Evidence for the Biblical Record

I didn't address this post before, but since Buz wants us to look at his evidence...

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Hi Peg. There are three prophetic scriptures in the Bible which depict this one and the same global end time prophecy, i.e. the 10 horned beast; Daniel 7, Revelation 13 and Revelation 17, 18. These are clearly one and the same beast, i.e. the end time global empire. You read in both Daniel 7 and Revelation 13 that this empire persecutes the saints of God who are his following believers. If you glean all of the info derived from these three scriptures, you get a pretty good handle on understanding this empire.

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As I have pointed out often enough Daniel 8 identifies the end times as the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. The beast of Daniel 7 is the Seleucid empire of Antiochus, past even at the time the Revelation was written.

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Don't forget, that Daniel was told in Daniel 12:9 that the prophecy would be sealed up until the end times. Lo and behold, centuries later, the NT prophet John's revelation is a sealed up book which Jesus, the sacrificial lamb unseals in Revelation 5; the first few verses and consequently more info emerges relative to the beast in question and other end time mysteries which were sealed from Daniel and from the ancients.

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Daniel 12:1 indicates that Daniel 12 itself is to be "sealed up" until the end. Which agrees with Daniel 8 in placing the end times in the 2nd Century BC. And we are told nothing if the contents of the book in Revelation 5 or the next few chapters and so we have nothing to identify it with the words referred to in Daniel 12.

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Now, in our times, when all of those end time prophecies begin to come in focus we moderns who are well advanced into the Industrial Revolution beginning a couple of centuries or so ago, begin to have the capability to understand some of the terminology of things like mark/number monetary stuff, globally viewed speaking images, enforcement of certain requirements to all nations and all of that which the prophets who spoke and wrote them likely had no clue as to why such inspiration termnilogy was given them to write. Some had visions of things to come which likely astounded them.

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Let us note that all we have is assertions here. Assertions that misrepresent the Bible.
There is no "mark/number monetary stuff". There is no indication that the mark is used for money or even for personal identification. The mark may contain a number - but only one number, that of the Beast is mentioned and even that is optional. That does not sound like any banking system that I know of ! Account numbers, credit card numbers and PINs are all individual !The image of the Beast is not viewed globally.Enforcement of restrictions can be done without advanced technology. (Informers and thugs are nothing new !)So we have no evidence here at all.

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You can in no way logically try to apply much of this that Revelation or even Daniel alluded to to ancient times. Much of it which I've cited was no way feasable for ancients. Horse and wagon/buggy/chariot and sail ship travel, oil lighting and word of mouth communication was it for all of human history until the Industrial Revolution which was the early beginning of what could be considered the last days.

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Daniel 8 clearly refers to ancient times. Ezekiel 35 can't be reasonably be taken as referring to modern times either - being addressed to a people last heard of in 70 AD.The Daniel verse - or part verse - you refer to (the latter part of 12:4) states Running to and fro doesn't require fast transport. "Running" suggests that they are not using any form of transport other than their own legs. (Of course, even if it did the Roman road system did allow people to move faster around the Empire.) Again, the evidence - a clear reference to fast transport - is completely missing.

Oh, Peg, Peg, Peg, have you learned no evaluation skills in your years her. of course the Chinese character for ship isn't made up of eight people in a vessel.!!From Inquiry regarding the mythical barge ('Noah's ark'):

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The notion that the character in question has anything to do with Noah's ark is simply wrong. It is based on a common misperception about how Chinese characters are constructed, namely that they are basically pictographic (i.e., crude pictures of the thing being named) or ideographic (i.e., that they combine pictures in such a way as to "get across" the idea of the thing or concept being described). Actually, almost all characters in Chinese, including this one, are formed using phonetic principles, although the phonetics in question apply to the language as spoken at the time and place where the character was coined, and not necessarily the way things are pronounced in Modern Standard Chinese. There _are_ a few pictograms, and an even smaller number of true ideograms, but this character isn't one of them.

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Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

May I ask, JonF, how much evaluation effort you put into this as well ?You do know you quoted Bill Jefferys, departement of astronomy at Texas university who's grand-father was a chinese missionary who is criticizing the work done by Dr. Ginger Tong Chock, who received her PhD in chinese art study from Stanford (chinese writing is included in art).Considering this, and also that the studies of these chinese characters were done by other native-speaking chinese people, I will ask a question (so as it does not become an argument from authority on my part): How much have you read on the subject, particularly the research done by Dr. Tong Chock ? I consider that reading from both sides of an issue would be one of the most basic ''evaluation skills'', as you call them.

I haven't seen any credible evidence for Peg's claim. You got some, you trot it out.Google shows zero hits for "Dr. Tong Chock". I can't come with any relevant hits using no quotes. CreationWiki gives two references, one which just repeats the claim and one which is in Chinese. http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j19_2/j19_2_96-108.pdf has one author with a possibly Chinese name who may or may not know Chinese (his brief bio seems to indicate he may be US-born) and two non-Chines authors.ABE: I've done a lot of reading on both sides of the issue on Noah's Fludde. It didn't happen. Therefore, any claim that rests on the assumption that there was a fludde is prima facie wrong.Edited by JonF, : Added last paragraph

this wasnt a discussion about noahs flood, it was a discussion about the languages of nations. Zen Monkey gave some 'evidence' claiming that the chinese people were already established with a language and writing system before the tower of babel incident implying that they could not have been among the people of mesopotamia.As linguists trace languages thru similarities, i showed that the chinese language has some similarities to the mesopotamia with regard to their word for ship. If you deny that the character for ship consits of the numeral 8, a vessel and mouths/people, then please address the evidence for that as your reply has nothing to do with the topic as it stands. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

There were only 8 mouths on the Ark? Do you have solid evidence that this is anything more than mere "coincidence"? Like, perhaps a study of ancient Chinese lettering that says it IS representative of the ark? The only reference to anything remotely similar is apologetics literature.

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"Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Othersfor example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einsteinconsidered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."-Carl Sagan"Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God." -Desmond Tutu

the sign for 'mouth' in chinese i believe is representive of people, not animals.and No, i dont have any evidence that this is anythign more then coincidence, perhaps it is, perhaps it isnt. If it is, its an unbelieveable coincidence i'm sure you'd agree. And if it isnt, then it shows that the chinese did have some link to the mesopotamia.

That wouldn't even be very interesting if it was true.As it is false, that removes any significance it might have had.

Actually it's representative of mouths.The word "duh" springs to mind.

duh exactly.

So, there is a seperate caricature for non-homo sapiens mouths?

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"Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Othersfor example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einsteinconsidered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."-Carl Sagan"Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God." -Desmond Tutu

i have no idea. Do you?

Peg, if you don't know, then how can you be so entusiastic about the fact it syas "eight people in a vessel"? When in fact you don't know if it says that. It could say "eight mouths in a vessel", in which the mouths include animal mouths, which would mean it's nothing like the ark. There are even other explanations. Maybe traditional chinese boats were managed by a crew of eight (I admit I don;t know this to be true, it could be an explanation though), point is, without looking into it, how can you be so sure it supports your position? Just because you happen to agree with it doesn;t mean it's true.This is what we mean when we say you should check your sources better. The way it seems to work now is this:You hear/read something you like/agree with/sounds to you like good evidence for your beliefs, and then you run with it, without checking if the thing you heard/read is in fact true. You then go to an online board, and proudly proclaim you have more evidence. People look into the evidence, and find out it's completely wrong.What "disturbs" me the most about this is the fact that this doesn't seem to hinder you in the least, you'll do the exact same thing next time.Why don't you check out the evidence, even when you agree with it? Doing it like this only undermines your cause. I will admit, that even before people came with the explanations for the evidence, I thought: "That's probably going to turn out to be false". Why? Because it ususally is with you.

It's not up to me to verify YOUR claim.

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"Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Othersfor example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einsteinconsidered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."-Carl Sagan"Show me where Christ said "Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones." Gay people, too, are made in my God's image. I would never worship a homophobic God." -Desmond Tutu

Or "eight vessels in a mouth", or "a mouth in eight vessels", or "a vessel in eight mouths" or "eight mouths outside a vessel" ... the word order and the preposition are entirely invented by the apologists and have nothing to do with the actual Chinese character.But their error is deeper even than that, because it is simply nonsense to try to read a single Chinese character as though it was a sentence.The breadth and variety of subjects that fundamentalists can be wrong about is astonishing.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.