Christianity and the End Times

There's a lot of original material in Luke, have you noticed?

What i can't understand is why you are arguing against Luke being a compilation of previous material. Luke was written decades after the resurrection. If it was all original material out of his own head it would have far less credibility than if it is taken, (which he says it is) from something recorded by eyewitnesses and the first Jesus followers. It doesn't argue against your belief that the Bible is inerrant.

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

*We* don't; you do. You have a needy and addictive personality - you tell us this. There you go again. There is no solution to life. Life is not a problem requiring a solution. Life is just what we have. Stop projecting.

She needs the authors of the bible to be eye witnesses otherwise they're just reporting hearsay. Eye witnessess evidence is weak evidence, hearsay evidence is not even evidence.

when I say *we* I mean jars first group, of which Faith and I belong....not everyone.

The facts themselves wouldn't be a big deal, I wouldn't really care if Luke did happen to be a compilation, I just do not think it is true, for which I've given some good reasons, and it's offensive that modern scholars are always taking It upon themselves to change everything about the Bible as it had previously been understood. Who do they think they are? Both scholars and believers down the ages deserve more credit.Luke also wrote the book of Acts, right after his gospel I think, and it covers the life of Paul, with whom he traveled. Paul is still alive at the end of Acts. He is believed to have died under Nero's persecutions and that puts the timing of the writing of Acts in the 60s AD. That puts the gospel earlier than that.Again, if there were writings by eyewitnesses that he could draw on other than those we are familiar with, it doesn't make sense that they were not circulated among the churches along with the ones we are familiar with. If the information was useful to Luke's gospel then it was useful to the churches before he wrote it, so it makes no sense that it wasn't in circulation, and he is saying he wants to add to the accounts, not repeat them. He clearly is saying to Theophilus that he is writing something that is NOT known since he starts out talking about those eyewitness reports both of them were familiar with already.He claims to have a good understanding of the events. We know he had contact with the disciples because he traveled with Paul, and he wrote the book of Acts so he knew a lot about the early days of the spreading of the gospel. Why do you have to make the source somebody other than Luke himself WHO WAS THERE, who was with all those eyewitnesses, who talked to them, etc etc etc. What is this need to create distances that did not exist? He added many things to our knowledge of the events of the time that are not in the other gospels. WHY NOT FROM WHAT THE EYEWITNESSES TOLD HIM? What advantage would there be to his having read what those eyewitnesses wrote even if by some odd chance they failed to get circulated among the churches, which is impossible. But he talked to them himself. That seems to be implied in what he says at the beginning of his gospel and it makes good sense.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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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.

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?If God cannot fail and God is the source of the prophecies then they cannot fail. We simply start there, with that biblical fact.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. YOU are the one "putting your beliefs before the Bible" because you deny the fundamental biblical truth about the nature of God as infallible.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. You start with assumptions about what a prophecy means and when that doesn't work out you call it a failure. 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.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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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

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.You being an atheist may not see the issue framed this way, so that's our first hurdle...to have a consensus on what we are actually talking about.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.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.AbE: Oh and I don't agree with jars "God" as the creation of human authors. One point for consensus that I would insist on is that God is not a product of the human imagination.Granted it would be impossible for me to defend my premise.Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

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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 ?

Which god?

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