/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>823879

>How do we know we're not supposed to follow the old testament laws?

But we are, at least with the moral law. The ceremonial law, however, is entirely fulfilled in Christ.

>>823882

How do we know this?

>How do we know we're not supposed to follow the old testament laws?

That's well-covered in the Acts of the Apostles, and in Jesus's own words. I'm sure someone will jump in to explain all this, though I'm a bit ill at the moment so I can't summon the effort to explain it all.

>Are there parts of the bible that has Jesus words directly from him and can I see just those somewhere?

Yes, in fact there are some Bibles where Jesus's words are printed in red ink to highlight them. This gave birth to a movement in Protestantism called red-letterism, which tried to put specific emphasis on the Saviour's words so I'm told.

>Why is the Bible so confusing, and why does it have some parts that feel random, like "so and so beget so and so" on and on.

All the begettings are genealogies. Ancient people used these records in order to locate themselves in time, much like how we use a numerical system, but it's only a rough guesstimate that people used before accurate record keeping. In the old testament, for instance, people used to mark the time by the regnal year of the king. So someone writing in "the 25th year of King David" would have made sense to people then, as much as it makes sense to us to say "in the year 1998." Technically, Christian/western calendars are actually following this same old way of remembering time, except that we go by the years of Christ the King, rather than the reginal years of any temporal ruler.

In law reporting until recently in the UK, statute books would be printed by regnal years too. This does make it very confusing. For instance, to go searching for a book of statutes from 1905, then you would be looking for a book labeled (Ed VII, 4) (i.e. statutes passed by parliament in the 4th year of the reign of king Edward VII, this is then abbreviated into Ed VII, 4). This is the trivia only a law graduate would be so unfortunate as to know.

Anyway, the point is that the Bible contains all kinds of stuff that had significance for other people, such as genealogies, such as "Adam and Eve begat Cain, who begat, etc."

>>823883

Basically, the Eucharist. The ritual law was all about sacrifices which had to be made to God in His temple as an atonement for sins. The Eucharist (the bread and the wine) represents the body of Christ, which was broken on the cross, as a sacrifice for all sins.

The Jews you see, believed that blood alone, from ritually sacrificed animals, were able to keep society from falling into decay through the curse of Adam (which is sin). Christ broke the bonds of sin by allowing himself to be the sacrifice. In fact, if you read the crucifixion narrative, all the evangelists put emphasis on the fact that Jesus's legs were not broken by the guards (a common practice to speed along death by crucifixion). This is because a ritual sacrifice must not have a bone broken nor any blemish according to the Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament.

At any rate, the ceremonial law is all about sacrificing animals and related ritual stuff. The reason we don't practice animal sacrifice anymore, even though it was totally ubiquitous in the ancient world, is mainly down to Christianity and Christian influence.

Anyway, all these rituals that consumed the attention of Jewish legalism have been replaced by the Eucharist, the simple eating of bread and drinking of wine, as the flesh and blood of the Lamb (Jesus) who is incidentally the last sacrifice. He is also identified with the Passover lamb from Exodus.

>>823879

>How do we know the Bible is the word of God

Because the Church that Christ established and gave authority to teach and tend to his flock compiled and created the Bible, and stated that it was the word of God