Christianity and the End Times

But he wasn't trying to save people from the flood. He was only trying to save his family.

Where is what in scripture? You're the one who's adding to the text.

It seems pretty clear that that would be counter-productive. The whole point of the flood was a fresh start, so it wouldn't make sense to bring the problem with them.

The real question is how we would interpret the event. "In other news, a bunch of people vanished off the face of the earth today. There is no sign of foul play. Police are investigating."Presumably, most of the people who believe in a rapture would be gone. Those of us who are left behind would be unlikely to interpret it as a rapture. A few believers would wonder why they were left behind. A few unbelievers would become believers. A few nuts would call it a UFO abduction. A few nuts would attribute it to spontaneous human combustion.Most would just say, "Huh?" and wait for more information.

With the fundies all gone, there won't be anybody left for them to scare, so they'll be retired.

As I have suggested many times before, there's a difference between real belief and professed belief. You can shout your supposed "belief" from the rooftops but unless something real comes from your belief, who cares? (Only a very petty God would be impressed by empty profession of belief.)

And they're always wrong. Don't forget that point.Jesus Himself said that nobody knows the day. Yet you feel free to overrule Him.

"We who are alive" is pretty plain. He didn't say "they" who are alive 2000 years from now.

It isn't a question of believing. It's a question of what the text says. It doesn't say "they" who are alive at the time of His coming. It says "we" who are alive at they time of his coming. There doesn't seem to be any doubt that Paul was referring to the near future, not the distant future.Unfortunately, this is all too typical of fundamentalist Bible reading.

You read "black" as "white". That's wrong in any context. You see what you want to see instead of what the text says. That isn't even really reading. It's written to whomever it's written to. To think it's directed at you is hubris.

Being wrong is an important part of being human.The mind isn't just a blank slate on which we write things that are "right"; a lot of wrong things get written there. For example, when you're little, you might think that caterpillars and butterflies are completely different. Correcting that wrong is what we call "learning" and hopefully we can continue learning throughout our lives.There's a certain enjoyment in learning something, in becoming right (endorphins?), part of the evolution of intelligence.It's hard to respect somebody who's never wrong.

I said that if He was fully human, he'd have to be wrong once in a while. That's a human experience that nobody should miss out on.I didn't say a single solitary word about sin. Do you think it's a sin to be wrong? "Paying for our sins" is a rubbish concept. If God wants to forgive us, He can just forgive us. The "payment' is something that HE arbitrarily requires, so He can just drop it.Did you ever see The Godfather? "You have done me a great disservice. Kill my son and we'll call it even." Do you see how stupid that sounds?

The Fall is another rubbish concept - AND it's a direct contradiction of what the Bible says. It's funny (literally ha-ha) how you cherry-pick which Old Testament concepts to keep and which to ignore. Strike one. Well, no. Not at all. God is supposed to be omnipotent - or at least more than some petty potentate. He's the one who supposedly makes the rules, and yet you seem to be saying that He has no choice, sacrifice is required.

The idea of Adam and Eve ever being immoral is not scriptural. Death is not a consequence of sin; it's a consequence of life. Again, if God makes the rules, He is under no compulsion to make that one. I's a silly rule made up by shamans. "You have done me a great disservice. Kill my son and we'll call it even."Edited by ringo, : malfunctioning sHift keY.

No fall. Therefore, Jesus didn't have to die. That's a new one on me. Chapter and verse?