The Lord's prayer in Matthew concerns forgiveness of 'debts', the word in the original being a matter of a failure in obligatory service (*opheilēmata*), Matthew 6:12. The similar passage in Mark regards 'trespasses'a matter of 'offence' in regard to lack of liveliness (*paraptoma*), Mark 11:25,26. However, I am hearing, many times, that ministers in Protestant churches are requesting forgiveness (for the whole congregation) of 'sins'. 'Sins' is the translation of *hamartia* and is a much more serious matter than a shortcoming in service or a lack of liveliness in conduct. Sin, says John, is the transgression of the law, 1 John 3:4. The original is a matter of negating a witness (*a-martus*), contradicting a testimony, deliberately going against a commandment. John states that those born of God do not practice 'sin', 1 John 3:9. In Roman Catholic congregations, one has a private conference with a priest and one's own, individual behaviour is confessed in detail, before a pronouncement is made, individually. But in Protestanism, currently, I am seeing a blanket 'forgiveness' being asked (and presumably being expected) for very serious behavioural failure - 'sins'. There is no explanation made as to what is being confessed (by the minister) and I could have committed adultery all week and sit there fully expecting to be forgiven for it, this Sunday and next Sunday, presumably. Is there any Protestant Denomination which makes a distinction between 'debts''trespasses' and the much more serious matter of 'sins' in connection to the Lord's prayer and congregational forgiveness ? ------------------------------------- As before, I am not asking for refutation or support of the practice, I am specifically interested in whether discrimination is being applied to these matters of conduct by particular Protestant Denominations.

Both Ezekiel 38-39 and Revelation 20 speak of this ‘entity’ Gog & Magog, both in battle based scenarios. Are these events the same or different? The Revelation 20 version gives a fairly clear, explicit timeline, the Ezekiel account is much more obscure. How can one decipher the timeline for the Ezekiel battle if it differs from Revelation?

How do Catholics reconcile the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception with what it says in Romans 3:23 about all having sinned and falling short of the glory of God? **Romans 3:23 NIV** > for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God Thanks!

Some Christian explanations of the Trinity use the analogy that the Father is like the mind, the Son (Jesus Christ) is the spoken word, and the Holy Spirit is the breath that carries the word. This seems to draw on biblical language such as: - John 1:1 (“the Word” / Logos) - Genesis 1:2 (Spirit of God moving) - Passages describing God speaking creation into existence However, classical Trinitarian doctrine (as defined in creeds like the Nicene Creed) emphasizes that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons who share one essence. My questions are: 1. Has this “mind–word–breath” analogy been used or endorsed by any major theologians in orthodox Christianity? 2. Does this analogy adequately preserve the distinction of persons, or does it risk collapsing them into modes (i.e., a form of modalism)? I’m trying to understand whether this is a helpful teaching analogy or one that could unintentionally misrepresent Trinitarian theology.

### Background According to Catholic.com , men and women were separated during Mass from ancient times, attested as early as the 300s CE: > The practice [of separate seating for men and women] is ancient. It is explicitly mentioned in the 4th century by St. Cyril of Jerusalem and St. Augustine. It most likely was inherited and carried over from the same practice of the ancient synagogues. ### Question When did this practice stop? For what reasons did Catholics stop practicing this ancient custom?

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre , founder of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) , made public his decision to consecrate bishops without a papal mandate in his letter to Pope John Paul II on 2 June 1988 . The consecrations occurred 4 weeks later, on 30 June 1988 , the Feast of Corpus Christi that year. When were the names of the priests to be consecrated bishops* first known to the public? *On "June 13 […] the four candidates appeared together at Ecône"; they were: "the Englishman Richard Williamson [48.3 yrs], rector of the North American seminary; the Spaniard Alfonso de Galarreta [31.4yrs], the District Superior in South America; the young Swiss Bernard Fellay [30.2yrs], the General Bursar, who had spent his youth close to Ecône; and the Frenchman Bernard Tissier de Mallerais [42.7yrs], the Secretary General." —+Tissier de Mallerais, SSPX, *Marcel Lefebvre: The Biography* pt. 4, ch. 19, § IV.

> Revelation 22:
(2) and flowing down the middle of the city's > street. On each side of the river was the tree of life, which bears > fruit twelve times a year, once each month; and its leaves are for the > healing of **the nations**. > > (3) Nothing that is under God's curse will be found in the city. The > throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and **his > servants** will worship him. > > (4) **They** will see his face, and his name will be written on > **their** foreheads. > > (5) There shall be no more night, and **they** will not need lamps or > sunlight, because the Lord God will be their light, and **they** will > rule as kings forever and ever As long as I understand (from reading the internet), it seems Revelation 22 is about a place (called heaven or kingdom of God) AFTER the Judgment Day. No more mortal human. Assuming that my understanding is correct, so the inhabitants of the heaven are all :
1. His servants (verse 3)
2. have His name on their foreheads and see His face (verse 4)
3. rule as kings forever and ever (verse 5) My questions are :
- are the inhabitants of heaven = the nations mentioned in verse 2 ?
- who are to be ruled and why ? are the inhabitants rule to each other ?
I realize that my questions are not valid if my understanding is not correct.

In Christian tradition there is a least one character with full conscious knowledge of God’s existence that chooses not to worship God, namely Satan. Evidently, humans seems not be that favored in having satisfactory evidence for God’s existence (as witnessed by the wild Christian internal disagreement, different denominations and schisms of the original faith; not to mention all the non-Christians). Why is Satan entitled to a such privileged epistemological certainty while humans are not?

In related form to a previous question on the basis *for* the Trinity, what is the Biblical basis for disbelief of the doctrine? Not all Christians (and perhaps not all branches of Christendom) hold to a Trinitarian view - how are those views justified from the Bible? Specifically, what verses do non-Trinitarians cite to support their views / contradict the doctrine of the Trinity?

I noticed that Catholics pray to statues of Mary, and pray using Rosary beads. When I ask Catholics why they pray to Mary instead of God they tell me that they just show Mary respect for being a sinless woman. I take issue with both points because Mary was not sinless her entire life, only Jesus was, and the Bible says that prayers are between you and God without any middle man. Also, there is a difference between showing respect and worshipping, and it looks to me more like the latter than the former. The Bible says not to use any prayer tools and a Rosary qualifies as a prayer tool. On top of that it is not mentioned in the Bible so where did the Rosary come from originally? I also disagree with Christianity using Jesus on the cross as their image because God said that he doesnt want any image to represent him. Christians dont worship the cross though so I dont label it as idolatry. How does Catholicism reconcile all of these biblical contradictions? *I am not trying to insult the religion, these are genuine questions with no malicious intent behind them. I apologize in advance if this offends anyone*

I was privately approached by someone who objected to the wording 'penal substitutionary atonement'. They expressed the opinion that Jesus bore sins during his crucifixion but was 'forgiven' these sins, based on his own holiness. He, they say, was not punished. This sounded to me like a form of unrighteous nepotism. I questioned the fact that, in this scenario, the wrath of God was not propitiated. But there was no reply forthcoming. Is this a personal opinion on the part of the person who approached me ? Or is there a Christian Group who teaches such a doctrine ? -------------------------------------------------- I am looking for factual evidence of whether any Group holds this doctrine. *I am not asking for refutation or support of the doctrine.*

All throughout the Bible, in too many instances to list, there is a meta narrative wherein the sentence of a righteous judgment is avoided by the sacrifice of an innocent: The innocent bearing the sentence of the guilty. Examples of this include the Passover lamb in the Exodus story, and the scapegoat of the great day of atonement. Up until the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world put an end to sacrifice, by becoming the once for all sacrifice, those sacrifices were of lesser beings for greater beings; lambs for people, etc. Jesus turned that around and made it the sacrifice of a greater for the lesser, but it doesn't seem as though the underlying idea of punishment for sin, retribution if you will, being transferred from one being to the other as disappeared On the other hand, I know that there are theologies which reject the notion of penal substitutionary atonement as being unbiblical. What do those theologians do with Passover and the scapegoat, for example??

In Genesis, God commands Adam not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: - Genesis 2:16–17 — a command is given with the warning of death - Genesis 2:9 — the tree is described as being “in the midst of the garden” This raises a question about the purpose of both the command and the tree’s placement. On one hand, it could be understood as a test of obedience—whether Adam and Eve would follow God’s command. On the other hand, it could be seen as placing their fate into their own hands: - Obey → continue to live - Disobey → become mortal >“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God… then you shall live and multiply…”(Deuteronomy 30:15–16) >“Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death.”(Jeremiah 21:8) These passages strongly support the idea that: - God sometimes presents humans with a real choice between outcomes - Life and death are tied to obedience vs disobedience How have major Christian traditions (such as the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant theology) understood this? Do they frame it primarily as a test, or as an instance where the outcome—life or death—was set before humanity based on their response? I am interested in interpretations grounded in Scripture and/or historical theology rather than personal opinions.

Is there any historical evidence that the early church believed in the divinity of Jesus? What about the **first century**? What about the **second century** (and so on)? Was the belief in the divinity of Jesus widespread? Was it the norm or the exception? Can we find reliable answers to these questions in the historical records? Answers to this question should provide clear unambiguous evidence of post-New Testament writings which teach the divinity of Jesus.

According to the a Wikipedia article on Catharism (a Gnostic Christian movement in the 12th to 14th centuries): > The idea of two Gods or principles, one being good and the other evil, was central to Cathar beliefs. The good God was the God of the New Testament and the creator of the spiritual realm, contrasted with the evil Old Testament God—the creator of the physical world whom many Cathars, and particularly their persecutors, identified as Satan. I find the statement about the Old Testament God being identified as Satan to be really surprising. How was this explained? I'm especially interested how references to Satan were handled (e.g. the book of Job) and how any "good" actions from God were interpreted. One point I would like clarification on is that modern Christians (say, Catholics) generally consider Satan a powerful being, but not a god. What was it in Cathar theology that "elevated" Satan to the level of an evil God? Was he just the most powerful evil being they knew of and so he must be the same Old Testament God that they viewed as evil? It's kind of a long shot in that this information may not exist, but I would love to know how they viewed God having Old Testament heroes of faith, like Enoch, Moses, and Elijah, not taste death. I figure having a soul be released without having to die would be very interesting to them.

I wonder that if there are Christians that interpret the Old Testament as something so false/deceitful that it may be the work of the Devil himself in an attempt to lead humanity out of God's true path.

[Deuteronomy 32:8–9](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+32:8-9&version=NRSV) (NRSV), part of Moses' song, reads: > When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods; the LORD's own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share. Can someone tell me what this means? God is one of many gods and he got Israel? God divided the earth among his angels? Or is he talking about idolatry?

I always hear people use the Ethiopian Bible as evidence that our modern more common Bibles, such as the King James Bible, have been corrupted over the years. The apocryphal books in the dead sea scrolls were compared to the books in the Ethiopian Bible and they matched up almost word for word. So its difficult to defend the accuracy of my King James Bible. With this being the case, should all Bibles include every book just like the Ethiopian Bible? In the case of "The book of Enoch" I heard that it was removed from our Bible due to it not being written by Enoch (please correct me if thats wrong). Isnt it possible that it was passed on by word of mouth, which was common due to literacy rates back then, and then written much later? How can we be certain that we didnt corrupt Gods word?

When teaching students in the Apologetics class about the (a) existence of God,(b) trustworthiness of the Bible, (c) and the proofs of the Deity of Christ...and the efficacy of His salvatory work on the cross, whereby man is saved...invariably someone will ask, ***How did people get saved BEFORE they knew Christ died on the cross, and they didn't have any Scriptures like the Jews had?*** And its corollary question--which is onlt secondary--is added on in the discussion: ***What about the people in the world today who have never heard about Jesus?*** Can they be saved, if so, how? The question isn't so much about if they go to heaven or hell, BUT rather, "***How*** did/does a person get saved?"

I was very surprised when I entered the words 'substitutionary atonement' into the Google Ngram Viewer and produced the graph below. The graph shows usage in literature from 1600 to 2019. This reports from the corpus thus far digitally scanned into Google Books. This is a fairly reliable representation of the usage of language. And this appears to indicate that the phrase is a relatively modern phenomenon. The fact that its heavier usage begins in the mid 1850s might point to rising usage in the beginnings of the Brethren movement - the 'Plymouth Brethren' at the time. It could also denote usage among the rising Baptist movement - the 'Strict Baptists' (as opposed to 'Anabaptists') of the time. But what surprises me is that it appears not to be terminology used either by the Reformers or by the Puritans. And certainly not from the early Church. Does anyone have any more information on its first usage and first popularity - or why it seems to have gained significant usage in the past few years ? Link to the Ngram Viewer As per the comment, I have added the Ngram for 'atonement' and its usage far outweighs that of 'substitionsary atonement' (to the point of flattening its curve to zero) but shows an increase, also, in the past few years. As per the second comment, I have plotted 'vicarious atonement' against 'substitutionary atonement'. Very interesting indeed.