Quote:
Originally Posted by Nell
Do you think shutting Cahn down will insure that precious brothers and sisters will not get defrauded of their love for God? I also know some who are overly fascinated with all kinds of things. Will shutting down the voices fix that? Who do you shut down next? Who decides?
|
Of course not. But revealing the serious error will help deter those who would be ensnared by this one particular distraction.
The question seems to be based upon one of two assumptions. The first is that since there are many ways to get distracted and defrauded from our love for God, we should just ignore them all and hope we are not ourselves caught up in one of those. The other is that people who think they see an error should just keep silent while the errors are allowed to run their course without challenge.
In other words, rather than speaking out against an error — not trying to silence the error, but expose it — we should be silent. Seems that the ones being silenced are those who would have any reason to question the position of the ones you claim we are trying to silence.
Yes, I have cast Cahn's teachings as an error. And it is possible (despite my doubts) that I am not correct on this. But you don't discover whether Cahn or I (and others) are right by simply silencing one side. Our goal is not to silence Cahn. It is to expose it as false. If our position is true, and that message gets out, Cahn is not silenced, but the impact of his message is greatly diminished. But rather than hear the complaint, seems his followers would rather that we be silent and just leave it alone.
Who is trying to silence who?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nell
We speak the truth and trust the hearing of others to God. Pray for the people you love. That's the best we can do and that's not a bad solution. We can't manufacture an environment where the faith of men will not be challenged. We can't regulate what men hear. We've been there.
|
This is true on both sides.
But for all of us, the best we can really say is that "we speak what we understand to be the truth." That is true for all of us, including me.
Some complain about my lack of quoting scripture in my comments, positions, and responses. But does anyone actually not understand the scriptural basis (or lack thereof) of whatever it is I say?
For example, someone (not you) asked for verses about something recently. Might not have been about Cahn, but was related in that it was within the context of how to read the OT promises and covenants. It would seem that I need to provide a verse that directs that any particular OT statement is or is not relevant to today as a literal promise or principle. With rare exception, there is no such statement within the OT or NT on the subject. Yet there is fairly consistent thought on a lot of such things without the inclusion of any verse specifically making such a statement.
But then someone comes along and insists that certain things
are for today. Or
are about America. Why? Because there is a verse that makes it so? Or why not? Because there is a verse that makes it so?
The answer to both is generally "no." But that does not make either position simply open season. The lack of a spoken limitation does not prove no limitation. And the lack of a spoken extension does not prove no extension. But the manner, time, context, words, etc., contained in what we do see is instructive. As is the manner in which other things are not included.
So let's take a look at the covenant with Israel. God did not put a general challenge out for any nation to sign up for special benefits and blessings. And the children of Israel did not decide that they did not like their current surroundings, so they did an ancient "one of by land and two if by sea" and left Egypt to create their own nation, and then while making their way back to the land that their ancestors came from stopped near a mountain and made some speeches and called upon God to accept them as the first (and only) nation to accept the challenge.
No. Long before Egypt. Before the Red Sea. Before the giving of the law. God chose Abraham. He singled him out and declared that he would bring about his salvation for all people through his descendants. As a result, Abraham moved west and lived in a new land. Now some centuries later, his offspring have become numerous. And they are now leaving subjugation in Egypt. They are the beginning of their own nation. And God comes to them on the mountain, speaking to their leader, Moses, to establish this covenant that was not offered to any other country around them. (He did eventually say that there would be blessing on those who helped them along the way, but no offer of a similar deal.) But there were conditions.
We know the rest. So what part of that story is rationally understood to suggest that any nation stepping up to "dedicate" itself to God can step into the shoes of Israel in terms of receiving similar blessings, and with it, similar threats of retribution for failure to keep at it?
There is no verse that specifically states that you can or you can't. But the narrative concerning Israel suggests that it is not the volition of Israel that made it happen, but the volition of God to continue the Abrahamic covenant and move forward through the offspring that he promised Abraham with the continued goal of blessing the nations.
So what are we to do with this?
Pray for the "return" of the nation to God? To be able to enjoy divine benefits?
Pray that we, the Christians who are the church, be better image bearers of Christ and better love our God, our neighbor, and each other, and through this show the world that God sent Jesus. Bring light into darkness. Be salt and light, not in our rhetoric about everyone's sins, but in our living as people with changed lives.
The latter was always our charge. I am having a hard time seeing that America could ever have received (or apparently been able to effectively demand) special blessings from God because its Christian sub-population did what was commanded of it.