tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464977109229359349.post2364724745857239987..comments2023-10-21T03:54:12.029-04:00Comments on A Gift Universe: A gaping hole I can't patchSheilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10853868724554947854noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464977109229359349.post-69722526825124507812016-01-29T01:17:52.954-05:002016-01-29T01:17:52.954-05:00Just a few things - the Jewish messiah (no capital...Just a few things - the Jewish messiah (no capital "m") is to be a normal human male (not a virgin-born godman) who will accomplish certain tasks (with God's help). Jesus did not accomplish a single one of these; that's why he had to schedule a "second coming" to perhaps get something done. This disqualifies Jesus from being the Jewish messiah.<br /><br />Second, in 1 Cor. 7, Paul advocates celibacy for all - including married couples. Why? Because Jesus is coming back in, like, the next 5 minutes - <i>there will not be time for another generation!</i> He was wrong. Obviously wrong.<br /><br />Third, I think John 14:12-14 is at least as problematic as the passages you cite:<br /><br /><b>Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.</b><br /><br />Last I checked, no Christian was able to duplicate Jesus's little magic tricks, and certainly no Christian has gone above and beyond in the "miracle" department! No Christian can walk on water, and no Christian has fed the city of Detroit on a single chicken pot pie. But Jesus said REAL Christians would be able to. Are there simply no REAL Christians?<br /><br />Also, in that passage, Jesus says he'll do whatever his followers ask. There is no room in this for "No" being an "answer" (even if one could somehow discern when it's "No" and when it's simply not answered at all). Jesus said "WHATEVER YOU ASK, I WILL DO IT." Full stop. No qualifications.<br /><br />Yet we know that prayers go routinely unanswered, unfulfilled. Christians pray for all sorts of perfectly reasonable things, only to find *nothing* happens. They're left hanging. "Save yourself, sucker."<br /><br />Finally, in 1 and 2 John we see multiple references to "antichrists" - and from the context in 1 John 2:18-19, we see that 1) the unknown author believes he's in the "last time" because there are so many "antichrists" running around, and 2) "antichrists" are nothing more than people who left the church - they may not even be true apostates, technically! So the author of 1 and 2 John was wrong. WAY wrong - on each point! It <i>wasn't</i> the last days - obvious. And if Christians are going to consider EVERY person who switches churches to be an "antichrist", along with every apostate, doesn't that cheapen the term "antichrist" and turn it into nothing? According to Revelation, it's supposed to be something significant, but if the world is gaining 3,500 "antichrists" <i>per day</i> (the number of Christians leaving the church), why should that be any concern of ours? Surely, if it were a problem of any sort, we'd have seen <i>something</i> happen by now.<br /><br />Thanks for listening! Love your writing!<br /><br />Doris Fromagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07804899422584862557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464977109229359349.post-91711036432955030192015-08-20T09:26:58.968-04:002015-08-20T09:26:58.968-04:00Yeah, something had to give, didn't it? But i...Yeah, something had to give, didn't it? But it had to give too much.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14479224236264150172noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464977109229359349.post-91472858957689011952015-08-14T20:41:14.616-04:002015-08-14T20:41:14.616-04:00Hello Sheila,
Without providing a lot of context,...Hello Sheila,<br /><br />Without providing a lot of context, I would like to try and answer at least one of your question(s). <br /><br />Of all the teachings of Jesus, no one thing has been so confused as his promise to come back in person to this world. It is only natural to believe that Jesus would be interested in coming back, not only once but many times, to the world whereon he lived such a unique and important life as one of us; as a human being.<br /><br />While he was here, on numerous occasions and to many individuals he declared his intention of returning to this world. But as his followers awakened to the fact that he was not going to function as a temporal deliverer, and as they listened to his predictions of the overthrow of Jerusalem and the downfall of the Jewish nation, they most naturally began to associate his promised return with these catastrophic events. <br /><br />But when the Roman armies leveled the walls of Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and dispersed the Jews, and still the Master did not reveal himself in power and glory, his followers began the formulation of a belief which eventually associated the second coming of Christ with the end of the age; even with the end of the world.<br /><br />Jesus promised to do two things after he had ascended: He promised to send into the world, and in his stead, another teacher, the Spirit of Truth; and this he did on the day of Pentecost. <br /><br />Second, he promised that he would sometime personally return to this world. <br /> <br />But he did <i>not</i> say how, where, or when he would revisit this planet of his bestowal experience in the flesh. (On one occasion he intimated that, whereas the eye of flesh had beheld him when he lived here in the flesh, on his return, or at least on one of his possible visits, he would be discerned only by the eye of spiritual faith.)<br /><br />So those who most positively believe that he will again come in person, still have not the slightest idea as to when or in what manner he may choose to come. Will his second coming on earth be timed to occur in connection with the terminal judgment of this present age? Will he come in connection with the termination of some other subsequent age? Will he come unannounced and as an isolated event? No one knows. <br /><br />Only one thing we are certain of when he does return: all the world will likely know about it, for he must come as the supreme ruler of our universe and not as the obscure babe of Bethlehem. <br /><br />And as believers, we can be sure of only one thing: <i>He has promised to come back.</i> We have no idea as to when he will fulfill this promise or in what connection. As far as we know, he may appear on earth any day, and he may not come until age after age has passed.<br /><br />The second advent of Jesus/the Son of God on earth is an event of tremendous sentimental value to humans, but otherwise it is of no more practical importance to us than the common event of natural death, which so suddenly precipitates us into the immediate grasp of a succession of events which leads <i>directly to the presence of this same Jesus.</i> <br /><br />The children of light are all destined to see him, and it is of no serious concern whether we go to him, or whether he should chance first to come to us. Therefore we should be ever ready to welcome him on earth, as he stands ready to welcome us in heaven. Still, we can confidently look for his glorious appearing, but we are wholly ignorant as to how, when, or in what connection he is destined to appear.<br /><br />If any of this is at least thought provoking, (as an ex-Catholic) I strongly recommend reading at least Part Four of <i>The Urantia Book,</i> The Life and Teachings Of Jesus of Nazareth. <br /><br />At any rate, all the best in your search for answers and in your remaining time on this world.<br /><br />T_P_Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05422531479839463921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464977109229359349.post-57069409713479899662015-03-03T17:34:28.912-05:002015-03-03T17:34:28.912-05:00Hi Sheila. I've wondered about these passages ...Hi Sheila. I've wondered about these passages too and spent quite a bit of time mulling them over. You mentioned context, and I think that's important. Matthew 16:28 and Mark 9:1 ("I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power") are both followed immediately by a record of the transfiguration, where Jesus appears in his glorified form one week after that statement. The timing of the comment and the way the gospel writer chose to record it suggests Jesus intended, Matthew and Mark understood it as referring to the transfiguration. A second interpretation (according to the handy notes in my NIV study Bible!) is that Jesus may have been referring to the events of pentecost, though that interpretation seems less likely to me given the way the gospel authors chose to record Jesus' statement followed so closely by their accounts of the transfiguration.<br /><br />The other verses you mentioned (eg Mark 13:30, Mat 24:34), which refer to "this generation" appear in the context of Jesus clearly talking about the end times; describing in detail a lengthy period of tribulation and persecution before the second coming. A lot of what Jesus is recorded as saying and doing in the gospels has prophetic meaning of course, but in these chapters here it seems to me that Jesus is going into full on prophet mode, employing the multi-layered language of prophecy in a lengthy speech along the lines of what you find in the Old Testament tradition. Events prefigure later events but are described by multiple layers of the one prophecy. This is much more open to interpretation, and although he is the one prophesying here, Jesus himself admits he doesn't know the day or the hour. The more important point of what he is saying is what we should do, as shown by his conclusion "Therefore keep watch...etc" (Mat 24:42 and mark 13:35) So I think the word "race" or "generation" could refer either to the Jews, to that particular generation of the Jews, to the generation who will be alive when the end times begin, or to some overlapping combination of these things. Some people, for example, understand these verses to refer in part to the sacking of Jerusalem that took place in 70AD, when the temple was destroyed -- an event that prefigures the horror of the ultimate end times, and which Jesus refers to at the beginning of his long prophecy about the end times (eg Mark 13:1-2). It does seem to me that he moves from the more immediate (ie the destruction of the temple in 13:1-2) to a much longer range view of what will happen (suddenly we have a series of wars as "nation will rise against nation" 13:8)<br /><br />It's true that the early Church thought that the end times were coming soon, and lived accordingly. In this they were being obedient to Jesus' repeated commands to keep watch. It's a good thing for all of us, I think. No matter how far off the final end times may be in the life of the earth, my life will be only a few decades, and then I'll be catapulted into the presence of the "owner of the house".<br /><br />I hope this is helpful.<br /><br />RebekahRebekahnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2464977109229359349.post-36473510876275336282015-03-01T17:00:48.862-05:002015-03-01T17:00:48.862-05:00It's certainly puzzling; now that you mention ...It's certainly puzzling; now that you mention it, though, Jesus seems to have spoken of the dead in a strange way in other places, strange both to his first audience and to us.<br /><br />He insists, for instance, that when we invoke "the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Israel", that we attest that Abraham and Isaac and Israel <i>are yet among the living</i>, because "God is not god of the dead". He tells Martha, he tells the local governer, that their recently-deceased relatives are "not dead, but sleeping", He endures derision, and then He produces the living deceased.<br /><br />And God said to Adam and Eve "in the day you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge [...] you shall surely die"; but manifestly they did not die in a day. Did God lie before the Fall?<br /><br />This is not to say that our Lord is equivocating on death, but at the least He and we have different relations to it.Belfry Bathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00514867101036143597noreply@blogger.com