Comments by "Digital Nomad" (@digitalnomad9985) on "Alisa Childers On The Deconstruction Of Christianity And CCM" video.
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"JOKES DO NOT HELP"
Unsupported assertions in all caps don't constitute evidence. You need an argument, statistics, focus groups, something. Before you can influence anyone at all, you must get their ear. If you were right about how to reach people and they were wrong, then you would have a million subscribers and they would have 4. Envy is the Devil's cocaine.
"tell me a joke CHRIST told."
Have you even READ the Gospels? I can think of 2 off the top of my head:
"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" "Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?" "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye."
The hyperbole wasn't necessary to make the point, and the image was elaborately absurd, and obviously chosen for its absurdity. The Lord was using humor and (in the Greek) alliterations and word play to help the teaching stick in the hearers' minds.
"Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel."
I am sure the crowd laughed at that one (except for the scribes and Pharisees who were the butt of the joke). Derisive humor is always funnier when it challenges the oppressive power. The sort of joke that can get you cancelled, or jailed, or killed. Because that is what God made derisive humor FOR. Remember Elijah before the prophets of Baal?
"Because it IS hat serious."
Hat serious, eh? Yes, Jesus and the Bee are serious in a way that you are not. A serious man is one whom others take seriously, not one who takes HIMSELF seriously. And apart from that, there is a fundamental fallacy in your argument. You seem to claim that we can never serve Jesus by doing something He didn't do. Did Jesus ever post videos and comments on YouTube?
I Corinthians 9:19-22
"For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some."
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@paulhagen1002 So, yes, you do.
The cannon was closed before the second century. As early as 120 AD, (Muratori) Christians started making lists of the books written by the apostles and prophets, lest people forget which books were prophetic and get them mixed up with apocryphal and pseudepigraphical books. Clement of Rome (c. A.D. 95) mentioned at least eight New Testament books in a letter; Ignatius of Antioch (c. A.D. 115) also acknowledged about seven books; Polycarp, a disciple of John, (c. A.D. 108), acknowledged fifteen letters. That is not to say these men did not recognize more letters as canonical, but these are ones they mentioned in their correspondence. Later Irenaeus wrote (c. A.D. 185), acknowledging twenty-one books. Hippolytus (A.D. 170-235) recognized twenty-two books.
For whatever set of reasons, there is a widespread belief out there (Internet, popular books) that the New Testament canon was decided at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD—under the conspiratorial influence of Constantine. The fact that this claim was made in Dan Brown’s best-seller The Da Vinci Code shows how widespread it really is. Brown did not make up this belief; he simply used it in his book. The problem with this belief, however, is that it is patently false. The Council of Nicea had nothing to do with the formation of the New Testament canon (nor did Constantine). Nicea was concerned with how Christians should articulate their beliefs about the divinity of Jesus. Thus it was the birthplace of the Nicean creed.
When people discover that Nicea did not decide the canon, the follow up question is usually, “Which council did decide the canon?” Surely we could not have a canon without some sort of authoritative, official act of the church by which it was decided. Surely we have a canon because some group of men somewhere voted on it. Right? This whole line of reasoning reveals a fundamental assumption about the New Testament canon that needs to be corrected, namely that it was (or had to be) decided by a church council. The fact of the matter is that when we look into early church history there is no such council.
Sure, there are regional church councils that made declarations about the canon (Laodicea, Hippo, Carthage). But these regional councils did not just “pick” books they happened to like, but affirmed the books they believed had functioned as foundational documents for the Christian faith. In other words, these councils were declaring the way things had been, not the way they wanted them to be. Thus, these councils did not create, authorize, or determine the canon. They simply were part of the process of recognizing a canon that was already there.
This raises an important fact about the New Testament canon that every Christian should know. The shape of our New Testament canon was not determined by a vote or by a council, but by a broad and ancient consensus. Here we can agree with Bart Ehrman, “The canon of the New Testament was ratified by widespread consensus rather than by official proclamation.” This historical reality is a good reminder that the canon is not just a man-made construct. It was not the result of a power play brokered by rich cultural elites in some smoke filled room. It was the result of many years of God’s people reading, using, and responding to these books.
If you were to attend these early councils and congratulate the ecclesiasts there for asserting "Church authority" over the prophetic canon, it is THEY who would rebuke you in no uncertain terms. "The Church" didn't make the Bible, the Bible made the Church. "The Church" does not have authority over the Scriptures. The Scriptures are the Church's rule of faith and practice. God by His Holy Spirit gave apostolic and prophetic authority to the apostles whom Jesus chose and those who received the prophetic gift from an apostle. These had no "successors". A body is "apostolic" in so far as they follow the apostles teaching as passed down to us in the Bible.
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