all of teh 50 or more books I have read, and checking the Bible tells me Jesus will come whenever, no warning, take the christians in the rapture.
Then 7 tears later, He comes visibly to unbelievers, and opens the biggest can of whoop ass anyone has ever seen on them (and good they deserve it, the Bible says-some of them have killed Christians)
Then the earth is cleaned up and peace regins for 1,000 years.
(then a temporary uprsiing then time stops)
That was in fact exactly my point. The “joke” is that Jesus would return, and as a Mormon.
It’s not very subtle, it’s insulting to any person who has a shred of respect for the religious beliefs of another. The person I quoted seems to find it hilarious that it’s “bad news” that Jesus would appear in the epicenter of Latter-Day Saints’ the world over.
I hope that clarifies, and answers your question regarding my post.
…and lest anyone jump me for not backing down just because an LDS member posted up there claiming to tell the same joke, my assertions are even more thoroughly proven.
I’m wondering how the Outrage Meter would have pinned if " LDS" was replaced with " Republican" , " Lesbian" , " Black" or " Asian" ?
This is exactly the point of my objection to the joke told by tomndebb. It’s not okay to single out any one religious group as “bad news”, just as it’s not okay to single out any other minority group as “bad news”. 11, 580 posts and this is news? :rolleyes:
Cartooniverse, have you considered the possibility that you didn’t understand the joke? Because you should.
Not quite, and I have to jump to it because it seems that only later you noticed dangermom reply.
There was nothing racist about it, and the only “bad news” is that you don’t recognize a Joke.
FoxNews would probably cover it, fairly and balancedly.
No, I’m sorry, I don’t agree. In the LDS version, Jesus comes to the Vatican, right? So the joke is on the Mormons, because here we were thinking we were right, and all along we should have been Catholic. It’s a self-deprecating joke. In tomndebb’s version, the Pope is thinking, “Dang! I shoulda listened to those missionaries when they came knocking!” It’s not that Salt Lake is bad news, it’s that the Pope got it wrong, ha ha!
Well, at the Second Coming, miracles will happen, we’re told! 
Without overdoing the analysis, let’s not that Tom~ is a Catholic, and the point of the joke is that (in context) Christ is reurning as a Mormon – bad news for the Pope (and the rest of us non-Mormons. (And yes, I do know that “LDS” is preferred – but it works awkwardly as a noun, though I try to make it a point to construct sentences where LDS is an adjective and use it in preference to “Mormon” when making references to the church which Joseph Smith, Jr., founded (or reestablished, if you prefer).) Hence Tom~'s use of the joke was more or less self-deprectory, and I don’t see where Cartooniverse has a complaint.
With regard to the OP, it’s been my feeling for years that, although there are several theories regarding the timing of the Second Coming and the other Last Things, and although vanilla defined the “standard” (pre-tribulation) doctrine quite well, that’s not what’s going to happen.
Consider: In the First Century B.C., there was a pretty consistent set of beliefs among observant Jews on what the coming of the Messiah would entail. He would be a mighty warrior king who would defeat the conquerors (i.e., the Romans) and re-establish the Davidic kingdom and the observance of Torah in its fullness, bringing about a kingdom of righteousness. The liberals of that day saw the “messianic” prophecies as not predicting the coming of a person, but rather the role that the Jews as a community were to play in the bringing of the Gentiles to the recognition of God. Israel, not the Messiah, was to be the righteous man, the suffering servant, the restorer of God’s rule over mankind, in some mystical, human dynamics mode of progress.
Like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expected Jesus of Nazareth.
And any evangelical today can tell you exactly what’s going to happen – just like any devout Jew could back then. Nobody expected the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. Nobody expected an itinerant rabbi who taught in parables, and who redefined the law as radical love of God and compassionate lovingkindness towards all human beings.
IMHO, He will make Himself known fairly soon, and in a way that nobody, including me, expects. Those who believe in Him will recognize Him from His teachings – but a lot of those who claim the Christian faith will reject Him because He will contradict the dogma they hold more precious than following Him.
I have a very strong hunch that I do in fact know his identity – and his surname is already a household word. If I am correct, he is fairly short, a very handsome young man with dusky blonde hair and beautiful-but-insightful blue-green eyes, slightly disabled by a chronic heart-valve problem, in his late teens today. He will probably be accompanied by a companion since childhood, a dark-haired young man whose heart is given to him.
And His teachings will shock the evangelical community.
What? That’s, umm, a pretty radical statement. Care to clarify?
Well, the same joke IS told with exactly those variations, in one form or another – witness, f’rinstance, the venerable “God is coming – and is she pissed!”
What you fail to understand is that the “bad news” in the joke is bad news only to the butt of the joke – in this case, the Pope. Similarly, it would be bad news to Jerry Falwell if Jesus turned out to be Alan Dershowitz. The metamessage of this joke, and other jokes in the same vein, is that we are all in this together, and if there is in fact a God, and Jesus was his son, that certain believers might be advised to quit burning their bridges.
You forgot one.
As you said, there will be those that believed he has not come yet, those that believe he has come once and will return, those who believe that he had come before and has returned and those that believe he did not come before but has come now.
Other than that your post is one of the most insightful things I’ve heard all day.
<Lenny Bruce>
Cardinal Spellman, when Christ and Moses turn up at St. Pat’s.
Who is it? With a cross of hmm hmm
No, not Zorro!
</Lenny Bruce>
Well, as a Calvinist (but it’s been a while since Catechism), I suppose I should point out that there are other points of view besides the Left Behind premillienial version. This one is by far the most common in the Protestant US. It’s the one with the Rapture of the Saints, the 7 years of Tribulation, the conversion of the 144,000 Jews, the second second coming, the final battle of Armageddon, and the 1,000 year reign on Earth. This eschatology translates to a belief that the situation here would get worse and worse, indeed, needs to, before Christ would return. Hence the environmental policies of James Watt, and the attitude of the fundamentalists like Falwell towards Israel (or should I say “the Holy Land”).
There’s also the Quaker (and the others) post-mills, who believe that Jesus will return after the 1,000 reign. Until then, life here on Earth will get better and better. The US constitution would be replaced by a theocracy in some opinions. They’d like to get their people into the gov’t and then tear down the church-state wall from the inside. Well, not all of them would. Kinda sorta like the “Handmaid’s Tale.” Eventually life would be so great here on Earth, we’d have a thousand year reign of Glory to prepare the way for the Return.
Then, there are us Reformed types who are a-millenialists. As in the Millenium is just a plot device that doesn’t work, and anyone who tries to make sense of Revelation has too much time on their hands. We need to live as people connected to the rest of society, but not be ruled by it. We need to engage it as Christians in order to redeem it. But Christ return isn’t being held up by our failure to do so. It will happen when it will happen.
People have been claiming the impending doom of all humanity for a while now. Each generation fears that it will be the last. But here we are. Still waiting. I think it’ll be like how one recognizes porn- you’ll know it when you see it.
Most Christians believe that they are filled with His spirit daily and some even ingest Him on a daily basis. So in a physical, spiritual, refractive, and infinite way isn’t His second coming already foregone and yet to come… yesterday, today, and tomorrow?
hhmm… I think if he does come back the Vatican will be right up there… telling the soldiers to crucify him again ! Have no doubt on that…
Great Dave- the theocratic post-millists aren’t Quaker but tend to be Reformed- mainly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the Reformed Episcopal Church. I’m thinking of Gary North, the late Rousas J. Rushdoony, James Jordan, Gary DeMar & their organizations. Whether or not it would be like the Handmaid’s Tale or like a Christian Galt’s Gulch in ATLAS SHRUGGED depends on one’s perspective, I guess L
Oh come on Polycarp!
You could at least just tell us after that tease.
No one can figure who you mean.
My first thought was prince William(according to your descrip)
Quaker Reconstructionists? The mind boggles…
Ah, yes, the old “Oh, Christian Reconstructionists are just ‘Christian libertarians’” line. Well…libertarians who want the death penalty for adulterers, women who have abortions, homosexuals, blasphemers, false prophets, witches, and children who curse their parents. And “idolaters”, which not only includes non-Christians, but also any Christians who don’t happen to be Christian Reconstructionists. I suppose from the perspective of the survivors the end result might resemble some sort of anarcho-libertarianism, who knows?
Polycarp:
Your probably right. Considering Jesus is nearly 2000 years late from when he said he would come, by now I think it reasonable to assume he was just joking when he said he would come back at all, or more likely wasn’t even god and is now dead as fried chicken just like his contemporaries.
That’s the nice way to say it, of course it requires heaps of post hoc rationalizing. I think a more impartial (and more concise) way to say it would be: JESUS DID NOT FULFILL THE PROPHESIES!
Lovingkindness towards all human beings, except for when he is casting heaps of them into a furnace of fire for eternal punishment.
When you mean soon; days, weeks, years, millennia?
Poly, considering you teach people that they do not need to follow a lot of the teachings of Jesus, as witnessed by the gospels, what makes you so sure your not going to end up on the short end of this stick?
ARE YOU SERIOUS?
If yes:
ARE YOU OFF YOUR ROCKER?
And to echo others, how about a name?
MEBuckner- that is why the CR movement has for all practical purposes disbanded & even several big names (James Jordan comes to mind) have parted ways. Those of us along the spectrum of the Christian Right draw some ideas & inspiration from the Recons, but ultimately have to distance ourselves from the ruthlessness of strict OT Theonomics.