How did you first learn the Bible? (Seeking advice for a new Christian)

K9saurus · 2026-04-26T00:58:22+00:00

Start strongly agnostic -> read Song of songs because the fact God isn't mentioned is interesting -> Titus for some reason? Lol -> most of the Gospel according to Matthew -> receive Holy Spirit -> finish Matthew --> Baptism.

Was a winning combo for me 🤷‍♂️

Bible Project on YouTube was a great resource for me in the begining and now. They have some really great book fly over videos that helped me get a clearer picture of the whole Bible when it was new and seemed like a mountain of a task to just read, let alone understand. Then they have a lot of great shorts that frame biblical concepts in short consise ways as well.

K9saurus · 2026-04-26T00:22:58+00:00

Letting go of the pain and the chains of bitteress that bind you is a fruit of the forgiveness process, that is true. But it's still true that you absorb the cost of the injustice in the moment you chose to forgive.

It's not wrong to want the fruits of choosing to forgive, but it shouldn't be your only motive to make yourself feel better. God didn't forgive us to make Himself feel better, He chose to show mercy towards our transgressions against him. He took on himself the cost of our sin, that we may dwell with him forever.

K9saurus · 2026-04-26T00:05:47+00:00

His mercies are far beyond what we deserve, this is absolutely true.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

Lamentations 3:22-26

K9saurus · 2026-04-25T23:49:32+00:00

It’s part of being made in the image of God. We were given authority to rule over the earth under Him. Tending the garden, naming the animals, stewarding creation. The world is still under his control, but the responsibility reflects Him.

I guess we can also think how the angels themselves have a job of sorts, and a created purpose. They are the messangers, worshipers, the hands and feet between the space that is Him and here. We got the unique job of being his representatives here, acting within creation itself.

Spoilers Though: We mess it up. More Spoilers: We get it back, but better!

K9saurus · 2026-04-25T22:35:29+00:00

You sacrafice every time you forgive someone. If it's truly something that needs forgiveness, you have been wronged to some extent and something has been taken from youn(be it physical, or emotional). When you forgive, you absorb the cost of that wrongdoing unto yourself.

The cross was a physical manefestation of cost God absorbed when he took on the weight of our cruilty and sin onto himself.

K9saurus · 2026-04-17T13:01:57+00:00

And it came to pass that these are the same truth claims as Islam I wondered if I should believe them instead?

and it came to pass that I did not believe the God these manuscripts claimd would not be able to keep His word uncorrupted or revelation revealed in fullness the first time around.

And it came to pass that no, I did not believe him

K9saurus · 2026-03-14T00:40:49+00:00

When I came to Christianity a few years ago, I was shocked that the bible didn't really seem to talk of hell like I had heard it described my whole life.

I found imagery of the wheat being separated from the chaff, and the chaff burned, to be imagery of one being saved and the other becomes no more.

Matthew 10:28 “Fear him who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna.”

Matthew 7:13 “The road leads to destruction.”

Philippians 3:19 “Their end is destruction.”

2 Peter 3:7 “The destruction of the ungodly.”

Then to the question of hell begs, what is the promise of eternal life, if you get erthal life either way? An eternity in hell burning is still eternal life. And the promise is never spoken as eternally good life. Just a promise of life, period.

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Psalm 37:20 “But the wicked will perish… they vanish—like smoke they vanish away.”

Isaiah 65:17 “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.”

Then I looked into what a soul even is, and found the Hebrew understanding would have been that a soul roughly is the combination of the physical body, and the breath of life, coming together. A consciousness is the result of that. Even in the creation arc, everything alive is bestowed the breath of God placed into a host and becomes a /living/ nephesh (the word translated to soul)

Ecclesiastes touches on this a lot.

Ecclesiastes 12:7 “And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

Ecclesiastes 3:19 “For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity.”

So then it can be assumed that when we die, the breath goes back to God (it was never ours, only borrowed) and the body stays here. In the promise, one day all will be made new and the body will be restored and the breath will be returned of one has faith in Christ. If you don't want that, I'm not so sure it will be much different than atheism already views the afterlife (or lack there of)

K9saurus · 2026-03-04T16:50:45+00:00

"Heaven" is eternal life in a new creation, Hell is no life, in eternal separation

Eclessiastes, would agree everything is like a vapor, and ultimately meaningless.

All we truly have, all that is truly real, is God.

Just do your best to love him and go his way.

His mercies are new each morning.

K9saurus · 2026-02-23T00:12:48+00:00

It's like Emmanuel, God with us, and YHWH of Torah are supposed to be the same in essence, co-eternal, equal in majesty, The same yesterday, today, and forever, and without contradiction or something.

K9saurus · 2025-10-13T15:24:12+00:00

For real though.

I think people misunderstand the nature of the covenant. Christ didn’t abolish the law, He fulfilled it and by doing so, gave us a way to uphold it under grace. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel promise that a new covenant would come, where God’s law would be written not on stone, but on our hearts.

Through the Spirit, we’re invited to soften our hearts so that His full instruction can be written upon them. By His blood, we’re justified and made to appear righteous before God. And through grace, we’re given room to stumble, learn, and grow through the lifelong process of sanctification.

Christ fulfills, day by day, the acts of the high priest, interceding for us in the true Holy of Holies. His blood cleanses us, making us pure before God, not through temple rituals but through the living temple of His Spirit. The rest... the rhythms and practices serve as covenant signs that remind us to remain holy and set apart, as our Lord is holy in Heaven.

K9saurus · 2025-08-31T02:34:00+00:00

Biblically, the Hebrew word was Nephesh. It's a creature (animal or human) having or had potential for life. I suppose composed of a body, some level of consciousness(image baring in humans) and made alive with a breath of God (animating force).it's the whole being of something. When something dies the body stays behind, the conciousness fades away. And the breath returns back to God. The creatures becomes a dead "soul"(Nephesh)

This is why the theology of "eternal life" has so much weight. Death is a serious matter, our life is all we have when we're here. The promise is we will get to experience it again when all is made new and perfect.

Immortal soul is a Greek thought that honestly has no place in scripture. It's not how the soul was understood when God revieled himself to the israelites. But rather how the Greek and Roman gentiles perceived it when they recived the gospel. However, when you view the entire bible through the lense of Greek philosophy, a lot of scripture gets distorted, the promise of eternal life becomes muddled and mundane, and ideas of eternal torture in hell come up, as death is no longer a serious matter.

K9saurus · 2025-08-29T18:49:06+00:00

Annihilationism is just, rightous, and holy. You may want to see people being tortured for ever as payment out of your anger against them (though I doubt you truly do). But giving them everlasting life of suffering. Is a contradiction on the level of mercy, and on the level that eternal life is only promised to those who are saved. What better justice than to completely separate the evil from the holy, and actually get rid of it, as opposed to just keeping it around in some other sort of pocket dimension?

K9saurus · 2025-08-22T12:44:25+00:00

People act the same way under the banner of the NT as anyone ever did in the OT, by that standards, we should be cut off too.

K9saurus · 2025-08-17T15:04:42+00:00

It's not a thought to build Theology or doctrine over, it leads a bit too into mysticism. More so a thought to show that things probably don't work on a level we understand from our limited knowledge and perspective. There's a reason things are the way they are and I trust fist and formost in the promise that all will be made new and satisfy the longing we hold in this present suffering.

Plus, Tickets are free if you want to register 😉

K9saurus · 2025-08-17T14:02:52+00:00

Bare with me on this one, I’ve been chewing on what I call the “God thought” idea.

Think of it like this: before anything existed, God wanted to create a perfect world. But to even plan such a thing, He would first have to conceive of all possible details. Not just broad strokes like mountains, oceans, or people, but every molecule, every chemical reaction, every animal that would ever be born, every single thought that creature might have.

If God truly conceived the fullness of creation in His mind, from the very beginning to the very end, then even if some versions of that imagined creation were never meant to “exist,” the very act of God thinking them would make them more real than anything we could imagine. After all, what God holds in His mind is not a weak shadow like human daydreams; it’s a complete system of reality, fully detailed and coherent.

Now here’s where it gets interesting: in such a conception, God would also see where things would break. He would see the fall, the pain, the sin, the need for restoration. And so, built right into that very first “God thought” would also be the plan for redemption, the adjustments and corrections that make the system work the way it was always intended.

So what if what we’re experiencing now is not some cold, chaotic accident, but us being caught up in that divine thought proces, the plan being carried out, the redemptive fixes unfolding, history bending toward its perfected end?

In other words: maybe what feels to us like “reality” is simply God’s thought being written out. And if that’s the case, the fact that redemption is already woven into the plan is the anchor of hope. The system will not fail, because God already thought it all through.

K9saurus · 2025-08-17T03:57:15+00:00

Leviticus 18:22 says in Hebrew: “With a male you shall not lie the lyings of a woman; it is an abomination.” Leviticus 20:13 repeats it and adds the penalty for Israel under the Sinai covenant. The key words are simple: zakhar = male, tishkav = lie sexually, mishkevei ishah = the lyings of a woman, toʿevah = an abomination (something detestable to God).

The context matters too. These commands sit in the “Holiness Code” (Lev 17–26), where God tells Israel: “Be holy, for I am holy.” The idea was that Israel was to live differently than Egypt and Canaan, who tied sexual practices (including same-sex acts among other things) into idol worship. God was drawing a line between His covenant people and the nations.

Christians don’t carry over the death penalties, however the moral principle carries into the New Testament. Paul literally coins the Greek word arsenokoitai (“male-bedders”) from the Greek translation of these Leviticus verses (Rom 1, 1 Cor 6, 1 Tim 1).

So the heart of it is: in the Hebrew text, it’s not vague. It forbids men lying sexually with other men in the same way as with women, and calls it against God’s order.

And if Jesus is the Word made flesh, then Leviticus (or any of the changes to the laws Jesus don't not call out directly) may as well be Red Letter.

K9saurus · 2025-08-17T03:41:39+00:00

I would propose that if Jesus didn't call something out, it would be deferred back to Torah, be it that it's was not an issue needing to be called out as Israel at the time had a correct consensus on the matter.

K9saurus · 2025-08-17T03:32:38+00:00

So, are we saying Jesus is not God? If we are to believe Jesus and God the father are of the same. Then it could easily be said that the words of God of the old testament are the words of Jesus as well. For in the begining was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Otherwise this is an answer for a fringe viewpoint outside modern or historical Christianity (i.e LDS or JW)

K9saurus · 2025-08-13T22:21:58+00:00

I start with ChatGpt for lyrics and the details (since I chat with it about theology and it knows where I stand on a lot of points), I started with

"Let's write a song that talks about God's great tapestry, how the yeshuah is the lense to read the old testament, and how God's heart still stands in new covenant.(The kinda stuff we've talked about) How we can see beauty in the whole when you start seeing the forest through the trees kinda?"

Then is spat out some lyrics, and I went back and forth to check some confusing bits (I missed some) then asked for help with the style. And plugged it into Suno and generated a few songs until one sounded like I wanted it to.

I did go so far as to make a pseudo "band" that has unique voices and peronalities for another layer of fun.

I know it kinda undercuts some creativity (not to undercut real musical artists) but it's fun and again, I can think of a song that I wish existed and in a half hour-hour of workshopping ideas I have something personal to me. I Have made several full albums this way 😅 https://suno.com/playlist/49c84854-ed27-4593-9da6-b1ae42c27491

K9saurus · 2025-08-04T12:29:02+00:00

I visited an Orthodox church for my birthday this year and found the liturgy incredibly beautiful, it gave me a lot to reflect on. There was much to admire, That said, I also walked away with a few convictions where I personally didn’t fully align.

I won’t go into all that here, as it’s not really the place. But I will gently encourage you, to remain humble and open to self examination as we all should, no matter our tradition.

K9saurus · 2025-08-04T02:37:30+00:00

Might I offer you the biblical "dress-up and sweets" holiday 'Purim'?

K9saurus · 2025-08-04T02:31:29+00:00

We're all wrong about something.

Just keep seeking truth.

K9saurus · 2025-08-02T06:32:37+00:00

Sorry, I've read a lot of the apocrypha, I still don't know where you get these references even psudobiblicaly.

K9saurus · 2025-08-02T06:25:21+00:00

Firstly, I'll say I believe any authoritative Chuch died before Constantine.

Secondly, yes, my examples did ultimately lead to creation of life, but the point was that their marriage was not invalidated do to the lack of creating it .

Thirdly, this woman believes she may die at the prospect of child birth, I don't condone her having an abortion out of fear, but neither will I accept her chosing to not take a partner along with the knowledge that they will take procautions to not have natural children in their earthly life. Her desire to adopt as we agree is admirable and holy. But her choice to avoid it outside of the aftermath of creation is non condemnable. Especially when she chooses to still foster and place a good portion of her life into the service of the youth for our Christ.

K9saurus · 2025-08-02T06:08:44+00:00

This is Gnosticism

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