Friends, as one who continually spend my retirement years almost daily at the public libraries & chain of bookstores, there are new & some of them best-selling books which will challenge our nearly 500 years of Christian influences in the Philippines. Pretty soon the Pope Francis will visit our country and you can expect that millions of the young Filipinos would be witnessing his visit in Manila & Tacloban cities, other municipalities in our country. Thousands of new converts & perhaps millions of fellow Filipinos faiths would be renewed. There are equally & more qualified professors of the New Testaments as well as the Old Testaments who can provide us with the latest developments on Christianity, Messianism, religions, and many others. In addition, we have instant access to the Internet information from almost all over the world. Again, why not open our minds to the knowledge, understanding & wisdom of the experts who have more access to the museums, top colleges, universities, Bible & theological institutions, travel to the biblical sites, and so forth than our limited energies, sources, time & money to do so like what they can and are doing as part of their professions. Why not give them & us the benefits of doubts, while allowing ourselves to open our minds. We learn about the scriptures on prove all things, hold fast that which is or are good or true ... (biblehub/1_thessalonians/5-21.htm). There are thousands of verses which we could quote from both the Old & New Testaments. BUT, always remember that the original manuscripts of the Old & New Testaments do not exist! Even if you & I can find the original, how do we know how to translate them. Some of the first few books of the Old Testaments were supposedly written in Hebrew. But, we know that when they wrote in Hebrew, there were no vowels. In addition, there are ancient writings on tablets of stones which are much older than the Genesis book, for example. The Sumerian tablets which are much older than the so-called Torah have the writing on the equivalent of Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden stories. They are almost identical with that of the much younger biblical stories. There are many other new books which are shelved within the Bible, Christianity, Christian Life, and many other familiar subjects at the public libraries & bookstores. We learned how they are classified & shelved from the grade school, colleges, churches, publications, radio & TV programs, and many other sources of information. Why not try to just visit with the OPEN minds the public libraries, bookstores, even read or watch the Internet webpages and videos? Please dont mistake me for having changed since we first met at the Manila congregation over 40 years ago. I still have the same attitude of searching, observing, comparing, learning, understanding, consulting with others, & remaining with an OPEN mind.since I was a teenager & starting in 1964. Let us not be self-centered or something else we would like to be identified as somebody or with other groups. We are not the only ones being called out or challenged to search for the truths ...! We have over 7 billion people too around the world to learn from!
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 20:57:45 +0000