Rainy: This is why a private conversation with Ed would have been a total waste of time.
Ed: As was a public conversation Rainy since all you wanted to do was devolve into the dishonest tactic of making personal attacks instead of honestly supporting your positions. The only good that would hopefully have come out of that dialogue once you sabotaged it with your manipulative diversions would have been you recognizing that your behavior was hostile and abusive and making a decision to change for the better and to become more loving in the way you treat others.
Rainy: He does not understand why I did not discuss this with him in private.
Ed: This is yet another misrepresentation of my perspective. I absolutely understand why you avoid honest and respectful dialogue whether in public or in private and why you devolve into hostility and the deplorable practice of diverting into pre-emptive hostile and abusive personal attacks. The primary reasons are that you are spiritually immature, institutionally religious, in idolatry to both religious dogma and the religious system's imperfect bible, and you are extremely unloving when met with a difference of opinion where your religious beliefs are concerned and especially where your idols are challenged.
I was just trying to help Tansy to see that initiating personal attacks in a public forum was your very intention and if you really wanted to "help" me, then you had the option to personally attack me in private. Of course i understood that you wouldn't and i also understood why you wouldn't.
Rainy: By posting in his thread, which he posted on a public forum, I was able to warn his readers who have an ear to hear.
Ed: A so called warning which could have been accomplished by expressing and supporting your opinions of why you believe in a 100% God breathed 66 book Martin Luther canon with actual supportive evidence and without immaturely and deplorably devolving, diverting and launching into pre-emptive personal attacks. You could have said that receiving Jesus as Savior and Lord is not enough and that in order to be saved you also have to believe in the religious system's Dogma that says He is God and that you also have to believe in the religious system's dogma of the 100% God breathed bible even though Jesus never taught that believing in these religious delusions were supposed requirements for salvation.
Even the deity of Christ and/or Trinity issue was a manipulative diversion for you from the topic of the thread which was whether or not the religious system's bible is really the 100% God breathed book which that system propagates it to be.
I would really appreciate from others honest and focused dialogue as to why apart from institutionalized religion just saying so and apart from trust being misplaced in that system's bible dogma and mistaken for loyalty to God Himself do they believe in a 100% perfect God breathed bible, supported by actual evidences not just hostility, hate, personal attacks and other dishonest and dishonorable diversions.
Rainy: It was totally predictable that he would not listen.
Ed: It was also totally predictable that you would not listen to reason Rainy, that you would refuse to actually dialogue about the topic and support your position of why you trust in the institutionalized religious system's doctrines of the 100% God breathed bible, that you would not answer any of my perfectly reasonable questions and that you would demonstrate the usual hostility and anger when you disagree with someone including launching into spiritually immature and abusive personal attacks.
Rainy/Loquat: You said: "God does not make personal revelations to ppl that confirm their own predisposition to cherry-pick the bits with which they agree, and destroy the authority of His own Word."
Ed: The religious system's bible is not God's own word, parts yes and parts no. The Heavenly Father never actually supported taking slaves, beating slaves and raping slaves in spite of what that partially true and partially false bible says. That book did not fall out of the sky perfect, it was written by imperfect men with their biases and false ideas mixed in and with the free will to be right about some things and wrong about others. God did not suspend their free will and He did not guide their every word as the religious delusion propagates. And it's spiritually lazy, spiritually blind and actually Cultish to trust in this religious lie which originated in the whore Catholic church and with a bible that was different at the time from the 66 book Martin Luther canon. Trusting that the massively corrupted insitutionalized religious system presented you with a 100% perfect bible is a deeply misplaced blind faith in false and counterfeit religion of man rather than in God... and is in fact an anti-God false belief, most especially since that religious system's bible slanders God's character.
By the way, i do agree with Loquat that God did not make personal revelations to people that confirm their own predisposition to cherry picked bible verses which they use as supposed support for their trinity doctrine or "Jesus is God" doctrine while ignoring thousands upon thousands of anti-trinitarian and anti "Jesus is God" verses, including so many of Jesus' own words. He's really onto something where cherry picking bible verses is concerned since this is the only way the whore Catholic church has been able to indoctrinate multitudes of religious conformists into its false dogma to which you and he are both so completely swept up in.
Rainy: This is how Christian cults get started.
Ed: The original christian Cult is the massive and overwhelmingly powerful, corrupt and murderous Cult of Catholicism. And that false and counterfeit religion and whore church used the lie of the 100% God breathed bible as one of its brain washing tactics to deceive people and to further increase its power and control over its deeply deceived cult members. The various mainstream institutionalized protestant religions that emerged from Catholicism which also propagate and perpetuate the Catholic Cult's lie of the 100% God breathed bible - a bible which slanders the Heavenly Father's character by turning Him into a God that encourages humans to rape other humans - are also extremely spiritually blind, undiscerning and are themselves massive and powerful religious cults which have controlled minds such as yours with indoctrination, group think, fear, manipulation and other brainwashing techniques.
They actually believe that the true God supports (or at one time supported but now He grew up and changed for the better) taking slaves, beating slaves and raping slaves because their book says so and they refuse to seek the Holy Spirit for the possibility that maybe the lying scribes that Jesus warned about managed to mix some lies into that book. Blindly believing in a 100% perfect bible regardless of the many absurdities and atrocities ascribed against the Heavenly Father's character, shirking any Holy Spirit discernment whatsoever to blindly trust in this institutionalized religious system's lie is the very kind of delusion a brain washed cult member would fall into...as so many multitudes of wide road religious people such as yourself have done while believing yourselves to be superior in wisdom and discernment to those who have not been brainwashed into that massive Cult and its false dogma.
Rainy: People who start these cults claim some super relationship with God that makes others feel like they have no hope of attaining this so they must follow the one who does.
Ed: Do you mean like the Pope system? Do you mean like the clergy class established within the Catholic whore church and its protestant whore church offspring, both of which are massive cults? If you're looking to warn people against Cults Rainy, that's a valid concern and you should start by warning people against the Cult to which you belong.
Rainy: The sad part is that so many believe them.
Ed: Yes Rainy, so many including you.
Rainy: So, yes, this is how Christian cults get started. Why are so many so quick to believe these types? Is it spiritual laziness?
Ed: Yes i do believe it is spiritual laziness to trust in Cults like Catholicism, mainstream protestantism and many other smaller cults, all led by controlling, manipulating and dominating false leaders who share a lot of your manipulative and otherwise abusive personality traits... and to blindly and lazily trust in and defend their false doctrines including their false dogma of a 100% perfect bible which slanders the Heavenly Father's infinitely good character.
Rainy: After all, we all can seek God... The Bible says "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." That is for everyone. Yes, everyone can have a personal relationship with the living God. It is up to each person just how deep and how strong that relationship will be.
Ed: At least there is something we are able to agree upon and i agree with all of this including the truthful and excellent bible verse. In this example you have successfully separated Spirit and truth from false religious system dogma and you have chosen a bible verse that is true as opposed to the verse which accuses God of supporting and instructing the raping of slaves.