I wish I had more time to respond to this posting. I still owe you responses from a year ago, I have not forgot, they are still in my word processor. But I did want to take a moment to say something, to encourage you. If God had wanted to write a book himself, he could of carved that out in stone with his finger like the ten commandments that he wrote twice. The scriptures tell us that men wrote under inspiration, meaning that they were inspired to write, or a different way to say that would be , motivated to write. God wasn’t literally guiding their hands, nor their brains, nor their hearts, they were writing what they felt , what they knew, from their own prospective, their own experiences, and example of this is clearly spelled out in the four books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Where four men, living at the same time in history, closely associated with each other, Apostles of Christ at the same time, but their writings are all from a different prospective of their own, that are not identical copies of each others writings like some people expect them to be, and find criticism in their differences. God does not make robots, and gives all of us the ability to see things from a different angle, and we need that, I need to see things from a different point of view of others. There are areas of life however where this freedom of thought does not apply, there are laws, and some laws are fixed, they are ridged, and because of these fixed ridged laws, we derive great benefits. Examples would be math, music, the laws of physics, like chemistry and electricity, the laws governing the universe, where by we can calculate the position of the stars out to billions of years to the billionth of a second. There are also moral laws that God has established, but men have chosen to bend, break, and shatter to his own demise, not the least of which, is the words written under inspiration, of God’s dealings with man, that man has bent to his own pleasure and often, for profit. There is that scripture that says that “men were borne along by holy spirit” and what this means is that Gods active force was acting upon them in an increased measure, but still, they were not controlled robots, as much holy spirit as was poured out upon Moses, the scriptures still reveal to us that he acted independently as a stand alone man, faults and imperfections intact, an example of that would be the smashing of the tablets. God could of had just one man write the 66 books of the Bible instead of some 40 different ones. But instead, in his infinite wisdom assuming he inspired these men to write down their experiences, he had many men, with many different perspectives, living some 1,600 years apart in completely different time periods write. Leaving God out of the picture, the historical facts still prove, that that is what happened. Inspired to write, from whatever the source of that inspiration came, men wrote about their faith, and their perceived relationship with their creator and his dealings with man, and no matter our personal beliefs, they wrote from theirs, and history recorded it, and maintained it, and make constant reference to it. This collection of books is found in the tool box of every archeologist on the planet. If the Bible says there was a city at this location, it might be ten sedimentary layers down, but that city is there. No other book in the history of man has found such scrutiny as the scriptures, and with all of that introspection man has come away from that book with faith and complete confidence in it’s words, that is of course, until those words are toyed with, removed, switched around, throw in a few new ones, and how is a person to know when this has been done. The way to tell when the scriptures have been tampered with is to compare them with known truths. In electronics we have this thing called truth tables, it goes something like this, “If this is true, and this is true, then it is possible that this is true” ” if it’s true, let the signal thru. IN Scientology they have this thing called Stable Datum, things that are absolutely true that can be referenced to. Science is filled with all kinds of Stable Datum, things that are absolutely true. And the scriptures as well have many points than can be constant absolute references, and when applied, these references anchor faith. Anchor chain links are broken, by false beliefs, that is to say, beliefs that are in direct contradiction to all known truths. But truths must be taught, and in the case of scripture, that is the whole purpose of the visit of Christ, was to tell us the truth, because for 4,000 years before that, we were lied to at every turn. Christ mentioned the word truth, dozens of times, even referring to himself as, “the way, and the truth, and the life” . It is the Bible, above all other books, that gives us the most information about the life of Christ when he was on earth, and if we form the foundation of our beliefs upon the validity of these scriptures about his life then it all fits together perfectly, all the way back to the garden of Eden and all the way forward to the time when he hands the keys of his kingdom back over to his Father at the end of the thousand years, when he has once again, brought this earth and man to the perfected state that his Father had originally intended. Our beliefs become challenged when we begin to accept teachings that are contradictory to the principles and guides of Christ words, and indeed all of the bible writers. When we accept teachings, that supersedes the laws of God as taught by the churches, our faith begins to erode. When our belief systems become so polluted that we begin to adopt them as fact, those that teach the exact opposite of all scriptural principles, to the point of actually slaughtering each other over our differing beliefs, then we have lost all faith, and if we remain on this path, we will loose our lives as well. Adam and Eve and Satan, joined together, in calling God a liar to his very face, most of mankind and the religious system of today do the same, by teaching things that are in direct contradiction to scripture, is all the same as calling God a liar. Much of the formation of the Church doctrines of modern times comes from the teachings of the apostle Paul, and many of the scriptural references that are spoken from the podiums of Churches come from his writings. If we are to have the view, that inspiration from God, allows personal color and experiences of life to shine through the writings, which in deed is the entire purpose of the scriptures, then we also should view the writing of the man, whose words have the greatest influence on christian congregation governance, the Apostle Paul, as writing through the lens of his personal life experiences, and from his close association with the very first Christian Congregation. Keep in mind when reading the words of Paul, his total life experiences up to that year of 56CE. Before becoming a follower of Christ, Paul’s job was to get Christians killed, and he said he was an expert at that. He described his core personality to us, but he became a different man. Still our lives are all shaped by our life’s experiences, as was Paul’s. When we compare the words of Christ with the words of Paul, we can clearly see the personality differences between the two. An extreme comparison might be, one is kind, forgiving, none judgemental, inclusive, loving, and the other whose life before was to get people killed who believed in Christ, we can still see the faint coloration of that life glimmer through in the stern words. This is in no way meant to dilute the words of Paul, no, they are valid, it is only to draw comparison of the acceptance of broad views we find in all the scriptures, while at the very same time, a constant traceable theme runs through them all. Your experiences with the Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses and mine, and others who have been there, reflect a modern day deviation from the nature of Christ, and more resemble the stern nature of the pre-christian nature of Paul, and are missing the forgiving, inclusive nature due the Christ. But, and this is an important but, this is exactly how Christ said it would be when he left, “oppressive wolves would enter among the sheep and would not treat the flock with tenderness”. Are we to believe this of Paul, I am not so sure, but he certainly was not excluded from the comments. When we view as well, the scriptural council of how to treat others within the congregation, it is hard if not impossible for us to imagine Christ giving that very same speech. However, when we view the entire content of the scriptures as a whole, it is all about the evil workings of man, and Gods constant plea with them to change, and come over to his side, and how he dealt with man, and how man has dealt with man, the scriptures do not try to hide the sins of man, it exposes them, it is perhaps the most honest open book ever written, and that is the key word to this posting, the Bible is honest, and honesty is always more easy to put faith in than a lie. One last point to take away today is this, all of the Bible writers and the people written about in scripture are about, and from, those who witnessed and experienced and lived in the times of, God’s direct, sometimes visible presence with man. Remember, the angels guarding Eden were visible to everyone for 1600 years, all the way up to the flood of Noah, anyone could walk right up to them. This ended with the death of Christ, no more visible images of Gods direct presence, after Christ death, everything was faith based not upon sight, and that is what is required today, faith. But we can be confident, that our forefathers and mothers had no reason to lie to us, they told us the truth, and they wrote it down for us, and it is up to all of us if we want to believe them or not.