Christianity and the End Times

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Traditional views should NOT every be challenged, except by other traditionalists on minor points

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So the Reformation was a horrible mistake ?

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Come Soon, Lord Jesus, before this planet gets even crazier.

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Maybe you should stop adding to the craziness then.Seriously, this silly diversion - all because you want the Gospels to exactly reproduce Jesus’ words, and don’t care about whether it’s true or not - is the craziest thing in this thread.

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The problem in my mind with your approach is that for a believer, it eliminates any conclusion that God speaks to humanity through scripture. If I cannot find God through Jesus and through scripture, I am left either believing that He speaks to me through my intuition or faced with the cognitive dissonance that He is simply unknowable and likely a product of my imagination. Granted, this is no problem for you, Paul as you are an atheist.

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It may eliminate some versions of that - like the idea that there are secret messages intended for modern believers. What it will not do is eliminate any meaning that is in there and could be understood by the original readers - indeed it is a better method for uncovering that.

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And yet we perhaps feel as if though anyone not promoting a living Christ is opposing Him by default.

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The Bible is ambiguous on that. However, opposing by simply not supporting is a far different thing from intentional opposition, which was the actual point. Even opposing by supporting rival ideas is not the same as intentional opposition. And whether opposing fundamentalism is opposing Christ is a very different question.
Is trying to understand the Bible correctly opposing Christ ?

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In my mind, this means that one group wants the conclusion to be that God speaks to us through scripture, while the other group sees no way to test or prove this and thus uses their own (and consensual proof through other critics) proof as to what it means.

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Absolutely not. There are plenty of disputes over human authorship and over interpretation but whether God speaks - in some way - through scripture is not really an issue. For secular scholars it is simply not an issue, for Christian scholars it is likely assumed.

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Faith and I dont even agree on what scripture says nor means, but we hopefully do agree that God speaks to those who have an ear to listen. The critics, in general, have no belief in God,(or if they do they see God as much bigger than mere time for interaction with we humans)and thus we chaff at your interpretive style. Nothing personal, Paul....but we need to have God speak to us...not some bunch of human critics who believe only in human wisdom as the solution for life.

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Or to put it another way you use your belief as an excuse to justify twisting the Bible. That may sound harsh but this is not about a solution to life it is about understanding what the Bible really says.
For example Faith - and others - refuse to accept that prophecies fail so out comes all the creative interpretation to cover up the failure.
That’s not being true to the Bible, that is putting your beliefs ahead of the Bible.

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You say this sort of thing frequently but it just makes no sense. Prophecies given by the living Creator God cannot fail and that IS biblical. God as revealed in the Bible cannot fail. Do you doubt this is how the Bible portrays Him? Do I need to muster evidence?

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First, even the Bible says that God can and does change his mind (Jeremaiah 18:8-10 for instance). Second, it is certainly possible that your ideas about the Bible are wrong, even if you can’t accept that.Biblical prophecy has failed and that is a fact. If it makes no sense to you then the problem is yours.

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If you start with that biblical fact then it points you to different ways of thinking about the prophecy than if you start with the idea that prophecy could fail. There is nothing more "creative" about interpreting from the belief that prophecy cannot fail than interpreting from the belief that it can, and if you are wrong then your interpretation is not only "creative" but false.

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The starting assumption is not the issue. The issue is how the text is forced to fit the belief. With no assumption of infallibility, no belief that the text has to be made to fit then we have the freedom to see what it actually says.

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YOU are the one "putting your beliefs before the Bible" because you deny the fundamental biblical truth about the nature of God as infallible.

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That is obviously self contradictory. You see how you make up things to try to support your claims without any regard for the truth ?

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So God is biblically presented as omnipotent and omniscient and impossible of failure. According to the Bible it is the sign of a true prophet that his prophecies come true because they come from God. What is NOT biblical is your idea that prophecy can fail.

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Funny how something that the Bible actually says is NOT biblical.

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You start with assumptions about what a prophecy means and when that doesn't work out you call it a failure.

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By which you mean that I start with what the text actually says, and fit it into its historical context? I wouldn’t call that assumption.

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But the biblical framework tells us that prophecy cannot fail so we correct our failed assumptions accordingly and look beyond any supposed "failure" to understand the greater context of the prophecy. Which you miss because of your cramped assumptions which are unbiblical.

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In other words, you twist the Bible to force it to fit your dogma.Edited by AdminPhat, : fixed broken quote

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More to the point, this debate in my mind is about understanding what God actually says---whether He does it through human authors of a book, voices in our head, or even through each other to each other...in some way, shape or form.

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The topic here is understanding end-times prophecies as they are written in the Bible. That should be clear.

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Let's say we "threw the Bible away" and attempted to understand God, His message for humanity and for us individually, and His teaching and edification. Without using the Bible verses as one reference, neither side could or would have an easy time with that concept. It would be highly subjective, inconclusive, and liable to take any number of rabbit trails off course.

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That's one reason why my side at least starts with the Bible. It is one method used to attempt to explain what God actually means.

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Two points here. First that could be just another rabbit trail. Indeed if you are talking about a debate involving people who don’t share your views you’ve really got to make a case that it isn’t.Second - and more important - once you start imposing your beliefs on the text aren’t taking a great risk of missing the intended meaning ? If you dogmatically believe something that is not true and you stretch your interpretation - never mind anything more extreme - you are practically certain to be distorting the meaning.In short if the sensible reading of the Bible contradicts your views what grounds to you have for thinking that it is the interpretation that is wrong rather than your beliefs ? Even more so, why should anyone else - especially a non-Christian - agree with that ?

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This is such a complete obvious inversion of the truth I don't know how you manage to say such things

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I say it because it is a completely obvious truth. If my interpretation is NOT influenced by preconceived beliefs then obviously I cannot be putting my beliefs ahead of the Bible. Not believing that prophecies cannot fail is the absence of a belief, not a belief.

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You must be reading some completely other Bible than I read. So quote please where the Bible says TRUE PROPHECY FROM GOD CAN FAIL.

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You can’t just pick up a Bible - or look at an online Bible - and look up the citation I gave ? Jeremiah says that God can change his mind and a prophecy need not come to pass.Jeremiah 18:7-10 NRSV Have fun fitting that into your doctrine.

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The Bible says God cannot fail, and you are denying that.

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If God changes his mind and doesn’t do. Something he said he’d do, is that a failure ? Because if it is you’re arguing with Jeremiah, not me.

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I have no preconceived ideas about any of this either, but you accuse me of it anyway. But denying God's infallibility is you putting your beliefs ahead of the Bible which clearly declares Him infallible.

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Of course you have the preconceived idea that he prophecy must succeed no matter how you have to torture the text.Also, of course, I’m not saying that Bod is fallible at all. All I am saying is that the Biblical prophecies failed - for whatever reason. If you think that means that God is fallible then that says much more about your assumptions than anything I said.

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There is nothing in the quote from Jeremiah that contradicts the infallibility of prophecy. He is not talking about prophecy at all,

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Prophecy is EXACTLY what he is talking about. If God sends a message saying that he is going to do something that IS prophecy.

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...he is talking about the effect of sin and disobedience versus righteousness and obedience on the destiny of a nation. If a nation changes from one to the other it will reap the appropriate rewards or punishments.

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And the effect is that God can change his mind and not do what he said he’d do.And let’s make the problems for you clearer. How could God not know what they are going to do in advance ? Because if he did know wouldn’t he also know that he wasn’t going to do what he said he was going to do ? Wouldn’t he be knowingly telling a falsehood when he said he was going to do it ? And in your belief didn’t he even intend that they would act in a way that caused him to go back on his word ?

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Clearly the Early Church Fathers knew they were in the Fourth Empire of Daniel's prophecies, knew it was the Roman Empire and were looking for further fulfillments as yet future.

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Likely they had much the same aversion to the idea that prophecies could fail. I will say this for them - at least living in the time of the Roman Empire they didn’t make up fantasies about the Roman Empire coming back as if it had never been away.

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This is certainly an argument against PaulK's insistence that Daniel's prophecies were fulfilled in the time of the Maccabees.

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I don’t say that they were fulfilled because they obviously were not completely fulfilled. Nevertheless I have made the case that they are about that time and there has been no reply but unsupported assertions to the evidence of Daniel 8 and Daniel 10-12.

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I wonder what you'll all think if the Rapture does occur and you can see some prominent leader "confirming a covenant" for seven years, probably with Israel, probably promising a protection of some sort.

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I wouldn’t see any of those as a reason to change my interpretation of Daniel. Why would I ?

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I suppose there will be many theories about how it was the wicked people who were taken away not the true Christians, well that's pretty much guaranteed to be forcibly promoted, because of course there will be a lot of "Christians" still on the earth, and they will be much more likeable than some who were taken, such as myself.

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You are wicked and you aren’t a true Christian. That’s really obvious. You aren’t likeable because of your sins - your ridiculous false pride, your love of hate and slander and all the rest. I know that you don’t like those being mentioned even though you insist on displaying them here for all to see - but you chose to make them relevant.

I obviously couldn’t tell if it was only the wicked, but in your case it’s definitely true. You’ve even attributed your sins to Jesus which any real Christian would call blasphemy.

It would take time to dig up the post but I distinctly remember you claiming that you didn’t do anything that Jesus hadn’t.Besides you love to boast about your special understanding of the Bible but you managed to ridiculously misunderstand Jeremiah 18:7-10 Message 377.

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I don't claim a "special" understanding of the Bible, I claim I have the traditional orthodox understanding, which happens to be correct and very different from most of the stuff I find here at EvC.

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Not understanding what prophecy is rather undercuts even that. And then there’s all your boasting about having a regenerate mind.

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And I couldn't possibly have compared myself to Jesus like that. Jesus was absolutely sinless and I'm far from it, although most of your adccusations are false.

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Don’t underestimate your ability to spout nonsense,

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And you totally misunderstand the idea of God's changing His mind. It's all about relenting about judgment when a nation changes from unrighteousness to righteousness, certainly has nothing to do with prophecy.

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If God sends a message that he is going to do something that IS prophecy. If God doesn’t do it, the prophecy failed. And Jeremiah says that God can change his mind and not do what he said he’d do.
(And as I noted that is problematic for even the idea of Omniscience, let alone Calvinist ideas of God’s Sovereignty)

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I have the traditional orthodox understanding of prophecy too.; You have a modern revisionist reading.

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Oh yes, the Bible is a modern revisionist work and obviously inferior to your orthodox understanding.

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No it is not prophecy for God to say He is going to bring judgment against a nation for its sins, it is merely a warning that what His law decrees will be carried out unless they repent. You really have that ALL wrong.

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A lot of prophecy is God speaking of blessings or disasters that he is going to send. Try reading the Bible sometime.

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I dunno. You probably just don't notice the signs, such as this one

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"Italian bishop says he’s ready to turn all the churches into mosques to aid the cause of mass Muslim migration

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I admit to not being a gullible idiot. Show me a site where I can actually find what the Bishop said in context and we’ll see. But I’m hardly going to trust propaganda sites.

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As for doctrine, I don't know about Islam but doctrine is no obstacle to this Pope at least. I'm sure he can find a way to blend with Islam if that's his desire.

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Your ignorance is truly amazing. Do you really think,that the Pope could abandon the Divinity of Christ just like that ?

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Only when it is something that is definitely going to happen, which isn't the case with the if-then example you gave.

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Jeremiah doesn’t make any such distinction. There is a prophecy that God will do something, but He changes his mind because of people’s actions in between the prophecy and the intended fulfilment. That is it.

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Jeremiah wouldn't have felt any need to point out the distinction since he was writing to people who understand how to read the Bible.

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I don’t think that making things up to pretend that Faith is right is really the way that the Bible is meant to be read.