A number of our professors contributed to a book that addresses some of your concerns about the authority of the Bible entitled, "The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures"-www.amazon.com/Enduring-Authority-Christian-Scriptures/dp/0802865763/?tag=bettwowor0e-20

You got it!

On it!

Many interpretations, but it emerges pretty clearly which ones are correct and which ones are fanciful.

@user-ft4kh1sz5x 40,000 denominations which fanciful or correct are still fictional until proven. That's 1 religion, with that much division, out of approximately 10,000 known religions. This is why proof becomes such a big issue? If my "eternal soul" is on the line and I'm damned to eternal suffering in hell if I choose the wrong god, then asking a few questions and for some evidence isn't such a bad thing.

More to come!

Hi Jim. Your questions about Israel are good, albeit common questions. One way to get a sense of the answers to your questions would be to immerse yourself into the community of Jews today, because the same issues Jesus and Paul were dealing with in the Jews of their day still persist in the Jews of today, and this is because they derive directly from their interpretation of the message of the OT, and of course the OT has not changed. Jews believe that God selected them as his chosen people, and that means that God passed over all other people. God loves the Jews and does not love the Gentiles. Sometimes they say he even hates them. This sets up the natural and ancient objections, why would God do this? Is this even true? That second question was almost always dismissed by Jewish Rabbis because to them the OT was clear, of course it was true, were you doubting their esteemed intellect and traditions?!?! Although this second question turned out to be false. So they only ever addressed the first question, and their answers varied from benign, ‘it’s what scripture says’ and ‘God works in mysterious ways’ and ‘His ways are higher than our ways, you can’t understand it’ and ‘God is sovereign to elect whom he chooses’ (strikingly similar to Calvinist answers?) to the more hateful, ‘of course God hates the Gentiles, they’re subhuman dogs.’ There is no good, convincing answer to the first question, just as there is no good reasoning behind God’s unconditional election in Calvinism today, because it was never true in the first place. In dealing with the Jews’ hateful conundrum Paul takes you back to the root of God’s election through Abraham and shows conclusively that God did NOT in fact not-choose the Gentiles. He chose the Jews and the Gentiles both. He chose the Jews so as to be his example on Earth of his power over and love for mankind, but he did this so that all mankind would see and understand and come to worship him.

Interesting thoughts R9. Regarding Calvinism, what do we do with every instance of predestination and election talk?

@@jimtrombley3625 they’re not all the same. What would you like to examine? In Ephesians 1 and Romans 8 Paul is explaining all of the blessings that have now come to the Gentiles also. They were already believed to have been granted to the Jews, now they have also come to all the Gentiles. Before Paul it was believed that only the Jews were predestined, blessed, elected. But Jesus came and corrected that. Now it has been made clear that God did not only love, elect, predestined, bless the Jews, he did all that for the Gentiles also. Calvinism wants you to believe that Paul is teaching God only elects some people. This is the exact error the Jews have always taught, and the same error Jesus and Paul were correcting. Paul is saying the Gentiles have also been elected, along with the Jews, so that all people are chosen, not some, as Calvinism teaches. It’s a horrible, foundational error born out of awful reading comprehension.

My longer, other answer serves as the back drop to this answer. The Jews taught God only loved Israel so in Rom 2:28-29 Paul was demonstrating that even if you take that as true, God invites all people into Israel, so the end result is that God loves all people, not some.