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Originally Posted by aron
Yes, I do.
Do you believe that when Job's wife advised him to "Curse God and die", she was speaking for God? Or was that merely her opinion?
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aron, surely you do not compare Paul's practical instructions to Timothy on how to maintain a widows' roll with Job's wife's advice!
What you have written concerning Paul's letters seems to fly in the face of holding those works sacred. If these letters may be picked apart as, Oh, this part is just Paul's culture and we may ignore it, how can we, on the positive side, have the practice of "elders" with the confidence that the Bible is God's word to us?
I would go one step further to illustrate the problem.
In Hebrews, we are exhorted to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together as the custom of some was. Doesn't that pretty much declare that it was a matter of custom to assemble? And wasn't this, just coincidentally, the very practice of the synagogue and the Temple?
Brother Nee in one place wrote
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The Bible gives explicit commandments as well as clear examples of people meeting together.
Watchman Nee - Messages for Building Up New Believers
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Is the Christian meeting a matter of culture or commandment? We generally accept that assembling is something that we must do, but is that so? Is it so just because it was Paul's opinion that it was a good thing to do?
But I don't want to get off track. I am not asking if we should meet or not. That's purely rhetorical.
I am asking whether we can parse Paul's letters to Timothy as you have suggested and whether such parsing properly respects the Bible as the Holy Word. I think it might be possible to discern Paul's culture in a way that has been neglected for 2000 years, but I think many, most, nearly all, will tell you that you must do what Paul says to do regarding all the things he discusses or you are rejecting the Bible and counting yourself higher than it is.