Huh? What for? I thought the whole idea of knowing when the end of the world was, was to accept all those credit card and unsecured loan offers and run up mind boggling amounts of debt, no?
No? What’s this page about then? Have they got their terms confused?
Yes, they do. None of the creatures mentioned is a dinosaur (gamers aren’t noted for their taxonomic accuracy…). And that’s about as far as I’m willing to go with this here, since it would constitute a significant hijacking (I could talk for hours on this sort of thing…).
The Fight Against Ignorance never counts as a hijack. 
Umm, JD - that’s not a dinosaur, that’s Godzilla.
And Raymond Burr’s the antiChrist, no doubt.
I asked my bro, and he said he thought the “Sirrush” a Babylonian dragonlike monster was mentioned- and that some Cryptozoologists think it could have been a surviving dinosaur. So, as to “dinosaurs”= well, maybe- but not by name, certainly. As to the Euro- well, agin, not by name, and the part about the “mark of the Beast= Euro” is even more stretched. Strech things that far, and the Bible can be taken to say anything you want it too.
Darwinsfinch- depends on what you define as a “dinosaur”. If you define them as “any of a number of large reptilian extinct creature”, then that includes the Ichyosaurs & the Plesiosaurs. Since “Dinosaur” isn’t a class name, the definition is strechable.
I beg to differ. “Dinosaur” has a very specific meaning in taxonomic circles. And, while you could say that a dinosaur is “any of a number of large reptilian extinct creature”, your definition would be every bit as meaningless as if you referred to elephants as dinosaurs.
Jersey Diamond, Duck Duck Goose has already beaten me to it, but every group that has believed they’re in the End Times believed their reason for thinking so, just as I think my reason for believing we’re not is biblical. I admit the Rapture would solve my unemployment problems rather neatly one way or another, but I’d rather like to see a great many more sunrises and sunsets yet, walk the beaches and mountains in Maine, and see you and Joe Cool enjoy many years of marital happiness before that time comes. Until that time, I’ve got work to do in this world, as will those who come after me, I hope.
CJ
Many do believe that the “Rapture” stuff dreamed up by Darby is the Gospel truth. However, they don’t tend to be the best and brightest in the Christian religion. Even the Catholic Church rejects the view of revelation being a map of the future, and Lord knows how loathe the RCC is to change, even when presented with overwhelming evidence.
The Christian religion, as a whole, rejects Rapturism and the literal interpretation of the book of Revelation. Only a few fringe groups that represent the most backwards groups within the religion still cling to such daydreams.
The same with groups on the fringe who try to insist that the Bible talks about dinosaurs, creatures which had been dead for millions of years before the first scribes ever started writing down the Hebrew people’s tribal myths.
Watch out–when I was in high school, I very nearly didn’t write a paper for English class because I was soooooo convinced that the Rapture was gonna happen that weekend.
Friday night at the rockin’ and rollin’ and speakin’ in tongues teen coffeehouse prayer meeting, “Jesus will come by Monday morning! HalleLUjah!”
Sunday afternoon at home, “Umm…maybe I’d better write it anyway, just in case…”
You notice how the Rapture didn’t happen in October of 1972…
Well, gosh, if the Catholic church rejects it, I’d better hurry and revise my beliefs! :rolleyes:
I’d like a cite for this comment, please. If you don’t hold to that belief, that’s fine, but that doesn’t give you leave to insult everybody who disagrees with you. That kind of arrogance is really annoying.
If you edit it a little for rhetorical exaggeration, it’s true–Christianity as a whole rejects the concept of the Rapture, and there are only a few denominations and sects that believe in it.
http://www.billygraham.org/qna/qna.asp?i=477
http://www.orthodoxonline.com/leftbehind.htm
Um, so, in this corner we have one Eric Jewell–
–whose cite for this is one incredibly obscure tiny little sect, the Preterists, and one incredibly obscure sermon from the Early Christian Church…
–and in the other corner we have dozens, perhaps hundreds, of theologians and historians and theological historians.
Guess whose corner I’m gonna go sit in? :rolleyes:
Much as I hate to argue Episcopalian doctrine with you on this board, I have to take exception with this remark. Over in this thread some time ago I had occasion to say:
As it happens, Joe Cool said he agreed with me.
Now, on the subject of the Rapture, I must agree with you, with a caveat. The relevant Scripture seems to imply such an event if taken literally, the question being to what extent New Testament prophecy is to be read literally. Certainly a lot of O.T. prophecies were fulfilled in Jesus, but in very rare cases in any truly literal way – instead we read into His life, self-sacrifice, and Rising the real meaning of what Isaiah or Micah or Habukkuk had had to say.
However, I’d say that the burgeoning evangelical/fundamentalist wing (and yes, I do realize that that applies to two different usually-allied movements) of Christianity does not (in my view, unfortunately) constitute “merely a fringe.” And there seems to be a strong holding in those movements that, yes, what I and II Thessalonians, II Peter, and Revelation had to say will be fulfilled in a literal manner (allowing for the apocalyptic metaphors of Revelation). This is in general denied by the mainline churches of all four main branches of Christianity, expecting instead a symbolic fulfillment of those prophecies along a parallel to how Jesus fulfilled the role of the Suffering Servant rather than the conquering war-leader Messiah or the law-renewing Teacher of Righteousness of contemporary Jewish eschatological thought.
Paul seems to have believed it:
You can argue about when this is supposed to happen in the end times chronology, but I’m fairly certain that nobody was “caught up together in the clouds” in ancient Rome. Unless you can produce Roman documentation of flying Christians…
Sorry if this bothers you, but I consider Paul to be a somewhat more reliable and authoritative source on Christian doctrine than the Catholic church, any of the links you provided, or even you.
And as Polycarp just said, it doesn’t matter to me (or Jerseydiamond, for that matter) if the “end” happens this afternoon or 15,000 years from now. The significance of “end times” is that the important stuff already happened, and now we’re just waiting for the final act. Jesus came to earth and accomplished what he needed to, and now for some indeterminate amount of time, we wait until God decides to wrap things up on his own timetable.
…Which I believe will include a rapture, a 1260 day minor and 1260 day Great Tribulation (what you call it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if the word ‘rapture’ appears in the bible. Recall that the bible wasn’t written in English, so technically even the word God doesn’t appear), but not necessarily in that order. I’m not convinced which is going to happen first, but I am convinced that neither of them has happened yet.
And no amount of mockery and snide remarks will change that. If you want to change my mind, give me scriptural backup, not links to orthodoxy online.
Can you produce Roman documentation of a Resurrection or Pentecost?
Well, Joe, certainly God didn’t accept the offering of a “lamb without spot” hung on a cross by the Romans at the behest of the Sanhedrin – instead it was Jesus, metaphorically a “lamb without spot.” What many of us are suggesting is that Paul is using figurative language in a passage that seems to principally focus on the concern of his correspondents about people who had died before the Second Coming (see verses 14-16 of your Thessalonians quote).
No problem either way – I don’t expect a Rapture and think it’s a misinterpretation of what Paul was trying to say (though I believe that what he intended will actually happen in some way that with 20:20 hindsight we’ll see the prophecy to have been fulfilled, just as Isaiah’s “he was wounded for our transgressions, and with his stripes are we healed” was fulfilled in the Atonement). You’re welcome to read it your way, for all of me.