Summations Only

Anybody with an agenda to tell The Truth™ should be distrusted.Edited by ringo, : Spelinge.

You're thinking in circles. You've decided that Jesus is God with us so Isaiah must have been talking about Him. That's like saying that the epistles of John talk about Obama because Obama is the antichrist.

You seem to have missed an important word in my post: YOU. I was talking about YOU, not the people who knew Jesus personally when He was alive. YOU know nothing about Him except what THEY claim.I said that YOU decided first that He was the son of God and then YOU went looking for Old Testament prophecies to back up the belief that YOU already had.THEIR thinking isn't circular. YOURS is.

You have that backwards again. It's true that prophecy would be worthless if people did nothing as a result but the point of (most) prohecy is to get people to prevent the fulfilment. They're supposed to stop what they're doing or God won't protect them from the Assyrians, for example.

quote:

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Isa 7:16-17 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings. The LORD shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria.

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It was in the specific case we're discussing though, wasn't it? First God would slap down Assyria to show that He was in charge. Then the impliction is that if the people didn't behave, He'd turn Assyria loose again. There wasn't much scope there for the people to work toward fulfilment, was there? As I said, it's usually about avoiding "fate". It is about something positive that you can do to make your life better. It isn't about phonying up the results to make it look like it was fulfilled, which seems to be what you're suggesting.

So you're saying that Jesus deliberately concocted a phony fulfilment. That's like me "prophesying" that your house will be vandalized and then throwing a brick through the window to fulfill the "prophecy".Ideally, a prophecy should be fulfilled by somebody who's never heard of the prophecy - a double-blind system.

So we're back to square one. You've decided that Jesus is the son of God, so when he deliberately set out to make himself look like a fulfilment of prophecy, it really was a fulfilment of prophecy. Your reasoning is still perfectly circular. Well, that's what this thread is for. Roll 'em out. Instead of wasting everybody's time with prophecies that aren't prophecies and prophecies that Jesus deliberately fulfilled, let's get to the good ones. Give us an example of an actual prohecy about the Messiah that was actually fulfilled by Jesus without him having to do anything.Edited by ringo, : Spellng.

So we can disregard your denial that you're thinking in circles. So, in other words, you're not going to back up your claim.FYI, I have no preconceived objections because I have no idea what examples you would offer. I don't think I've said anything about objectivity in this thread. I've pointed out the circularity of your thinking, which you finally admitted, and I've asked you to back up the claims you made.Instead of taking potshots at my motvations, why don't you make a decent case for fulfilled prophecy?

Whether or not I have preconceived notions about the fulfilment of prophecy is irrelevant to anything I've said in this thread. All I've done is point out the errors in your logic. I'd do the same thing if I agreed with your conclusion. You said you could provide examples of fulfilled prophecies that weren't contrived. When you walk into a discussion and make claims about the topic, there is some reasonable expectation that you will back up those claims. "Not that far-fetched" is a far cry from "fulfilled". Bigfoot is not that far-fetched. Not at all. That is the point, exactly. The subject of the prophecy was to be named Immanuel. Whether he would fit your requirements for "God with us" doesn't matter. There have been plenty of people in history named Immanuel who didn't live up to the name.The meaning of the name Immanuel isn't particularly relevant. A lot of Jewish names refer to God. That doesn't mean that anybody and everybody with "god" in his name is the Messiah. Nor does it mean that somebody who acted like God with us has anything to do with the prophecy.

Don't try to weasel out like that. "Contrived" was my word and you responded to it. In Message 149, you said: I think it's reasonable to expect you to provide an example. The thread is about scriptural evidence. Unless you have scripture where Mary called Jesus Immanuel, its just wild speulation. Think again. I've said in this very thread that prophecy is often/usually about dire consequnces. Why must you always resort to personal attacks? Nothing that I've said in this thread has anything to do with whether or not I believe in God or whether or not I believe Jesus was the son of God. All I've done is point out where your reading of the Bible is wrong. As I've already mentioned, that's a point against your claim, not for. It's circular. If he was called Immanuel by somebody who didn't love him, that would be impressive.And I'll remind you again that the thread requires scriptural evdence.

So you have a word that could possibly in some cases mean virgin and a vague speculation that Mary might occasionally have called Jesus Immanuel. Coulda-would-shoulda is hardly "scriptural evidence that Jesus is Messiah".I could point out that nowhere does Treasure Island explicitly deny that Long John Silver is the Messiah, therefore he is.

Why were the Greek translators specific when the Hebrew text is not? It seems a bit presumptuous to translate "car" as "Cadillac Eldorado" doesn't it? Are you suggesting that the Greek translators knew something that wasn't written in the Hebrew text?In any case, the word almah refers to a young woman who didn't have any children at the time the prophecy was given. It doesn't suggest that she would still be a virgin when the child was born.Edited by ringo, : pelling.

They seem to have believed that the word was appropriate at the time the prophecy was given. "That girl over there will have a child and by the time he knows right from wrong, the prophecy will be fulfilled."

The sign is the fall of the enemies. God knocks 'em down to show that He can; then He sets 'em back up if you don't take the hint and behave yourself. That's real life. That's more profound than some vague possibility centuries in the future.The birth of the child just gives the timing. Why do you keep ignoring that? The birth of the child is tied to specific historical events. The thread is about scriptural evidence, not your opinions.

Nonsense. It has been shown that your claims are factually wrong. The prophecy specified that the child was to be named Immanuel by his mother, not by others. That is fact. The mother was a young woman (maybe a virgin) at the time the prophecy was given, not at the time of the birth. That is fact.You're welcome to give your opinions but by the definition of the topic, they fail as evidence of fulfiled prophecy. On the contrary, I'm speaking for the people that the prophecy was given to. I'm talking about what was a momentous event with profound consequences for them. The prophecy was about a sign for them, not a sign for you. Frankly, I couldn't care less whether the prophecy failed or not. I'm only interested in it from a logical point of view. I have no more vested interest in its success or failure than I do in Hamlet's fate. It would have been nice if he and Ophelia had lived happily ever after but I'm not going to mangle the story just to suit my own preferences.I'm curious why you cling to such a bad example when there are suppoedly so many others. Surely you can come up with something better.