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Rascalking
Guest
Of course I’m not serious dear one, but thanks just the same!I hope you’re not serious Rascalking. No need to beat yourself up over something as silly as that.
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healonzo
Guest
I’m feeling embarrassed because of that. Well, hope everything works out as well also.
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PJM
Guest
***The easiest. surest, and undeniable way is to show and prove the OT prophisies that have been indispuitably proven: Here are JUST a few such:
Isaiah 7:14: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.
Matthew 1:22-23: All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’–which means, ‘God with us.’
Micah 5:2: But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.
Hosea 11:1: When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
Matthew 2:14-15 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’
Isaiah 9:6-7: For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
Wisdom 2: 12-22 “Let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions; he reproaches us for sins against the law, and accuses us of sins against our training. He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord. He became to us a reproof of our thoughts; the very sight of him is a burden to us, because his manner of life is unlike that of others, and his ways are strange. We are considered by him as something base, and he avoids our ways as unclean; he calls the last end of the righteous happy, and boasts that God is his father. Let us see if his words are true, and let us test what will happen at the end of his life; for if the righteous man is God’s son, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries. Let us test him with insult and torture, that we may find out how gentle he is, and make trial of his forbearance. Let us condemn him to a shameful death, for, according to what he says, he will be protected.” Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray, for their wickedness blinded them, and they did not know the secret purposes of God, nor hope for the wages of holiness, nor discern the prize for blameless souls;***
There are a GREAT many more too!
God Bless,
Pat
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Cat_Herder
Guest
All of that presupposes that the Roman Empire declined and collapsed. It did not, at least not until 1492 A.D. when its capital was destroyed in a radical militant Islamic terrorist attack.
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Actually pagan Roman religion was very much believed–those who would not sacrifice to Caesar and the gods got fed to the lions with ruthless efficiency. It is kind of hard to launch some kind of grassroots political initiative when you have no money or property to actually give to the poor thanks to Caesar burning your churches and killing your field workers. This kind of persecution did not happen to Mithraism, Artemis-ism and the other mystery religions, so by your logic, one of them should have dominated the empire. That did not happen.
Revisionist history may be popular in the academic world, but there is a reason why there are terms like “nutty professor” in the lexicon.
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SGWessells
Guest
PJM wrote: "Isaiah 7:14: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. "
Far from indisputable, this prophecy is transparently bogus.This is not a prophecy about Jesus, no matter what Matthew says…First of all, the word “almah”, commonly translated “virgin” means “young woman”. Now before you say, “yeah, but Matthew and the Septuagint say “parthenos,” which can only mean virgin”, hold on. In the culture of the time, a young woman was most likely to have been married, since girls were married younger in those days, as young as age twelve, the age of adulthood. In the first century, according to a professor of NT Greek at Los Angeles University who is from Greece, “parthenos” could mean either “virgin” or “young woman,” and came to mean "“virgin” only later. According to rabbi Levi Dershowitz, the word “almah” which Isaiah used cannot mean “virgin” at all. There is a Hebrew word “bethulah,” meaning explicitly “virgin”, but it was not used here, which is odd if Isaiah meant virgin. Since young married women often gave birth, but a virgin giving birth would be unprecedented and received skeptically, why didn’t Isaiah make it clear that he meant “virgin” by using the unambiguous “bethulah”, thus clearing up confusion?
But a young married woman giving birth would not be a sign of anything supernatural, while a virgin birth would be an “indisputable” sign, since it is normally impossible, right? Well, look at the context, as we are always urged to do except when messianic prophecies are concerned. The prophecy speaks of a sign which will be given, not to the coming ages, but to King Ahaz of Judah. It speaks of a boy that shall be born of an “almah”, and the almah (not generations far into the future applying this name to Jesus because Matthew yanked this verse out of context and misapplied it) called his name Immanuel. Isaiah 7:15,16 continue talking about the same boy, and what do they say? “He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the boy * knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted.”
Wait – what two kings are these? 7:1 tells us: Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah the king of Israel, whose threat to Jerusalem, verse 2 tells us, made “the heart of his people shake as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.” It is their defeat, not some unanticipated event far in the future which Ahaz would never know about, which the prophecy foretells.
So clearly, the prophecy is not about the boy Immanuel at all, much less about Jesus, who was born centuries after the devastation mentioned. The boy is mentioned to give a timeline to the event the prophecy IS about, namely the destruction of Rezin and Pekah, which is what Ahaz was worried about, by the king of Assyria.
Why then did Matthew take this one verse out of context and put it where it didn’t apply? Because he was desperate to find some OT justification, however feeble, for the virgin birth doctrine, and this one had the added attraction (alas, also irrelevant) of the name “Immanuel,” which seemed to support the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity.
In short, this is not a prophecy about Jesus or his mother, and the constant invocation of it as if it were is simply dishonest. Many other so-called prophecies are equally bogus, as I shall show when I can.*
Far from indisputable, this prophecy is transparently bogus.This is not a prophecy about Jesus, no matter what Matthew says…First of all, the word “almah”, commonly translated “virgin” means “young woman”. Now before you say, “yeah, but Matthew and the Septuagint say “parthenos,” which can only mean virgin”, hold on. In the culture of the time, a young woman was most likely to have been married, since girls were married younger in those days, as young as age twelve, the age of adulthood. In the first century, according to a professor of NT Greek at Los Angeles University who is from Greece, “parthenos” could mean either “virgin” or “young woman,” and came to mean "“virgin” only later. According to rabbi Levi Dershowitz, the word “almah” which Isaiah used cannot mean “virgin” at all. There is a Hebrew word “bethulah,” meaning explicitly “virgin”, but it was not used here, which is odd if Isaiah meant virgin. Since young married women often gave birth, but a virgin giving birth would be unprecedented and received skeptically, why didn’t Isaiah make it clear that he meant “virgin” by using the unambiguous “bethulah”, thus clearing up confusion?
But a young married woman giving birth would not be a sign of anything supernatural, while a virgin birth would be an “indisputable” sign, since it is normally impossible, right? Well, look at the context, as we are always urged to do except when messianic prophecies are concerned. The prophecy speaks of a sign which will be given, not to the coming ages, but to King Ahaz of Judah. It speaks of a boy that shall be born of an “almah”, and the almah (not generations far into the future applying this name to Jesus because Matthew yanked this verse out of context and misapplied it) called his name Immanuel. Isaiah 7:15,16 continue talking about the same boy, and what do they say? “He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the boy * knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted.”
Wait – what two kings are these? 7:1 tells us: Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah the king of Israel, whose threat to Jerusalem, verse 2 tells us, made “the heart of his people shake as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.” It is their defeat, not some unanticipated event far in the future which Ahaz would never know about, which the prophecy foretells.
So clearly, the prophecy is not about the boy Immanuel at all, much less about Jesus, who was born centuries after the devastation mentioned. The boy is mentioned to give a timeline to the event the prophecy IS about, namely the destruction of Rezin and Pekah, which is what Ahaz was worried about, by the king of Assyria.
Why then did Matthew take this one verse out of context and put it where it didn’t apply? Because he was desperate to find some OT justification, however feeble, for the virgin birth doctrine, and this one had the added attraction (alas, also irrelevant) of the name “Immanuel,” which seemed to support the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity.
In short, this is not a prophecy about Jesus or his mother, and the constant invocation of it as if it were is simply dishonest. Many other so-called prophecies are equally bogus, as I shall show when I can.*
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SGWessells
Guest
Cat Herder wrote, "Actually pagan Roman religion was very much believed–those who would not sacrifice to Caesar and the gods got fed to the lions with ruthless efficiency. It is kind of hard to launch some kind of grassroots political initiative when you have no money or property to actually give to the poor thanks to Caesar burning your churches and killing your field workers. This kind of persecution did not happen to Mithraism, Artemis-ism and the other mystery religions, so by your logic, one of them should have dominated the empire. That did not happen. "
First, being thrown to the lions unless you worship Caesar is not a recipe for fervent faith, but for hypocrisy. If people were fed to the lions for believing in the deity of Caesar, that would be proof of their belief.
Second, the persecutions were local and sporadic until Diocletian’s time (c. 303 CE) when they were short-lived. There are pagan sources that testify to the loving and cohesive social structure of Christianity, though they laughed because Christians were so easily taken in.
Thank you for bringing up the martyrdom issue, which I had forgotten. The martyrs were, as Tertullian said, the seed of the Church. Their courage and example undoubtedly inspired others, and as long as the persecution was not “ruthlessly efficient” (which it was not), they served to increase, rather than diminish, the prestige of Christianity. If the mystery religions had been persecuted rather than mildly disapproved of by the rich and respectable, they too might well have survived the collapse of the Empire.
Mithraism, by the way, probably failed because its membership was limited to men, and consisted mainly of soldiers. Thus it could not compete with Christianity in society-wide appeal.
Nor is it appropriate for someone spouting the Christian party line to scoff at me for spouting the secular one. Three fingers are pointing back at you, you know.
First, being thrown to the lions unless you worship Caesar is not a recipe for fervent faith, but for hypocrisy. If people were fed to the lions for believing in the deity of Caesar, that would be proof of their belief.
Second, the persecutions were local and sporadic until Diocletian’s time (c. 303 CE) when they were short-lived. There are pagan sources that testify to the loving and cohesive social structure of Christianity, though they laughed because Christians were so easily taken in.
Thank you for bringing up the martyrdom issue, which I had forgotten. The martyrs were, as Tertullian said, the seed of the Church. Their courage and example undoubtedly inspired others, and as long as the persecution was not “ruthlessly efficient” (which it was not), they served to increase, rather than diminish, the prestige of Christianity. If the mystery religions had been persecuted rather than mildly disapproved of by the rich and respectable, they too might well have survived the collapse of the Empire.
Mithraism, by the way, probably failed because its membership was limited to men, and consisted mainly of soldiers. Thus it could not compete with Christianity in society-wide appeal.
Nor is it appropriate for someone spouting the Christian party line to scoff at me for spouting the secular one. Three fingers are pointing back at you, you know.
S
SGWessells
Guest
Another irrelevant prophecy posted by PJM: "Hosea 11:1: When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. "
Again, if you look at the context, it says “when Israel was a child,” not “when Jesus was a child.” Verse two makes this clearer when it says, “the more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.” ESV. Clearly not a reference to Jesus.
However, another prophecy you mention, " Micah 5:2: But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times", could provide us a clue as to why Matthew took this verse from Hosea out of context, namely, to provide a reason for he had to invent a story (contradicting Luke’s in almost every particular) to explain how Jesus was born in Bethlehem, when everyone during his ministry (including Nathaniel, John 1:46) assumed he was from Nazareth, and thus would not fulfill the prophecy.
While we’re speaking of prophecies, here’s one you forgot to mention:
**"Matt. 2:23: "And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled: “He shall be called a Nazarene.”
**
Congratulations to anyone finding this prophecy in the OT.
Again, if you look at the context, it says “when Israel was a child,” not “when Jesus was a child.” Verse two makes this clearer when it says, “the more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.” ESV. Clearly not a reference to Jesus.
However, another prophecy you mention, " Micah 5:2: But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times", could provide us a clue as to why Matthew took this verse from Hosea out of context, namely, to provide a reason for he had to invent a story (contradicting Luke’s in almost every particular) to explain how Jesus was born in Bethlehem, when everyone during his ministry (including Nathaniel, John 1:46) assumed he was from Nazareth, and thus would not fulfill the prophecy.
While we’re speaking of prophecies, here’s one you forgot to mention:
**"Matt. 2:23: "And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled: “He shall be called a Nazarene.”
**
Congratulations to anyone finding this prophecy in the OT.
P
PJM
Guest
God Bless you and maybe even grant you a wee bit of humilty too
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SGWessells
Guest
Sorry, but quoting the Bible only refutes those who believe in its divine authority, which I do not. If I quoted the Bhagavad Gita to you in a way that implied that it settled the matter, would you concede the question on the grounds of its inspiration? I think not. So you’ll have to do better than that. First prove that the Bible teaches no errors and is “dictated by the Holy Ghost”, as Providentissimus Deus says (but nobody believes these days), then you can quote it as the last word on an issue.And my friend; you know this because:shrug:
God Bless you and maybe even grant you a wee bit of humilty too
Pat
Luke.1 Verses 26 to 35
"In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High ;And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end.” And Mary said to the angel, “How shall this be, since I have no husband?” And the angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God."
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PJM
Guest
Aw, you missed the point.
I was not ONLy quoting scripture; I was proving that it proved itself to be historically true some 500 years or so after it was predicted. I can share more of them, but somehow, I think your not seeking truth; just your idea of it?
God Bless you friend,
Pat
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SGWessells
Guest
Sorry, but you did not prove it to be accurate in the alleged “prophecies” you quoted, because they were not prophecies of the event they supposedly predicted. As for seeing “my idea of” truth rather than truth, I quoted what the prophecies actually referred to according to the text of scripture, not my idea of what it should have said. Maybe you are the one who missed the point. Unless you can show me where the context of Isaiah 7:14 proves that it prophesied the advent of a son of God born of a virgin hundreds of years afterward Ahaz’ lifetime, my rejection stands.
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Axman
Guest
This thread seems to be off track: Inspiration is not the same as veracity.To be true is not necessarily to be inspired.In the context of the Bible, inspiration means to be authored by God,written by men and even this would need to be further clarified .
Obviously, what God says is true, if God said it. This “ if “ is really what is being asked.:
How do we ( 2000 years later…) know that the authors of the New Testament were “inspired”?
Axman
Obviously, what God says is true, if God said it. This “ if “ is really what is being asked.:
How do we ( 2000 years later…) know that the authors of the New Testament were “inspired”?
Axman
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PennyinCanada
Guest
Have you read the book The Signature of God?
The evidence presented in The Signature of God provides tremendous evidence supporting the authority and inspiration of Scripture. Those who love the Word of God or anyone who wonders if they can trust the Bible need to read the thrilling information in this fascinating book.
Here’s a few notes I copied…
The evidence presented in The Signature of God provides tremendous evidence supporting the authority and inspiration of Scripture. Those who love the Word of God or anyone who wonders if they can trust the Bible need to read the thrilling information in this fascinating book.
Here’s a few notes I copied…
- These Hebrew Codes reveal the names: Hitler, Eichmann, and Anwar Sadat.
- The staggering phenomenon of hidden codes and mathematical patterns found in the text of the Bible that could not have been produced by human intelligence.
- The incredible fulfillment of twenty prophecies in our generation that authenticate God’s authorship of the Scriptures.
- Ezekiel prophesied the rebirth of Israel as a nation on May 15, 1948
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Bernadette173
Guest
Here is a good place to start Holly… shop.catholic.com/product.php?productid=17081
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JesuisSean
Guest
Tell him to stop being a believer/disbeliever. Follow the path of truth instead. If done, all questions will be answered. You will understand why everything is as it is, for the truth behind it is exposed.
However, let it be noted that if one finds all truths, and you speak of them to others who have not found all truths, they will not believe a single word that you have to say of such truths, for they are believers.
Truth is truth, and belief is belief, thus they are apart from each other. Believers do not accept the truth in the here and now, for they instead accept truth only from a distance, via the practice of a belief.
However, let it be noted that if one finds all truths, and you speak of them to others who have not found all truths, they will not believe a single word that you have to say of such truths, for they are believers.
Truth is truth, and belief is belief, thus they are apart from each other. Believers do not accept the truth in the here and now, for they instead accept truth only from a distance, via the practice of a belief.
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