What you want to know about Christ.

A few come to mind:Since the Bible gives us a clear examples that we should pray to the dead, and Jesus is God, how does Jesus want us to pray to the dead? Should we use statues, or candles, or incense?Another one - was jesus denied 3 times or six times?Did Jesus clear the temple once or twiceOn what day did Jesus die?was it dark when Jesus' followers went to his tomb?Thanks-Equinox

Phat, aren't all those also features of genuine relationships with Vishnu? Or with Allah? Or with the Buddha? Many of us know a lot of people who are explicitly non-Christian and yet have all of those features from their divine connection with their God. Gandhi is a good example, as was Anne Frank, and so many others.Are you saying that only Christians can be good people?Thanks- Equinox

Gen writes: Why would it matter what was known by humans back then? Aren’t you saying that the Bible is ultimately written by God? Wouldn’t God know how genes work? Ancient people weren’t stupid - if god explained the truth about something, they could understand as well as people do today when scientists explain it.Doesn’t it strike you as a little bit odd, to say the least, that an omnipotent God writes a half-million word book for us, and never mentions any science from his vast knowledge before the people themselves figure it out on their own? It can’t be because of some pledge not to tell us things we don’t know, since he goes on about the existence of heaven, hell, the creation of the world, Cain & Abel, Jesus’ trial narratives, and much more that the human transcriber couldn’t have known. And yet, not a peep about anything scientific that wasn’t already known (such as the fact that striped sticks determine breeding traits, or that there is a giant dome holding up the sky).Wouldn’t an omniscient, loving god say something about life saving things like vaccination, fertilizer, electricity, pain relievers, steam engines, telephones and the periodic chart? This is like a scientist who discovers an instant cure for leukemia, then comes home to his dear son who is dying of Leukemia, and just doesn’t say anything, or give it to him, but instead watches him die. Whaaaa? Imagine a ship of uneducated people you loved going to colonize a distant planet, and you could send a book of 500,000 words (the length of the KJV Bible) - think of what you could include! But instead we get stories repeated word for word, whole chapters of geneologies of people who are never mentioned again, and incoherent babblings. It’s like the parachutist who pulled the cord and out popped a blow up doll. What is this, some cruel, sadistic joke? And you say a God is behind all that, and that you still want to worship him? It makes me wonder who is more messed up.I know a lot of moderate Christians who think that blaming God for the Bible has to be the worst blasphemy they’ve ever heard. It’s hard to fit a more damning statement about the Holy spirit into a single sentence than saying that the Holy Spirit is ultimately the author of the Bible. Realizing that the Bible is a purely human creation allows a Christian to believe in a much grander, more wonderful, more loving God as compared to the sadistic, incompetent cosmic terrorist that must be believed in if one thinks that the Bible is the direct work of God.EquinoxP.S. gen, I haven't seen a response from you to my questions posted back on post #54. Did you miss them? Thanks.

gen wrote: Gen, have you actually read and critically studied these gospels? Even a very cursory study shows that the differences are beyond having a different writing style, including differences in theology, differences in what they say happened, and differences in how to be saved. (reposted from july) “John’s” gospel has so much magic and so many fabrications that is does not appear to be written by someone who was there or even someone familiar with the Palestinian world. In the 4th Gospel, Jesus never casts out a single demon, talks incessantly about himself, never does anything special with the bread and wine at supper, does showy miracles explicitly to convince people that he's the messiah, and never even tells a freakin’ parable! The opposite is seen in the other gospels. If the other gospels have any accurate information about a real Jesus, then it is clear that whoever wrote the 4th gospel can’t be anyone who was around Jesus, like John the son of Zebedee, who you claim. The author of the 4th gospel also speaks in Greek, and apparently doesn’t know Aramaic (see Greek word pun in John chap 3 - ask me if interested). How could John not know Aramaic??Also note that chapter 21 is well known to have been added later - not by whoever wrote the rest of the 4th gospel. It is only in that later addition that it says the “beloved disciple” wrote the gospel. The bottom line for me is that we don’t have much of a clue as to who wrote the 4th gospel - but that it appears to be a well-educated, upper class person, far removed from Jesus life and direct followers by both distance and time.There is almost no evidence supporting your statement that the 4th Gospel was written by John the son of Zebedee, one of Jesus’ disciples.Here is what we have in support:1. The Catholic tradition that this is the case - which doesn’t really tell us much, other than the fact that later Catholics thought so in the late 2nd century.2. The “beloved disciple” line in chapter 21. This is irrelevant for two reasons. First, it only says that this “beloved disciple” wrote this gospel - it doesn’t say who that beloved disciple is, and there is nowhere in the gospel that says something like “I’m John, the beloved disciple, writing this”. Secondly, and more importantly, chapter 21 is well known to be a later addition tacked on the end by someone else. That’s supported by changes in the greek, the previous ending in 20:30, the content of chap 21, and the fact that Tertullian, writing in the late 2nd century, says it ends without the verses in Chapter 21 (there were no chapter numbers then of course - he refers to content).OK, what evidence suggests that the 4th gospel wasn’t written by John the son of Zebedee, the disciple:1. Even our oldest manuscripts are in very good, sophisticated greek. This seems unlikely from an uneducated, lower class peasant like John.2. Elsewhere (Acts 4:13) says that John was illiterate.3. Many, contradictions (see above) between the 4th Gospel and the synoptics strongly suggest that whoever wrote John wasn’t an eyewitness (as John the son of Zebedee would be), and the 4th gospel itself says that it wasn’t written by an eyewitness, but rather based on the reports of eyewitnesses. (we can get into listing these if we like).4. Anachronisms in the 4th Gospel argue against an eyewitness as well.5. The Gospel of Mark (written around 70 CE) says that Peter and John were (will be) martyred - which is difficult to square with the idea of John writing the 4th gospel, which wasn’t written until the turn of the century.Scholars who study the Bible (including Christian Scholars) have long ago concluded that John the disciple didn’t write the gospel of “John”. So, overall, do *you* really think John wrote the 4th gospel? I’m asking for your opinion, for you to think for yourself, not just repeat what your preacher told you that you have to believe to avoid Hell.Thoughts? Thanks--Equinox

Almost no-one, not even those who call themselves Bible-based Christians, acts as if they really believe their chosen Bible is the word of God (of course, that assumes one starts by picking one Bible among all the canons and translations, which differ by entire books worth of text). Most Christians haven’t even read it all (!).Instead, Christians treat it as “interesting” or “worthy of respect” or “occasionally useful”. If one really believed their chosen Bible was the actual word of God, wouldn’t they aggressively investigate any suggestion that translations differ or that changes were made to the word of God- but instead, they usually ignore differences from version to version, saying they “aren’t important” - even when the differ by whole verses or more.Wouldn’t it be a huge deal -- if ideas were are added or deleted, even the addition or subtraction of a word would be an unpardonable crime. And yet, most Christians seem perfectly happy to blatantly ignore the text of the Bible if they don’t like it, or to add ideas (like the idea that “God caused Pharoah's heart to be hardened because of what he did with the Israelites, not be directly hardening his heart”, which the Bible doesn’t say.). Adding and subtracting as they like, because at some level, they, just like most other people in the world, know that the Bible is just a human book, as divine as Mien Kampf.In this thread we’ve already seen plenty of examples of gen adding to or deleting from the Bible at his whim (Egyptians putting blood on their lintels, the state of the dead, etc). There are a bunch of further examples in his responses here.Gen wrote: That’s all well and good, but in Mk it says Peter denies him 3 times before the rooster crows twice, not once. Some Christians I’ve talked to say that this means that Peter denied Jesus 6 times (3 before the first crow, then 3 more before the second). Do you, gen, think this is what happened (even though the Bible nowhere says 6 times), or do you think this is a copying/recording mistake?MK 14: Gen wrote: As you guessed, I mean driving the moneychangers from the temple during Jesus’ life. Sorry if that was unclear. John has: Mt has: We both know that it gets light well before dawn. So these two accounts disagree. You can see how seriously they disagree by simply writing down, in order, everything that happened that morning without omitting a single Biblical detail. It’s quite difficult to do without making each account into a terribly fragmented account, where the holy spirit has ”neglected’ to have each gospel writer write much of what happened. It doesn’t seem that any resolution of the problem of the very different gospel accounts is possible without saying that the holy spirit doesn’t seem able to tell the whole truth - which makes one wonder where else only part of the truth has been told. Mormons will gladly fill in more information with their 3rd testament. Most Christians will happily add the text of the other gospels to the gospel they are reading. For instance, when reading mark, they’ll say that Mary went there first when it was still dark, even though mark doesn’t say that. The most flagrant adding of pieces from other stories to the story being read is with the story of Jesus’ birth, where the two stories (Mt and Lk) have little in common. Gen, do you think it’s OK to add stuff to a gospel account?Vishnu Bless you in every way, my brother/sister in the karmic cycle- Equinox

Gen writes: Depending on the book, the Bible gives different answers. One direct view of heaven is in Rev (another is in Luke), which clearly says that the dead are there are conscious before the return of Jesus. You can see this by reading chapter 4 (where the elders of the church do things in heaven), or in this passage from chapter 6: Obviously, they are able to talk, wear different clothes, “wait” and stuff like that. - And in Luke chap 16 Jesus describes a story when two people, one in Heaven and one in Hell, have a conversation. “Prayer” can be prayer to the dead (as in asking them to pray for you, just as you’d ask your cousin to pray for you, or you might pray for your cousin) or prayer for the dead. Both are clearly scriptural. In numerous places in the Bible one person prays for another (Stephen, Jesus, Moses, Paul all pray for others), and since people in heaven are able to do things, asking them to pray for you should be no different than asking me to pray for you. Many of the earliest Christian church services we can find are from the 300’s, and they have extensive requests of martyrs and such to pray for them.Prayer for the dead, to help them, is clearly scriptural, and is mentioned in places in the bible such as 2 Mcb 12:46 or Brch 3:4-7. The majority of Christians from the start up to today have apparently done both kinds of prayers involving the dead.Augustine, the posterboy of the reformation (it’s no coincidence that Luther was an Augustinian monk), makes it clear that prayers for the dead are to be done in his book the Retractations, Book ii. 64:2. So I guess I don’t understand your view, other than the fact that I already know that different Christian groups hold all kinds of different views of the afterlife. Your views sound like those of the Jehovah’s witnesses or the 7th day Adventists. However, you can make up just about any afterlife scenario and there will be at least thousands of Christians who agree with you and will sift out Bible passages to support it.Vishnu Bless you in every way, my brother/sister in the karmic cycle--Equinox

Back in post #174 I wrote: Or, even more flagrantly, the pick and choose which translation to use based on what they’d prefer - because they know that their ideas about God are more important than “God’s word”, since they know that the Bible isn’t really “God’s word”.
For example, just three posts later, in #177, gen disputes a point about God by finding a translation that is closer to what he wants (the NIV instead of the KJV that riverix used).
Gen writes:Gen, since you don’t seem to think the Bible is God’s word, then what are you basing your ideas about God on?*****************************************************And:Gen writes: In post #169 you wrote That’s not in the Bible and contradicts what the plain text says.In post #134 you wrote: There are plenty of places where the Bible says that hell is everlasting.Ya know, I have some sympathy for Jehovah’s witnesses and other non-traditional Christians like gen. They are seen as irrational, deluded sheeple by the non-Christians, and as depraved heretics by the Christians, and are generally universal outcasts. I don’t see their beliefs as any more silly than the more common Christianities, and think they get an unfair share of derision and mockery.Just to clear some things up, gen:Is god a trinity, composed of three persons?Is the rapture expected very soon?Is the book of mormon inspired scripture, on par with the New Testament?Is the watchtower bible and tract society accurate in what it prints?Does your church worship mainly on Saturday, not on Sunday?Was Ellen White generally on the mark about religion?Thanks--EquinoxEdited by Equinox, : fixed typo

As IA pointed out, that’’s in Rom, starting around v 11: It’s hard to find a clear statement against this in the Bible.The response is that yes, the Christian God is what Rahvin says, but since he’s in charge, you better obey anyway. It’s simple might makes right. The Christian is to keep him or herself complicit, because non-Christians go to Hell, whether they have integrity or not.