Blaster Master, Dollars to Donuts your friend grew up in the same church I did. Check your PM’s
This is my experience in a Christian denomination as well. Our service includes readings from both the Old and New Testaments. There are quite a few references in the New Testament to the Old Testament that, to me, would be harder to comprehend without knowledge of the OT.
There were the Ebionites. They were a first and second century movement that followed the belief that Jesus was the fulfillment of Judaism. So they felt that being a Jew was part of being a Christian.
Johnguay, I didn’t get any further than the “Constitution” link on that page before I already saw significant divergences from the Jewish law. That’s not people following the Jewish law; that’s people making blind guesses about Jewish law, and getting it very wrong.
And what does “OFP” stand for, anyway?
What do you mean by disregard, exactly?
For them, there are only 7 laws they must abide by, so they are not bound to follow the other 607, nor are they bound to adopt the 10 basic ones, just the 7.
So it would be hard to accuse them of disregarding something they are not bound to.
And if they were to bind themselves to it, they would basically need to convert to Judaism, because that is what it is, and they would need to let go of the new testament, or they will be totally at odds with them selves.
Go on to read the canon if you can stand to, prepare for dejavu when you start going through commandments, possibly other areas.
It left me with the feeling someone had a crazy cut N paste session :smack:
Seems pretty plain and simple to me …
Exodus 21:22
Causing a miscarriage is a property crime, according to the Old Testament. The father gets to decide the amount of the fine. (Not a killing, where the sentence is death) Hence, any sect that believes abortion is murder is obviously not following the Old Testament.
IIRC my early church history, Paul basically made up much of the current Christian religion, and was tolerated by the apostles and their (Jewish) followers as long as he stuck mostly to gentiles and didn’t interfere with their messianic preaching to the Jews. Every so often they tried to “correct” him and this resulted in some pretty vitriolic responses in his epistles. Paul was the one who argued most vigorously that his version of the message did not require Christians to also become Jews. When the Romans basically destroyed the temple and dispersed the Jewish Christians, Paul’s version was essentially the last sect left intact.
lol
I realize that you’re just repeating what you’ve heard, so this is not directed at you personally.
The idea that you talk about is a combined anti-Paul/anti-Christian/anti-Bible canard, designed explicitly to denigrate the Bible and Christianity. There are MASSIVE parallels between what Paul taught and what the other Apostles taught.
Paul:
“And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain. And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre” (Acts 13:28, 29).
Luke:
"Pilate therefore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them. But they cried, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. And he said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him: I will therefore chastise him, and let him go. And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed (Luke 23:20-23).
Peter:
“The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree” (Acts 5:30).
Furthermore, Paul explicitly declares on more than one occasion that he preached exactly the same things as the other Apostles.
“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures” (I Corinthians 15:3).
“Then fourteen years after I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus with me also. And I went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain. But neither Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised: And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage: To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you. But of these who seemed to be somewhat, (whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me: God accepteth no man’s person: ) for they who seemed to be somewhat in conference added nothing to me: But contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter; (For he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles: ) And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision” (Galatians 2:1-9). [Note: I had to add spaces to separate colons and closing parentheses–the forum software automatically interpreted them as smilies.]
In this passage, he declares that he told James, Peter, and John exactly what he was preaching, and they saw no need for him to change his message. They were still alive at this point, and the truth of his story could easily be checked.
At least some first-century Jews (Philo, for one) seemed to think abortion at at least the later stages was murder. (It’s in the Special Laws, can’t look up the reference at the moment).
Paul didn’t make things up–he used Scripture as he knew it. He just had a theological debate about whether Gentiles had to become Jews to be Christian. He said no, while James said yes. Paul and Peter both had visions which they interpreted as saying that they didn’t. And since Peter was an apostle as much as James, they kinda came to an understanding, despite disagreeing. Basically, Paul would preach to the Gentiles, while James would stick with the Jews.
In pretty much everything else, they agreed.
Went through that ofp canon and it’s more than just copy and paste there is a photo copy of a book, OFP Canon : OFP scribes : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive If you can tolerate the septuagint version of the Bible it’s a decent codification. The constitution suggests it’s more of a religious order than the typical church.
Just trying to point out, that outside of Orthodox Jews, very few Jews accept that the whole of the Old Testament is binding. And even among the Orthodox, there are rules that have been essentially made void (look up how hard it is to get a death penalty declared under Jewish law or the sabbatical year). So unless you want to claim Jews don’t follow the Old Testament, then it’s hard to fault Christians for doing so.
My take on this (after being very confused about the issue growing up as a Lutheran) is that Paul, in one or another of his Epistles, states that by dying for us on the cross, Jesus freed us from the covenant. The proximate reason for this is that many converts balked (understandably) at the circumcision requirement. Therefore, prohibitions from the Old Testament that are not revisited in the New no longer apply. Thus, while shrimp and homosexuality are both called abominations, only the homosexual prohibition remains because Paul said so. His feelings on shrimp go unstated.
Any decision by a Christian to follow all the Old Testament rules would therefore be entirely voluntary because God (well, Paul actually) told them they did not have to follow them.
Quite a bit of the law involves things that have to do with the temple … of which there is none right now … so even Jews don’t follow these laws, or can’t follow them until the Third Temple is built …
There was one of the Christian Exodus type groups several years back that felt that all the OT laws applied to everyone. So if a child disrespected his parents, it’s straight out to the city walls to be stoned.
But the whole Christian Exodus things seems to have either faded or fallen off the Internet. (And there are a lot of Christian denominations that aren’t on the Net. I have relatives in one church that doesn’t “believe” in the Internet.)