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Why Would God Reveal Himself To Only A Select People?

If you're really interested in understanding what the Bible says, why not just read it in the original language? It is worth the time to study it in its original Koine.
 
Guy Incognito said:
If you're really interested in understanding what the Bible says, why not just read it in the original language? It is worth the time to study it in its original Koine.
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or go back to ancient Hebrew?

Interestingly enough, the Greek translation, and the NT written in Greek, was criticized for being written in the language of the people, much as the modern English version is today:

So the New Testament authors wrote in Greek. They did not, however, use really high-class or classical Greek, but a very common and everyday type of Greek. For many years some scholars ridiculed the Greek of the New Testament because many of its words were strange to those who read the writings of the great Greek classical authors such as Plato and Aristotle. But later many records were uncovered of ordinary people, and amazingly there were the same common terms used in everyday speech! The ridicule dried up accordingly.
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link

But, those old languages are all Greek to me.
 
Dittohead not! said:
or go back to ancient Hebrew?
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Well, this is an interesting point of theology. I believe that Jesus referred to the Septuagint, not the Hebrew Bible, and therefore the Septuagint is itself a divinely inspired, or at least divinely authorized, translation. I find that suits my purposes, as I seldom refer to the Old Testament, anyway, I am far more interested in the words of Christ. Of course, learning Hebrew is a good idea too!

Interestingly enough, the Greek translation, and the NT written in Greek, was criticized for being written in the language of the people, much as the modern English version is today:



link

But, those old languages are all Greek to me.
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Yes, I agree, the Greek of the New Testament is clumsy, it was clearly not the first language of the authors. But I haven't seen convincing evidence that it was originally written in some other language, such as Aramaic. I don't find that very persuasive.
 
Guy Incognito said:
Well, this is an interesting point of theology. I believe that Jesus referred to the Septuagint, not the Hebrew Bible, and therefore the Septuagint is itself a divinely inspired, or at least divinely authorized, translation. I find that suits my purposes, as I seldom refer to the Old Testament, anyway, I am far more interested in the words of Christ. Of course, learning Hebrew is a good idea too!



Yes, I agree, the Greek of the New Testament is clumsy, it was clearly not the first language of the authors. But I haven't seen convincing evidence that it was originally written in some other language, such as Aramaic. I don't find that very persuasive.
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According to the link I found, much of the OT was written in Hebrew, then translated into Greek. The NT was written in Greek originally.

How accurate that is, I'm not sure. I've been told that Jesus language was Aramaic. I'm sure dozens of languages came and went during the time the Bible was being written.

One thing we can be sure of: The Bible was not originally written in English, not even the thees and thous version of English in the KJV.
 
Geoist said:
From a Judeo-Christian perspective, God revealed himself to the people of the Old Testament and the New Testament (through Jesus). If He wanted to be worshiped and save humanity from its sins, then why did He not reveal Himself to the Americans, Africans, Europeans, or the rest of Asia? Instead of planting one seed, would it not have been more efficient/effective to have planted several seeds instead of relying on a tiny section of the world to spread the faith?
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It is because both Adam and Lucifer fell due to the lack of faith. Whether it is the angels or humans, they need faith to survive the eternity. If He shows up to everyone, then no faith is needed to get to Him. He leaves evidence to a small amount of people as a witnessing for the large amount to choose Him by faith. That's how things are working out.
 
Hawkins said:
It is because both Adam and Lucifer fell due to the lack of faith. Whether it is the angels or humans, they need faith to survive the eternity. If He shows up to everyone, then no faith is needed to get to Him. He leaves evidence to a small amount of people as a witnessing for the large amount to choose Him by faith. That's how things are working out.
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What is your definition of "faith"?
 
Dittohead not! said:
What is your definition of "faith"?
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Listen to God and obey what is told, in Adam's case.

In a broader sense, faith is the belief of a potential truth. At the same time, it's one of the ways to approach such a truth.
 
Hawkins said:
Listen to God and obey what is told, in Adam's case.

In a broader sense, faith is the belief of a potential truth. At the same time, it's one of the ways to approach such a truth.
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If a thing can't be proved, how do we know it is a truth?
 
Hawkins said:
It is because both Adam and Lucifer fell due to the lack of faith. Whether it is the angels or humans, they need faith to survive the eternity. If He shows up to everyone, then no faith is needed to get to Him. He leaves evidence to a small amount of people as a witnessing for the large amount to choose Him by faith. That's how things are working out.
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So then it's not really faith in god that matters. It's faith in the few witnesses who supposedly speak for him. If they lack credibility, then the whole world burns? Also, that would mean that the few who are revealed to cannot be saved, either, since they know and do not choose by faith. Your assertions are complete nonsense and a clear cop out.
 
Geoist said:
From a Judeo-Christian perspective, God revealed himself to the people of the Old Testament and the New Testament (through Jesus). If He wanted to be worshiped and save humanity from its sins, then why did He not reveal Himself to the Americans, Africans, Europeans, or the rest of Asia? Instead of planting one seed, would it not have been more efficient/effective to have planted several seeds instead of relying on a tiny section of the world to spread the faith?
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Free choice. If he came out of heaven and descended down in front of everyone and said "hey everybody I'm God, get on you knees", we wouldn't have any free will.

It also has to do with the fall. Before Adam and Eve sinned humans were aware of God and lived with him. After the fall sin stands in our way and clouds our ability to see God.

Many people believe God has revealed himself all over the world. There are Saints from every reach of the globe that have claimed to have talked to God just as the prophets of the Old Testament.
 
skeptical hippo said:
Free choice. If he came out of heaven and descended down in front of everyone and said "hey everybody I'm God, get on you knees", we wouldn't have any free will.
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Sure we would. We would have the option of giving him the finger and going on our way. Few would exercise that option, of course, but we'd still have our free will.

And, given the human propensity to continue to believe what they want to believe regardless of facts in evidence, quite a few would simply deny the event anyway.
 
Dittohead not! said:
If a thing can't be proved, how do we know it is a truth?
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It's a matter of time. Can history be proven ? Most can't. Is there history which is true. Yes.

Something can't be proven must not true is a fallacy. In stone age humans couldn't prove that the earth was round. It by no means says that the earth is not round at that time.
 
There is a body of thought that suggest that some folks are "wired" differently.
They see and hear things quite real to them. They are being honest.
Question is one of a separate reality.
 
Paschendale said:
So then it's not really faith in god that matters. It's faith in the few witnesses who supposedly speak for him. If they lack credibility, then the whole world burns? Also, that would mean that the few who are revealed to cannot be saved, either, since they know and do not choose by faith. Your assertions are complete nonsense and a clear cop out.
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His every single sheep will be saved. This is the end result.

He has the right choose to reveal to anyone as His witness. Whether they are saved is by the legitimate law. If the Law says that the direct witnesses will be saved, then they will be saved. Others need faith.

You are completely out of reality if you think that humans are not relying on human witnessing to get to know this reality. You are in a delusion!

Read this,

Humans get to know the world since their childhood from books written by other humans. They gain knowledge through books written by others. This is a process of human witnessing. Even today humans rely heavily (like more than 90%) on human witnessing to approach the reality, not evidence. The creation of TVs and videos only make human witnessing more powerful. Humans choose to believe the media of which the reporters act as human witnesses to report what our daily world is and or other humans to choose to believe.

History is never evidenced. This is the nature of what history is. The more distant the history is, the more impossible for humans to dig up the evidence. History again by nature is a product of human witnessing. Humans in majority in their life time almost never examine evidence of history. Instead, they choose to believe or disbelieve what was written by the historians (they are human witnesses of history).

To ask evidence of history (especially the distant ones) makes not much difference to asking a male to give birth to a child. It is because in nature male humans don't give birth to children. And in nature, history is not evidenced.

At last but not least, even science exists in the form of human witnessing. Is the earth really revolving around the sun. Humans in majority don't actually acquire evidence about it. They rely on what is written and said by the scientists (they are the human witnesses in this case). By the way, you need an extremely good telescope and other precision equipment for "earth running around the sun" to be evidenced to you.

So it is a joke, it is a delusion in reality to think that humans are actually relying on evidence to approach to the truth of this reality. In contrary, humans need faith all the times.
 
Longstreet said:
There is a body of thought that suggest that some folks are "wired" differently.
They see and hear things quite real to them. They are being honest.
Question is one of a separate reality.
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Ironically, you are describing the atheists.
 
Geoist said:
From a Judeo-Christian perspective, God revealed himself to the people of the Old Testament and the New Testament (through Jesus). If He wanted to be worshiped and save humanity from its sins, then why did He not reveal Himself to the Americans, Africans, Europeans, or the rest of Asia? Instead of planting one seed, would it not have been more efficient/effective to have planted several seeds instead of relying on a tiny section of the world to spread the faith?
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I haven't read all of this thread so excuse me if this has been mentioned, but the Catholic Priest who taught my theology classes in college claimed that the everlasting covenant dictated that there would be no more revelations until the end times. I believe that it was like "no direct revelations" so God no longer hangs out with people, calls them, texts them, or skypes with them. On the other hand, appearing via toast is fine but he only communicates via toast when the receiving individual makes a lot of toast and has an old, barely functioning toaster.

I think most of the explanation for who God is and what he does is created by filling in the gaps. For instance, Christians knew that if a God existed, he would have to be omnipotent, invisible, infinite, and all powerful. So they just said " well that's what God is - omnipotent, invisible, infinite, and all powerful." It would be like coming home one day after your wife stole your money and your cat and drove away in your car because she was leaving you - and assuming that (because it's easier and less painful to believe) your cat stole your money and drove away with your car and your wife spontaneously combusted due to loving you too much. You may not believe that the cat stole the money and the car, but can you prove it? That's what I thought.

When faced with such absurdities, I find that it is better to laugh because you won't drive yourself insane. Which is probably the mentality of a lot of religious people. So we're all alike, except for the ignorant religious types and the miserable pragmatists, who are superior in every way.
 
Hawkins said:
It's a matter of time. Can history be proven ? Most can't. Is there history which is true. Yes.

Something can't be proven must not true is a fallacy. In stone age humans couldn't prove that the earth was round. It by no means says that the earth is not round at that time.
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So, they accepted that the Earth was flat on faith.
 
Bob Blaylock said:
I don't think there's anything in the official doctrines of my religion that say anything about whether there may have been other prophets, in other lands, than the ones of which we know. But it sounds like you agree with my own personal belief, that it is very likely that God spoke through prophets in other places, and that the teachings of those prophets are either lost to us now, or else distorted beyond recognition. We would certainly know nothing of the prophets mentioned in the Book of Mormon, if those records had not been preserved as they were, and brought forth by Joseph Smith.
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Well NYLDS (New York Ladder Day Saint) As I recall it does not say in the Book of Mormon that the Americas were the only place he visited. I believe he hinted that he went to more lands then just their.

Bob Blaylock said:
Perhaps other records exist, buried and undiscovered, in parts of the world where it is widely assumed that God never revealed himself throuigh prophets, and which,if discovered and translated, would prove otherwise.
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Also, did you forget about the seal section of the Golden Plates (What the Book of Mormon was translated from).
 
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Geoist said:
From a Judeo-Christian perspective, God revealed himself to the people of the Old Testament and the New Testament (through Jesus). If He wanted to be worshiped and save humanity from its sins, then why did He not reveal Himself to the Americans, Africans, Europeans, or the rest of Asia? Instead of planting one seed, would it not have been more efficient/effective to have planted several seeds instead of relying on a tiny section of the world to spread the faith?
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I don't know if it has already been stated here, but Islam teaches that God had sent prophets to all nations...
 
American said:
When you look out of your eyes, does the Earth look round to you?
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Actually, it does. When you approach something that is far away, and begin to see it over the horizon, you see the top first, and more and more as you approach. That wouldn't happen if the world weren't round. The curvature of the Earth can be observed with the naked eye.
 
Geoist said:
From a Judeo-Christian perspective, God revealed himself to the people of the Old Testament and the New Testament (through Jesus). If He wanted to be worshiped and save humanity from its sins, then why did He not reveal Himself to the Americans, Africans, Europeans, or the rest of Asia? Instead of planting one seed, would it not have been more efficient/effective to have planted several seeds instead of relying on a tiny section of the world to spread the faith?
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Why is "God" always revealing himself to people? What's up with that?


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