God's Prophecies: what is behind them?

Phat,If I ask you if you stopped beating your wife, for purpose of discussion we will assume you are married and never beat your wife, do I have the right to insist that anything other than a "yes" or "no" answer is off topic?I suppose Percy or someone could come up with a Forum that involves forced choices and only allows the specified choices otherwise no comment but until that is made explicit the negation of a statement in a topic is part of the topic. I'm not surprised that Faith objected but you are an Admin and I expect better comprehension from you.lfen

When has God ever pronounced anything? What we have are people, prophets, who claim they are speaking for God. When Pat Robertson, or the Pope, of Joseph Smith, or Jeremiah etc. tell us God told them something why should I believe that God refuses to address me directly but rather wants me to take my orders from them? Hint, it was more effective when I could be ordered summarily to be stoned to death or burnt at the stake or something like that.Clearly religion is rule by a priest class. The genius of Judaism was to claim that the priests had the word of God. If bad things happened it wasn't because the priests and their claims about God were wrong but because the people were guilty of something and bad things would continue to happen until they obeyed the priests. Prophecy was the tool the priest used to control society. It was kind of the equivalent to the mass media of those times.lfen

Well, that is what in the book John claims. Joseph Smith made claims, Muhammad made claims, etc and etc. All these are people claiming to have received some message. You are a person telling me the book of Revelation is God pronounced. God has not told me this. It's all the claims of people. That is my point.lfen

Well, the question seems addressed to all of us. It doesn't specify believers. Hence "Which of these models do you seem to apply to the Bible's God?" must needs be answered by some of us as, "neither".I'd think the OP should specify who is supposed to answer the question but this doesn't. Something along the lines of "I'm asking those of you who are Christians and believe in the inerrancy of the Bible ...",
Or "I'm asking Jews and Christians ... ".It's not clear what the implicit criteria the OP had and the default seems thus to be anyone reading the question.lfen

Jar,I'd like your take on that statement. The priest (Episcopal) that had the biggest impact on me when I was in the church as a youth didn't believe God put people in hell forever. I prefer the Mahayana Bodhisattva concept expressed in the vow to not enter nirvana until all sentient beings are saved.lfenedited a typo: beleive back to believeThis message has been edited by lfen, 05-30-2005 11:07 AM