Certainly not a simple doctrine.

Originally posted by Rajk999

Then Peter said ... God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him. (Acts 10:34-35 KJV)

Did you read that or is it too simple to believe.

GOD ACCEPTS ALL THOSE WHO WORK RIGHTEOUSNESS AND FEARS HIM.

Nothing to do with Christianity.

We should consider not just man's need but God's purpose.
We should not consider only the minimal requirement for people to be blessed but what is it that God wants to accomplish for His will.

As Joshua said " ... Then what will You do for Your great name." (Joshua 7:9b)

In Acts 10 it should be obvious that God WANTED the Apostle Peter to go preach the Gospel to Cornelius and the Gentiles in his house. It was a part of God's eternal purpose that the pious Cornelius hear and receive the Gospel of Christ. Peter's realization that -

"I perceive that God is not a respecter of persons, But in every nation he who fears Him and works righteousness is acceptable to Him" was Peter's motivation not to withhold the Gospel of Christ from Cornelius.

This was so that "the word which He sent to the sons of Israel in announcing the gospel of peace through Jesus Christ" (v.36) would also be preached to the Gentiles.

The fearing God and the working of righteousness probably relates to all men having no excuse not to believe in God as divine Creator and awareness of the human conscience that men should pursue good rather than evil.

If Cornelius and his Gentile guests had not needed to hear the Gospel for God's purpose, He would not have sent Peter there to preach it. Neither would God have drawn Cornelius to await the apostle's preaching.

Acts 10 shows God's desire for His plan that the Christian Gospel go beyond Israel to the nations. There appears here both the need and the purpose of God that this happen.

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Claiming to be the incarnation of Jehovah - divesgeester

Except thats not what Jesus is actually claiming.

1. First of all there was no capitalization in the original text, it was added by whoever translated your rather archaic edition of the Bible.

2. The translation that you have offered doesn't even make sense in English, do you say, 'John I am', 'Hungry I am,' of course not, not unless you are Yoda. Are you Yoda? No? then it makes no sense to say, 'before Abraham was born, I am', does it? Or perhaps this is Jesus having some kind of miraculous effect on English grammar?

3. John 8:58 has two verb tenses, 'am', in the present tense and 'came to be', in the past (technically aorist). In John 8:58 the Greek preposition 'prin', coordinates the relationship between the two verbs and tell us that the action of the verb in the present tense (am) happened or was happening before the action of the verb in the past tense (came to be). What that means is that Jesus was simply saying that he existed before Abraham. Nothing in the text indicates that its a claim to be God incarnate as you have once again erroneously alleged.

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Why don't you first address the issues that I have raised and then we can talk about anything else.

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You were not asked about any of these, what you were actually asked about was,

1. the capitalization of the text and why your translators have sought to capitalize it when none exists in the original
2. the strange grammatical structure of the text that you quoted and why it appears contrary to normal English usage
3. why the idea that Jesus is making a claim to be God incarnate cannot be supported either by the English syntax in the verse nor on the basis of the Greek idiom, also present in the verse.

YOU WERE NOT asked about anything else. If you refuse to address these points then I will take it as evidence of your intellectual dishonesty.

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I have not provided an interpretation. How can you disagree with my interpretation when i have not provided one? What I have actually done is ask you to substantiate your claims based on the scripture that you yourself cited, that being John 8:58

you were asked,

1. Why the translators put the text, 'I AM', in capitals when none exists in the original,

so far you have dishonestly refused to answer the question despite being asked twice.

2. You were asked to comment on the English grammatical structure of the text that you provided to support your stance it being pointed out that its not normal grammatical use to say, 'Divesgeester I am', and to account for this for which you have once again dishonestly refused to render an account despite being asked twice.

3. It was pointed out to you that the verb tenses disagree with your statement that Christ claimed that he was God incarnate, in fact the original text rules your interpretation out because it is clear that Jesus was saying that he existed before Abraham. That itself is not an interpretation its a statement of fact based on the Greek idiomatic structure of the verse. You were asked to comment on this and instead provided some irrelevancy and continue to dishonestly evade the issue making you willfully ignorant.

You were asked in good faith to substantiate your claims and simply refused to acknowledge any of the points that were put to you and instead attempt to deflect attention elsewhere in the most intellectually dishonest stance that I think I have come across. If you had the honesty to say, 'I don't know' then I could have put up with that, but you simply don't know anything about the Bible and your ignorance is truly astonishing. You cannot tell us why your translators capitalized their text, you cannot tell us why they have used unusual English grammatical structure in rendering the verse and you cannot tell us why they have tampered with tenses in an attempt to make the scripture say something that it does not in the original. No more questions.

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You have proved yourself to be what you are. Anyone can read the text for themselves and view your intellectual dishonesty and your attempted deflections and ponder at the degree of your willful ignorance. You and I knew it already divesgeester and the pretense is up. Sure you can hide behind your opinions and interpretations but when it comes down to hard Biblical facts you are out of your depth. You simply haven't had the same Biblical education that those cultists the Jehovahs witnesses have.

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1. they ran out of red ink - divesgeester
2. Maybe they thought I AM was the same thing - divesgeester

The very same chapter John 8:28 ' I am he', uses exactly the same Greek phrase, 'ego eimi', as John 8:58 and yet it remains uncapitalized and untampered with the verb tense The very same phrase is found at John 13:19, ' ego eimi', and is translated as 'I am He'. You cannot tell us why then it suddenly takes on a completely different meaning at John 8:58?

Ok I shall tell you, because the verse upon which you have based your stance and of which you seem to know next to nothing about has been deliberately subject to a religious bias and a dogma has arisen that is not explicitly stated in the scriptures that you yourself cannot even explain when presented with some rather damning and incontrovertible evidence which soundly refutes that stance and rather than address the issue you do what all cornered people do, you have attempted to seek a way out through deflection.

Perhaps if you spent more time looking at what your own faith is based upon instead of criticizing others you may do better. For the record I am uninterested in convincing you for no amount of evidence can convince the willfully ignorant.

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You might be willfully ignorant but don't bring others down to your level. If you are disputing the evidence that I provided, linguistic, grammatic and textual then do so, otherwise, please spare me your projections of ignorance. None of this is my opinion, anyone that looks at the verses can see its factual.