The church side doesn't really make sense if you think about it. Unless you subscribe to Marcionism (the belief that the God of the OT was evil and the God of the NT is good) or the like. Why would everyone we read about in the OT have to go through all these steps to be followers and get severely punished when they didn't follow correctly? Then, Jesus dies on the cross, now no one has to do any of that stuff? That's about 4,000 years of people that need an apology or something. Did our perfect God make a mistake to have to change everything so drastically?

I was just thinking the other day, after coming to the realization that there is no separation in thought between the OT and the NT, that it is all just a continuation of the same story, I can't ever see myself falling back into seeing them as being separate again.

Things just don't make sense seeing them as separate. When you realize the whole story, since Adam, is about how we as humans are having to deal with this thing called sin, because of Adam sinning, and everything God has done through His judgements (like the Flood and Tower of Babel) to His instructions (the Law/Commands) are all there to get us back to a point that sin isn't in control any more. This continues in the NT with Jesus coming and being our example and then dying in our place so that we have a chance to come back into covenant with God.

It wasn't to change anything or start a new religion or whatever. It was purely to point us back to what God has wanted all along, for us to live good lives. How do we know what a good life looks like? By God's instructions, His commandments. We even see Jesus telling several people to obey these commandments. We see the apostles, decades after Jesus rose, still doing the commandments.

If the whole idea was to change things to where all we had to do was believe, why does James give us a warning that even the demons believe and shudder?

I don't know about you, but I don't want to be on the same level as a demon.


https://thestraightandnarrow.cfw.me/comics/806

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