You are right is that my credibility could be better.
But credibility and saying truth aren't same thing.
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Meat Mystery behind 1 Corinthians 7:36-37 (virgin, daughter, betrothed or what?)
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But credibility and saying truth aren't same thing.
To be consistent, I guess it has to mean that.
I would disagree with that. Doing right in their own eyes was the system God established when Israelites entered the land. It’s the he intended them to function.
Doing right in your own eyes sounds like having the freedom to live your conscience and convictions. This does not mean any lack of accountability to God and scripture, it just means someone else's conscience doesn't get to dictate your actions if they cannot pursuade you with scripture and reason to see it their way. The sinful pope did what was right in his own eyes and led most of the body of Christ into apostacy, left many women with no chance of marriage, and part of that was him refusing to let anyone even claim it was biblical. Discussing matters of controversy is a must.
I liked the moto of American Christian Ministries "Let facts be submitted to a candid world"
If everyone doing right in their own eyes was God’s system, we wouldn’t need Judges, nor a Book of Judges. There was nothing right about Micah’s idol shrine for hire (Chapters 16-18) or the Levite’s civil war against Benjamin (Chapters 19-21).
If the Judges wanted to present this as quasi-anarchy as God's design, it's strange that every cycle in the book follows the same pattern: Israel does evil, is oppressed, cries out, gets delivered, then relapses. That's not a portrait of a functioning system. Rather, it's a portrait of a feedback loop God kept mercifully interrupting.
It’s also worth mentioning that the people of Israel weren’t actually a law unto themselves during this period. They had the Torah given at Sinai, a priesthood, the tabernacle, and judges whom God himself raised up to lead and adjudicate (Judges 2:16-19).
The trajectory of the book argues against this reading too. Judges ends with Israel in moral freefall, and the canonical narrative moves directly from there into 1 Samuel, where Israel's request for a king is treated as a response to real dysfunction (even if also partly a rejection of God's kingship, 1 Samuel 8:7).
If "everyone doing right in their own eyes" were the intended arrangement, the biblical narrative's own verdict on the period: chaos, idolatry, and a near-genocidal civil war, makes for an odd advertisement of it.
But why stop at 1 Samuel!
One of the clearest rebukes against everyone doing what is right in their own eyes is a verse near and dear to everyone’s heart here: 2 Samuel 12:7-8.
Nathan’s words to King David, and indeed, every prophet’s words to every person, is utterly devoid of any real meaning or force whatsoever, if people are merely a law unto themselves.
Reproof, rebuke, exhortation, all of it becomes vanity and meaninglessness in such an anarchic, supposedly God approved system.
"Thou art the man" isn't persuasion by reason toward a conclusion David is free to reject if unconvinced; it's an accusation that presumes guilt under a law David didn't get to write or waive. If moral authority terminated at the individual conscience, the correct response to every prophet in Scripture would be "thanks for your opinion," and the text would have no categories for the hearer ever being culpable for rejecting the message.
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There are three major problems with this view.
First, it fails to account for the human propensity to acquire a seared conscience and engage in self-deception, something Jeremiah 17:9 warns us about directly. It's great that your view at least tips a hat to God and His Word, but "my conscience is king" cannot hold up once you admit that a conscience can be corrupted or self-deceived.
Second, it's devoid of any self-denial or preferring one another. There's no room in this framework for voluntarily going without something lawful for the sake of another person's conscience, which is exactly what Paul calls for in 1 Corinthians 8:13.
Third, it treats individual conscience as the final court of appeal, but Scripture places final adjudication somewhere far more corporate and authoritative. You can see this play out in your pope example: the fix for an unpersuadable abuser of authority isn't "everyone's own conscience is final," it's "authority itself must be accountable to Scripture and answerable to other believers." That's reinforced by 1 Corinthians 6:1-4, where Paul tells the Corinthians they will judge angels and the world, a scope of adjudication that presupposes something far more authoritative than any single individual's persuaded conscience.
If the same saints who will be judging you on your "day in court" are giving you an opportunity to hear reproof while here on earth, think of it as a kind of pre-trial settlement. It may be best to "agree quickly," lest you be brought before the Judge and have to pay the last penny. How we treat others, including the tender conscience of a weaker brother, will be counted as how we treated the Lord Jesus Christ himself.
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And we get similar issues in period of kings.
People just sometimes like doing evil.
And besides, who guard the guardians? And what if guardians become corrupt?
There is no system within your writing. No just write endlessy against indepedence. No real attempt how expected issues are to be handled.
And nevermind that often moral issues become legal issues which means "slight malfunction" become unsolvable problem.
Just check Lord Voldemort of Brazil.
If corruptibility disqualifies a system, your own appeal to individual conscience is disqualified even faster, since an unaccountable conscience is corruptible with zero checks on it at all. At least corporate and conciliar accountability puts multiple consciences, multiple sets of eyes, and the text of Scripture itself in the room together.
Doesn’t even nature teach you that sheep are at greater risk to predation when they’re alone? Or does being an eye or an ear separated from the body tend to live or die?
Regarding who watches the watchmen, that’s exactly what Matthew 18:15-17 and 1 Timothy 5:19-20 are for: it’s a process. An accusation against an elder isn't received on one person's word, it goes through multiple witnesses, and persistent unrepentant sin gets rebuked publicly so "the rest may fear."
Acts 15 shows the apostles and elders convening to resolve a doctrinal dispute rather than each man settling it in his own head. None of that promises perfection. It promises a God-given mechanism for correction that bare individualism structurally can't offer, because there's no "they" to appeal to when "I" am the final court.
Finally, we can’t ever *really* have a meaningful exchange until you and I map out clearly your doctrine of God’s Word. I believe it contains everything necessary to live a life of faith and obedience. It provides robust methods for dealing with conflict, to include even cleromancy (the casting of lots) as a way to end all conflict. There’s a recurring theme: appeals made by individuals to something external and authoritative.
I close with Holy Scripture, showing the blessing of operating as a believer within a plurality and not as some Lone Ranger.
“Woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.” - Ecclesiastes 4:10b (KJV)
“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” - Matthew 18:20 (KJV)
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And if system itself becomes corrupt?
Just take a look at current Brazil. Corrupt judges make sure corrupt president wins election and corrupt president makes sure corrupt judges stay on job.
So far, it seems there is no peaceful solution how to remove corrupt people.
At least my system stops systematic corruption where powerful get to corrupt others.
Predation by whom? Besides, I don't assume people will live alone.
Justice is known by what is done to helpless, not powerful. Loooollll, elder.
What about regulars and lower?
Without force, everyone else can decide do they accept decision of council. So it's in practice everybody decides for himself.
There is nothing to talk.
You are so stuck headfirst in Bible than you don't see practical issues.
Bible speaks a lot of marriage, but it doesn't mentions minimun age. So 5 years old can then get married because Bible says nothing of age?
If your beliefs result in answering yes to previous paragraf, I will gladly introduce you to local law enforcement.
You must have some caricature of indivudualism. If I need help, I can ask here. It's obvious.
Pragmatism has its own issues (just ask Moses). Appreciate the compliment, although you probably didn’t intend for it to be. Being stuck headfirst in the Bible is absolutely my aim.
I agree with a lot of what you believe, but you carry it too far.
If Noah hadn’t separated himself from his neighbors and followed a revelation that no one else received, he wouldn’t have built the ark.
If Moses hadn’t kept going up against the king, and making his fellow Hebrews miserable, he couldn’t have led them to freedom.
If Moses hadn’t thrown a fit when he came down from the mountain, they (we?) might still be worshiping a gold calf.
A young, lone shepherd taking out Goliath.
Peter taking the Good News to the gentiles, against the standing opinion of the rest of the apostles.
Paul representing the organized religious system having his “come to Yeshuah” moment all by himself on the road to Damascus.
In short, religious systems may be safer for the average sheep, but they can be hell on world changers.
Every analogy falls apart at some point and where the shepherd/sheep analogy fails is that sheep never become shepherds.
Yet Yah wants each of us to grow up and become shepherds.
You would herd as back into the flock to safely sit at the feet of some (appointed by who?) shepherd.
It’s been tried, buddy, it’s been tried.
1 John 2:19 means something.. all of Holy Scripture has something to say to us today.The people in this place seem to care more about what God’s Word doesn’t say than what it actually does say. They emphasize what is descriptive and discard what is prescriptive.
We don’t see Torah Keeping among Gentiles in the NT. Maybe Acts 15 was the Starter Pack, maybe it wasn’t. It’s an argument from silence.
We don’t see polygyny in the NT. Maybe qualifications for elders infer it, maybe it doesn’t. It’s another argument from silence.
We don’t see Gentile gypsies professing faith and refusing accountability or rejecting church membership in the NT. It’s yet another argument from silence.
Put it all together man. Work it out with fear and trembling with the LORD. That’s all I can say at this point.
There weren’t judges for long stretches of time during the time of Judges. God always preferred his people to live in direct communion with him. Judges only arose in times of need.
Why accept spiritual middlemen when you go to direct to Master?
If any of that is silent, then making a definitive conclusion in opposition is misguided, isn’t it?
As far as Torah keeping, Paul offered up sacrifices in the Temple. The historical and biblical evidence seems to indicate that NT believers kept Sabbath and celebrated the Lords day on the first day of the week. Since the new day technically begins in the evening, they likely had really long worship that lasted into the evening (technically) Sunday.
That’s not to plug Torah keeping for Christians, it’s just basic history and scripture.
This thread is super derailed btw.
Couple of thoughts:
I always read “doing right in their own eyes” as a negative. They did things according to their own morality, not God’s. That was the whole purpose of instituting judges. I welcome other viewpoints.
The king was sovereign over political matters. The prophets still has authority over spiritual matters. Samuel was a powerful man. It was a sharing of power in many ways.
Lone wolf hyper individualism is highly idealistic. It’s only successful because of the safety and security of institutions.
Couple of thoughts:
I always read “doing right in their own eyes” as a negative. They did things according to their own morality, not God’s. That was the whole purpose of instituting judges. I welcome other viewpoints.
The king was sovereign over political matters. The prophets still has authority over spiritual matters. Samuel was a powerful man. It was a sharing of power in many ways.
Lone wolf hyper individualism is highly idealistic. It’s only successful because of the safety and security of institutions.
Man is social being, so even loners have social circle. Small one, but still circle.
It’s about accountability, not merely socializing. You know that. I know that. We don’t have to keep pretending. You’re content to walk out your faith in a way that no person in the Holy Scriptures given to us as an example ever has, and I don’t think it’s going to end well for you or anyone else who decides for live out their faith like you do.
We know we’ve passed from death to life because of the love of the brethren. The world will know we are his disciples by our love for one another. We also have a picture in Scripture of what hatred is biblically (speaking neither good nor bad to someone).
That’s essentially what many of the hurt homesteaders here have done. They’re done with church, they’re done with the visible body of Christ by and large, and I genuinely believe that’s going to prove to be spiritually disastrous for you and many other people who go down those intentionally lonely paths.
The Christian life is lonely enough as it is. Withdrawing from true brethren just because things get hard is unwarranted.
Ehh, Paul may have paid for four men to fulfill a vow but I don’t think it can be exegetically demonstrated that he “offered sacrifices in the Temple.”
I do believe that Jewish converts would have kept both the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day separately. I don’t dispute that at all. I think Theophilus Brabourne may have been onto something with holding a sort of “two day” view.
But Paul (a Jew) keeping the Sabbath and a Gentile keeping the Sabbath are two different things. I’m in agreement with what Paul says in Colossians regarding sabbaths and holy days.
We don’t see positive examples of Gentiles keeping the Torah in the NT. As someone who has studied the Word very closely, graduated from seminary, reading it through once a year, etc., we see a lot of warnings in the inspired Word about Judaizers.
Every warning in the Word is worth heeding.
So he sinned? He kind of judaízed? He’s a hypocrite? He did that which was righteous? You do realize that prophecies of the coming kingdom include…temple sacrifice.
Likely not just Jewish converts but at least you concede that point.
All days are holy. Agreed. God made all days. How many other of the 10 are now optional?
Nor negative. As you say, it’s mostly silent.
So that means you were indoctrinated into your denomination’s belief system?
What was the goal of a judaizer? I believe Peter and Paul adopted Jesus’ view of the matter. It’s what’s inside, not outside that accounts for righteousness. Abraham and Moses had to believe God first. The judaizares put the cart before the horse. They were expecting full obedience without necessarily inspecting for inward conversion.
True. Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.
Brother, I am not a judaizer. I’m not even what one would consider a “Torah” guy. I’ve just become more pronomian over the years because it takes the guessing out of the faith. The mere fact that you have to question in another post about whether polygyny “could” be fornication means that you are putting yourself in much too high of a spiritual position. You wrestle with things that need not be so difficult. Gods law provides the template for accepted sexual practices. Anywhere inside that is permissible. Don’t strain at gnats.