Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
Further, your insistence that it is about nominal Christianity versus degraded is frankly, idiotic (to use a term you used previously). Nominal means "in name only" therefore you are saying these churches in Revelation are "in name Christians" only and not real churches. That is worse than saying they are degraded. You are not the expert of the English language and logic that you think you are, ZNPaaneah.
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Obviously those that say they are Jews and are not, but are of the "Synagogue of Satan" are nominal, not genuine. That is very clear. Also they are clearly worse. You cannot refer to them as "degraded" because they were never a genuine church to begin with.
Nor are they referred to as the church in Smyrna, rather they are the ones persecuting the church.
The analogy I use is of a childhood disease. If the disease were a virus, the virus would be the false teacher, the false prophet, Balaam, Jezebel, etc. That virus is not a "degraded church", it is not nor has it ever been a church. However, when a child gets the disease and is sick, that is what I understand by the term "degraded church". You are referring to a sick church.
My argument is that these childhood diseases are crucial, our immunity to them is our defense. This is why civilizations that have many domesticated animals are the dominant civilizations, they have a number of these childhood diseases. This is why the American Indians (North America, Central America and South America) were wiped out by Europeans. Therefore, I see that being exposed to these "diseases" and developing an immunity to them is a crucial step in the maturation of Christians. We need to overcome them, and we can't overcome them if we are not exposed to them.