external compliance.
This is where the whole accusation that grace leads to loose living starts to fall apart. People who really grasp grace usually see sin more clearly, not less. They see it for what it is: not just breaking a rule, but an attack on life, on relationships, on the things that make human flourishing possible. Sexual sin illustrates this with particular force. That is why those of us who preach grace are often so firm about it. It is not about abstract rule-breaking, but about taking something that God designed to give life and twisting it into something destructive. The fallout does not stay with the individual, but spreads into families, churches, and the whole fabric of society itself. A group of believers who understand this cannot treat it casually. When they confront it or even remove someone who refuses to repent from it, it's not us slipping back into legalism. On the contrary, its us protecting life and relationships inside the body. It is not an act of law but of love.
The believer’s motivation for their own actions changes at a deep level. You are not trying to earn acceptance anymore. You are not constantly measuring yourself against a performance standard. You start from acceptance, and that freedom lets you face reality honestly. You do not have to defend or minimize your sin because the fear of condemnation is gone. What you get instead is a life of real responsibility instead of mere rule-following. It's discernment instead of checklists and a kind of love that is rooted in truth and aimed at what is actually good.
Here's something that our accusers never seem to notice. Paul himself faced the exact same accusation. People said he was teaching that we should sin so that grace could abound even more. The critics twisted his message of free grace into license. In that sense, those of us who hold a Mid-Acts position are in very good company! We are hearing the same charge that was leveled at the apostle Paul. On the other hand, those who insist that believers must obey the Ten Commandments and who accuse us of teaching that we can sin with impunity will never, ever face that accusation themselves. No one has ever accused them of preaching sin that grace may abound. It wouldn't ever occur to anyone to make such an accusation. Their message simply does not lend itself to that kind of misunderstanding. That fact alone ought to make our accusers pause and ask which message is actually closer to the one Paul proclaimed.
The idea that you can sin freely under grace only makes sense if you have a shallow view of both sin and grace. Sin has built-in consequences that are baked into reality: damaged relationships, broken trust, personal destruction, even physical death. Grace does not magically erase those consequences. It removes condemnation before God and restores fellowship with Him, but it also lets you see sin clearly for the first time, without all the excuses. A man who knows he is fully forgiven does not have to hide his sin or dress it up. He can call it what it is. And that kind of honesty usually produces seriousness, not carelessness. Where the law could only bring the fear of punishment, but we have not been given a Spirit of fear but of love! Faith works by love! (Galatians 5:6)
Righteousness is not something you build by keeping commandments. Morality is not created by having a code. Righteousness is a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ. And real morality flows from the kind of life He embodies. When you put all this together, the supposed contradiction vanishes. People who are not under the law can still be deeply committed to righteousness, not because they are ruled by a list of rules, but because they have been given life in the One who is the source of it, and they understand what aligns with that life.
So why is this accusation so commonly where discussions about Mid-Acts Dispensationalism is being debated? It's because this kind of clarity does not just happen in generic Christianity. It comes from seeing certain distinctions in Scripture that a lot of people either miss or deliberately blur. What I have laid out here fits most naturally and consistently inside a Mid-Acts dispensational understanding. Not because other views cannot say some of the same things, but because they do not have the structural foundation that lets all the pieces fit together without there being a constant tension that is produced by a subtle double-mindedness (sometimes not so subtle).
A lot of believers will agree that righteousness is in Christ alone, that forgiveness is total, and that love fulfills the moral life. They will even sound a lot like what I have written here at times. But then they will turn around and still insist that the believer is somehow under the law, especially the moral law, as if parts of the Mosaic system still have authority over the Body of Christ. That creates this quiet, ongoing inconsistency. On one side they say righteousness is apart from the law and all in Christ. On the other, they keep pointing people back to the law as the measuring stick for daily living. It is like affirming grace in theory while sneaking law back in through the side door. The tension never really goes away.
Mid-Acts cuts that tension off at the root. It recognizes Paul’s unique apostleship and the distinct identity of the Body of Christ. The program given to Israel, including the Mosaic Law in its entirety, was never addressed to the Body, nor was it intended to function as its governing rule of life. It belonged to a different covenant, with a different people, under different promises, in a different dispensation. Once you make that distinction, the question about whether we are under the Ten Commandments or any part of the law pretty much answers itself. The law does not apply to us, not in part, not in some spiritualized version, not as a moral guide. It was a complete system that served its purpose and has now been set aside for those who are in Christ. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness sake. (Romans 10:4)
This is where it gets uncomfortable for a lot of people. Many are happy to drop the ceremonial parts of the law but want to keep the moral parts, as if you can slice it up neatly. But Scripture does not treat the law that way. It is one unified covenant. You cannot put yourself under part of it without putting yourself under the whole thing. (Galatians 5:3) The Mid-Acts view refuses to make that artificial split. It says the believer’s relationship to the law is not partial obedience. It is complete freedom from it. And that freedom does not weaken morality. It actually clarifies where morality really comes from.
Those who do not make this distinction often end up trying to explain how we can be free from the law and still bound to it at the same time. They will call it a guide, or a reflection of God’s character, or a standard that does not condemn but still directs. All of those attempts try to keep the law’s authority while using grace language, but the tension is still there because the law as a system was never fully released. Because of that, when they do sound like what I have written here, it is in spite of their theological framework, not because of it. Their conclusions might be good, but the foundation underneath them stays shaky. That instability shows up every time law and grace get pushed hard.
By contrast, the Mid-Acts framework gives these truths a solid place to stand. The believer’s relationship to the law is not one of partial obligation, but of complete release. Our freedom from the law is total and is not presented merely as a nice theological idea. It flows directly from who we are: members of a distinct body, under a distinct apostleship, living in a distinct dispensation. Removing the law does not leave a moral vacuum, because morality was never dependent on the law to begin with. That lets everything I said earlier stand without having to add qualifiers or workarounds. Righteousness is entirely in Christ. Morality reflects the nature of life as God designed it. Love acts in line with that reality. Sin destroys, whether there is a commandment against it or not.
This is not just a clever defense of grace against the old antinomian charge. It is a demonstration that when we understand the believer’s position rightly, and when we let the law stay where Scripture actually puts it, we do not get confusion or contradiction. We get clarity. And instead of moral indifference, we get a deeper, more honest commitment to what is genuinely good.
In any case, I've been working on the following essay in response to this whole topic. Whether Dave ever reads it and gets anything out of it is beyond my control. I didn't create it for him. I learn by writing. It is my desire to know, for my own sake, that I know not only what I believe, but why I believe it. This "sin with impunity" charge always gets my heart rate up because it's so false from so many different directions. Dave, and others that have similar reactions to our doctrine, seem to think that Mid-Acts hamartiology amounts to pretending that sin doesn't exist.
Full disclosure: I passed this through an AI for editing sake. It made a few modest alterations but not enough to alter the meaning of anything. That is to say, the only things it changed had to do with spelling, grammar and slight wording alterations for "flow".
Righteousness Apart from the Law: Why We Do Not Teach That Believers Can Sin with Impunity
People throw this charge at us all the time, and it is pretty predictable. If we are not under the law anymore, if every sin is already forgiven, if our righteousness is only in Christ and not in how well we perform, then what is to stop a person from just doing whatever they want and calling it grace?
The problem with that question has to do with what it presupposes. The law was never the thing that made people righteous or produced real moral living in the first place. Scripture calls the law holy, just, and good, but its main job was never to transform anyone. It was there to expose sin, to name it clearly, and to hold the sinner accountable. It could diagnose the disease, but it could not provide the cure. It never gave the life or power needed to actually obey what it demanded. If the law could have produced righteousness, Israel’s track record would have proven it. Instead, it proved the exact opposite. All those perfect commands still could not create the obedience they required.
A Mid-Acts view just takes this seriously and follows it all the way through to its logic conclusion. The believer is not under the law because the law was never meant to make us righteous to begin with. It was like a mirror. It showed us what was really there, but it had no power to change what it reflected. It could command, threaten, and condemn, but it could not impart life. And without life, real righteousness is impossible.
Once you are placed in Christ, everything changes. Righteousness is not something you chase anymore through effort and discipline. It is something you already possess because you are joined to Him. You do not stand before God based on how well you measure up to a standard. You stand there on the basis of how well Christ measured up to THE standard. You stand before God based on Christ's righteousness, which is now counted as yours. Your whole identity has shifted, and so has the ground of how you relate to God and to right and wrong.
That is usually when the objection comes up almost automatically. If the law is gone, then morality goes with it. Anything goes! But what actually disappears is not morality, but rather the mistaken idea that morality was ever rooted in the law in the first place. Law reflects morality. It does not create it.
Morality is about what actually sustains and promotes life. It is about what lines up with the way reality is built. Evil is what corrupts, twists, and eventually destroys. That is not some made-up definition that depends on a written code. Life itself is the standard. Actions are moral or immoral based on whether they build up that life or tear it down. (To answer some who might insist the God is the standard - You aren't following the logic. God Himself is Life Itself. (see Deuteronomy 30:15, Proverbs 11:19 and elsewhere.)
When the law says do not murder, do not steal, do not commit adultery, it is not inventing moral truth out of nowhere. It is pointing out behaviors that destroy trust, relationships, and life itself. The command is descriptive before it is prescriptive. It is telling the truth about how things really work, and warning us away from what carries real consequences. Once you see that, taking the law away does not remove morality. It removes the middleman and puts you in direct contact with reality. The question stops being which rule applies here and becomes what actually leads to life vs. what leads to destruction?
This is why love ends up being so much more than just avoiding the "thou shalt not" list. Love is not rule-keeping. It acts and moves with real intention toward the good of the other person in ways that protect and build life. It deals with reality instead of checking boxes. A guy might not steal because he is afraid of getting caught or punished. That does not say much about whether he actually cares about people. But another man who works hard, provides, and gives of himself for others, that is coming from a different place. He is operating out of an understanding of what is genuinely good, not just external compliance.
This is where the whole accusation that grace leads to loose living starts to fall apart. People who really grasp grace usually see sin more clearly, not less. They see it for what it is: not just breaking a rule, but an attack on life, on relationships, on the things that make human flourishing possible. Sexual sin illustrates this with particular force. That is why those of us who preach grace are often so firm about it. It is not about abstract rule-breaking, but about taking something that God designed to give life and twisting it into something destructive. The fallout does not stay with the individual, but spreads into families, churches, and the whole fabric of society itself. A group of believers who understand this cannot treat it casually. When they confront it or even remove someone who refuses to repent from it, it's not us slipping back into legalism. On the contrary, its us protecting life and relationships inside the body. It is not an act of law but of love.
The believer’s motivation for their own actions changes at a deep level. You are not trying to earn acceptance anymore. You are not constantly measuring yourself against a performance standard. You start from acceptance, and that freedom lets you face reality honestly. You do not have to defend or minimize your sin because the fear of condemnation is gone. What you get instead is a life of real responsibility instead of mere rule-following. It's discernment instead of checklists and a kind of love that is rooted in truth and aimed at what is actually good.
Here's something that our accusers never seem to notice. Paul himself faced the exact same accusation. People said he was teaching that we should sin so that grace could abound even more. The critics twisted his message of free grace into license. In that sense, those of us who hold a Mid-Acts position are in very good company! We are hearing the same charge that was leveled at the apostle Paul. On the other hand, those who insist that believers must obey the Ten Commandments and who accuse us of teaching that we can sin with impunity will never, ever face that accusation themselves. No one has ever accused them of preaching sin that grace may abound. It wouldn't ever occur to anyone to make such an accusation. Their message simply does not lend itself to that kind of misunderstanding. That fact alone ought to make our accusers pause and ask which message is actually closer to the one Paul proclaimed.
The idea that you can sin freely under grace only makes sense if you have a shallow view of both sin and grace. Sin has built-in consequences that are baked into reality: damaged relationships, broken trust, personal destruction, even physical death. Grace does not magically erase those consequences. It removes condemnation before God and restores fellowship with Him, but it also lets you see sin clearly for the first time, without all the excuses. A man who knows he is fully forgiven does not have to hide his sin or dress it up. He can call it what it is. And that kind of honesty usually produces seriousness, not carelessness. Where the law could only bring the fear of punishment, but we have not been given a Spirit of fear but of love! Faith works by love! (Galatians 5:6)
Righteousness is not something you build by keeping commandments. Morality is not created by having a code. Righteousness is a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ. And real morality flows from the kind of life He embodies. When you put all this together, the supposed contradiction vanishes. People who are not under the law can still be deeply committed to righteousness, not because they are ruled by a list of rules, but because they have been given life in the One who is the source of it, and they understand what aligns with that life.
So why is this accusation so commonly where discussions about Mid-Acts Dispensationalism is being debated? It's because this kind of clarity does not just happen in generic Christianity. It comes from seeing certain distinctions in Scripture that a lot of people either miss or deliberately blur. What I have laid out here fits most naturally and consistently inside a Mid-Acts dispensational understanding. Not because other views cannot say some of the same things, but because they do not have the structural foundation that lets all the pieces fit together without there being a constant tension that is produced by a subtle double-mindedness (sometimes not so subtle).
A lot of believers will agree that righteousness is in Christ alone, that forgiveness is total, and that love fulfills the moral life. They will even sound a lot like what I have written here at times. But then they will turn around and still insist that the believer is somehow under the law, especially the moral law, as if parts of the Mosaic system still have authority over the Body of Christ. That creates this quiet, ongoing inconsistency. On one side they say righteousness is apart from the law and all in Christ. On the other, they keep pointing people back to the law as the measuring stick for daily living. It is like affirming grace in theory while sneaking law back in through the side door. The tension never really goes away.
Mid-Acts cuts that tension off at the root. It recognizes Paul’s unique apostleship and the distinct identity of the Body of Christ. The program given to Israel, including the Mosaic Law in its entirety, was never addressed to the Body, nor was it intended to function as its governing rule of life. It belonged to a different covenant, with a different people, under different promises, in a different dispensation. Once you make that distinction, the question about whether we are under the Ten Commandments or any part of the law pretty much answers itself. The law does not apply to us, not in part, not in some spiritualized version, not as a moral guide. It was a complete system that served its purpose and has now been set aside for those who are in Christ. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness sake. (Romans 10:4)
This is where it gets uncomfortable for a lot of people. Many are happy to drop the ceremonial parts of the law but want to keep the moral parts, as if you can slice it up neatly. But Scripture does not treat the law that way. It is one unified covenant. You cannot put yourself under part of it without putting yourself under the whole thing. (Galatians 5:3) The Mid-Acts view refuses to make that artificial split. It says the believer’s relationship to the law is not partial obedience. It is complete freedom from it. And that freedom does not weaken morality. It actually clarifies where morality really comes from.
Those who do not make this distinction often end up trying to explain how we can be free from the law and still bound to it at the same time. They will call it a guide, or a reflection of God’s character, or a standard that does not condemn but still directs. All of those attempts try to keep the law’s authority while using grace language, but the tension is still there because the law as a system was never fully released. Because of that, when they do sound like what I have written here, it is in spite of their theological framework, not because of it. Their conclusions might be good, but the foundation underneath them stays shaky. That instability shows up every time law and grace get pushed hard.
By contrast, the Mid-Acts framework gives these truths a solid place to stand. The believer’s relationship to the law is not one of partial obligation, but of complete release. Our freedom from the law is total and is not presented merely as a nice theological idea. It flows directly from who we are: members of a distinct body, under a distinct apostleship, living in a distinct dispensation. Removing the law does not leave a moral vacuum, because morality was never dependent on the law to begin with. That lets everything I said earlier stand without having to add qualifiers or workarounds. Righteousness is entirely in Christ. Morality reflects the nature of life as God designed it. Love acts in line with that reality. Sin destroys, whether there is a commandment against it or not.
This is not just a clever defense of grace against the old antinomian charge. It is a demonstration that when we understand the believer’s position rightly, and when we let the law stay where Scripture actually puts it, we do not get confusion or contradiction. We get clarity. And instead of moral indifference, we get a deeper, more honest commitment to what is genuinely good.
Gentlemen, this website is not yours' to destroy by driving people away with denigrating insults. If you three don't agree to disagree with others that want to be here, with respect, I fear this website will die.
You can call me out, just not through calling me (or anyone else) a fool, a jerk, and a liar.
You break the terms of service and exalt yourselves as the final infallible authority here. I agree with all of you on open view, free will, and creation over evolution. As to Mid Acts, I agree with most of it, but God forbid that I should not agree with all of it exactly as you say I should. As to flat earth I never said that I absolutely believed in it. I always said our experience of earth "from earth" is that it is flat and motionless. I will say more about my final conclusions on that topic but not on this thread.
--Dave
Our calling you a liar has nothing to do with our theological disagreements, it has to do with you saying things that you know are false and that we all know are false because we were there. We all remember the two year discussion where I BEGGED you to stop and to see reason over and over and over again while you stubbornly refused to move a single inch no matter how iron clad the PROOF of your error was.
I don't understand who it is you think you're trying to fool here, Dave. Maybe yourself but, regardless, you won't get any sympathy from any of us who sat a watched you destroy your own integrity in open and deliberate defiance of absolute proof that you were wrong and never had any good reason to even suspect that you might have been right!
Read my quotes in post #151, they are an answer to your false accusations.
We can deal with this in another thread, if you like. I expressed my true motives, my true concerns, and true dilemma--a situation where a person is torn between two or more conflicting moral (in this case theological) requirements, where choosing one would mean violating another--That you think you know me better, as not being true to myself makes you God. Your arrogance is astounding. Bearing false witness is a serious matter, but no worries for you because bearing false witness was only for Israel. Funny how convenient Mid Acts works for you.
You can think what you want about me, but you just can't debate here, or any where else for that matter, by continuously denigrating me or any one else without violating the terms and rules here. You have made your feelings known, now drop it, or just stay off my threads. Your contempt is becoming online harassment.
--Dave
They aren't false accusations and you cherry picking particular posts doesn't remove the reality that you know full well that I remember extremely clearly.
It has nothing to do with arrogance or me playing God. It's simple common sense and first person experience and plain memory of the events.
Plus, the whole thread is right there for the entire world to read, Dave. Instead of cherry picking a post here and there, why not invite people to read through the whole thing. There's no need for them to read every post. If the restricted themselves to those posted by you and me, they'd get the truth of it in less than half an hour.
I'll tell you why you don't. It's because there isn't a single argument that you or any other flat Earther made this isn't flat out stupidity. The fact that you were torn at all is a serious indictment on your ability to think, much less discern issues as complex as the difference between following the law and being righteous. The fact that I repeatedly demonstrated with proof after proof and then when that failed I personally pleaded with you to change course and you flat out refused. REFUSED! There was no, "I'm just not convinced one way or the other." or anything of the sort. You were choosing to die on the hill of "The Bible teaches the the Earth is flat!" It was a case study in delusion and mindlessness. NOTHING moved you a single inch! No matter how compelling, no matter how well sourced, no matter you won ability to reproduce the evidence for yourself. God Himself couldn't have convinced you if He had transported you to the Moon and back!
I'll do precisely as I please and post where I desire to post until told to do otherwise by someone who has the authority to tell me to do so.
Earth, from earth, is flat and stationary. The earth from space above the stratosphere is a globe, so long as everything we are told by science is true. The earth spinning and moving around the sun is empirically unverifiable, but very possibly true. Flat earth arguments were never my arguments. Flat earth could not answer every question. No doubt I wanted it to be true in as much as I want to take the Bible as literally as possible; as a true revelation from God about his existence and nature, as a true revelation of the origin of man and the cosmology of the world created by God. The true dilemma for all of us is how much of modern science can we believe without destroying the credibility of the Bible. Is all of modern science true? I would say absolutely not. I still have some doubts about a spinning globe, but the earth being a flat and stationary globe, as well as spinning on an axis while racing around a globe can all be true without contradiction based on relativity. But not everything can be relative because then nothing is absolutely true. Please, cosmology for another thread.
--Dave