Christianity and the End Times

sometimes its fun arguing with you! My best guess is this sentence:

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What makes you think I revere human wisdom within yourself and others over (what other kind of wisdom could there be than human wisdom; trying to find the word, OH, yes, fantasy) unsupported belief? Should I prefer unsupported belief over supported and evidenced beliefs?

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Was that it? Am I making up your positions to add to my fantasy? So where do you get your idea of who God actually is? The Nicene Creed? Your beloved late Mama? Joe Wood?Did the idea not originate within you?

Yes, yes you are. I have said repeatedly that I cannot say who GOD actually is, beyond almost certainly not anything I can imagine. And no, the idea did not originate within me, rather it is a conclusion based on input and evidence for an unknown number of people and sources.

The problem here, jaywill, is your credulousness. You are prepared to believe the truly incredible that has been proven beyond rational doubt to be wrong whilst not believing things that are fully and factually evidenced. In short you're irrational and deluded. That was so good I put it in orange bold for you. You missed a chance there. There's a presumption in that question that's typically patronising of you believers. The vast majority of people in the world do not need anything instead of your Jesus Christ and never have and never will. They either have their own equally crazy belief system or no belief at all.In my case it's no belief at all of course, I don't need your crutch of future promises of everlasting life to enjoy my life here and now. My life is fulfilled by my career, my family and friends and various other interests. It's productive, useful and busy and I don'twaste any of it on my knees worshipping false gods. But thanks for asking.

I, for one, don't consider myself to be an expert on the Bible. I was almost literally born in church and I could literally quote Bible verses long before I could read. I have read the Bible far more since I stopped believing it. It's worth more as literature that as a guide to life or reality.I do know my way around the Bible a bit and the Internet makes it easy to search.I could name several people here who are far more expert than I am. Some are Christians, some are not.

You can ask as often as you like, I given you my answer twice now. Frodo is a Lord of the Rings character, do try to keep up. He drove evil out of Middle Earth and saved the Shire which is more than your fictional hero did. Your storybook hero just made a series of promises that didn't amount to anything. Oh yes, I particularly like what CS Lewis has to say. He's better at making shit up than most, but not one of them have any more knowledge about JC that you or I do. All that is know is in that one book. The rest is literary criticism.

So your implied answer is that Jesus of Nazareth was not a person in history.You are a "Jesus Myther" then ?No such person ever lived at all ?

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"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."

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You observed that no such person as Jesus of Nazareth ever lived though we have more reason to hold he lived then we do that Alexander the Great lived or surely as much that Julius Caesar lived.Wherever you got your education you should go get your money back.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

C S Lewis also said somewhere something like how his knowledge of literature gives him the ability to tell that the Bible is not fiction.

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You observed that no such person as Jesus of Nazareth ever lived though we have more reason to hold he lived then we do that Alexander the Great lived or surely as much that Julius Caesar lived

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That is certainly not true. Both Alexander and Julius Caesar had massive impact in life and left far more evidence (which is certainly not limited to written evidence). Jesus was an obscure figure who left little trace in the events of the time.Christian apologists, sadly, have little regard for the truth.

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That is certainly not true. Both Alexander and Julius Caesar had massive impact in life and left far more evidence (which is certainly not limited to written evidence). Jesus was an obscure figure who left little trace in the events of the time.

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You have here over 14,300 posts. How many posts do you have on this Forum or on any other, in which you argued / debated about Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar ?Don't you think you have given undue attention to disputing the impact on your life of Christ, if Christ is merely fictional compared to those men ?In the wee hours of the night, whose influence do you contemplate more, that of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar or Jesus Christ ?I think you contemplate the words of Jesus and what they may mean to you more than the lives of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

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You have here over 14,300 posts. How many posts do you have on this Forum or on any other, in which you argued / debated about Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar ?

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I have very few arguing about Jesus either.But what impact did Jesus have in life that compares to Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire ? Caesar’s impact was not so great as that, but he was deeply involved in Roman politics, conquered Gaul and brought about the end of the Republic.Simply talking about the impact of Christianity today is an evasion of the point. In life Jesus was a briefly faddish preacher with perhaps a few hundred followers. You should accept that because how else to explain the poverty of the record ? We have nothing written about him while he lived.

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Don't you think you have given undue attention to disputing the impact on your life of Christ, if Christ is merely fictional compared to those men ?

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I was neither claiming that Jesus was fictitious nor talking about anyone’s influence on my life. Therefore the question is quite absurd. The question is the matter of historical evidence.

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In the wee hours of the night, whose influence do you contemplate more, that of Alexander the Great, or Julius Caesar or Christ ?

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None of them.

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I think you contemplate the words of Jesus and what they may mean to you more than the lives of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar.

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You are wrong. But to add a point relevant to historical evidence we have Caesar’s words in his own writings. Jesus left none. All we have are words attributed to him, decades after he died, themselves translations, since Jesus would have spoken Aramaic, not the Greek of the New Testament.

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"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."

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I would like you to apply your axiom to this lecture to see if any of your views on moon landings are affected. Maybe you have some essentially religious beliefs about the claims of scientists at NASA. Maybe you piously preserve some modern superstitions. Has Man Ever Set Foot on the Moon? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fw1l-4EBEIEdited by jaywill, : No reason given.

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The End is Coming Soon is quite a cliche. There have been numerous occasions in the past where Christians have believed that the end times are almost upon us. And - certainly today - there is no shortage of people prepared to profit from it. We even see daft ideas like bar-codes being the Mark of the Beast (they aren’t).
But what does the Bible really say. You won’t find out from those selling an imminent apocalypse.

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I intend to survey the major end-time predictions and see if they really do match the present situation.

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Bible Study please.

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You wrote here about 234 posts dealing with such things as Christ's discourse in Matthew 24.So you tell me now you don't think too much about what Jesus said or the impact of His predictions and teachings?If His impact is roughly less than, or certainly not more than the impact of Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great can you show me where you voiced as much concern for their influence on things you feel need discussion?Jesus said "Heaven and earth will pass away, by My words shall not pass away." . Two millennia has arguably given us reason to wonder why His words and life are so endurable.Is there anything as momentous, as significant from the mouths of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar ?So you yawn and ho hum the warnings of Christ? Well, I don't. I consider His teaching that every idle word I speak or write I will one day accunt to God for. And my words will be the cause of my justification or my condemnation. In two minutes can you by comparison indicate more significant words attributed to Alexander or Julius Caesar ?Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

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You wrote here about 234 posts dealing with such things as Christ's discourse in Matthew 24.

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And many of those posts do not deal with words attributed to Jesus. As you certainly ought to know.

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If His impact is roughly less than, or certainly not more than the impact of Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great can you show me where you voiced as much concern for their influence on things you feel need discussion?

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Your continued attempts to change the subject prove that you know I’m right. Why not have the honesty to admit it ?

Well that's real proof isn't it? Do'h.He alo said this

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Say what you like, we shall be told, the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’ And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.

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It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible.

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There's a very large problem here jaywill. The problem is that you believe a series of imposible events that alegedly happened thousands of years ago without any evience at all other than they're in a book of myths written by anonymous authors.You believe stuff like talking snakes, miraculous cures, global floods deliberately caused, people being made out of dust - stuff we KNOW can't happen, stuff we know beyond doubt didn't happen, but you don't believe modern day stuff we know CAN happen and that we have huge quantities of evidence for.You're both credulous and a motivated thinker, nothing you say can be trusted.I'm not watching your video, if you have something more to say about the moon landings you need to say it; start a new thread on it, I'm sure it will be very popular.