These questions are not paradoxes, and they are not mysteries.
People often come to these kinds of verses, "imagine" they are unknowable through simple study of the text, and pretend that gives them a license to make up answers.
But these are simple questions with simple answers.
And we don't find the answers by pretending they're paradoxes, walking away, and "guessing" at the answer...
we get the answer by studying the scripture, thoroughly, and finding what it says on these topics.
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What if I were to say that I get my answers from the LIVING SPIRIT of GOD? Is The Holy Ghost not promised to reveal all truths that dwells IN us? I am not saying to put down the Bible, but how long are we going to only study scripture, before we follow the examples of the scriptures themselves. Using our maturity levels as excuses to only read the Bible and just wait on a rapture THAT ISNT EVEN IN THE SCRIPTURES!!!! People say trust no man, but yet when Paul said to do as he says or you cant be saved, what is different about that, than another man compelled by the Holy Spirit to speak? Nobody trusts anybody within the body of Christ. I know things that I cannot share with the body, because nobody will believe me, and it does no good to share with them the glorious things God is doing in my life to glorify Him. If I share testimonies of things God has had me do, people will just quote Matthew Chapter 6 at me telling me to not let my right hand know what my left hand doeth. Taking and making law out of the scriptures in the Bible to judge others by what they don't understand. Saying Christian music is truth, but saying only scripture is truth is a hypocrisy is it not? Is Christian music scripture? No, but it is worthy to worship God with, is it not? Did you know that if you are working a job, and you are not allowed to do Christian things at your job, but yet you stay there for the money, you have turned money into your idol of faith? Could you not live off the bread Christ gives you? Are we all meant for shelter and steady meals? Of course not... What did jesus say to those who wanted to follow him The birds have there nests, the foxes have there dens, but the son of man hath no place to lay His head. We have grown so accustomed to prosperity doctrines, and a need to have worldly pleasures, that getting our hands too dirty for the Gospel is rare. I love every single person on this site, and if what I say is offensive, it's in the scriptures on how do deal with that.
2 Corinthians 3 King James Version (KJV)
1 Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?
2 Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men:
3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.
4 And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward:
5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;
6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:
8 How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?
9 For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.
10 For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.
11 For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.
12 Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech:
13 And not as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished:
14 But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ.
15 But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.
16 Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
17 Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.