Jesus, Maitreya Buddha, Saoshyant, Kalki, ha-Mashiach, Imam Mahdi/Hazrat Isa - most of the world’s religions promise the coming of a savior.
When do you think this savior will come?
What do you think he/she will do?
How will the world react?
Are you anxious for his/her advent?
WRS - praying for the speedy Redemption of the World
Ha, this one is easy!
1.never
Curses! the stupid hamsters decided to post my message before I was done!
anyway… I don’t belive there will be any savior as I also don’t belive there is any god or afterlife or any such thing. However, I imagine if there was a savior most would think him crazy and he would probibly be locked up in a loony bin somewhere. That, or he would be killed in some horrible fashion by a fundie of some religion or another that diden’t like what he was saying.
I think people will still be waiting for a savior when the last embers of the human race are dying out, long after we’ve missed our chance to save ourselves.
What a sadly beautiful and profound statement…
The Baha’is believe it’s already happened:
MrVisible’s got it down.
I suppose a cynic (in the non-classical definition of the term) would say:
Well, they would, wouldn’t they?
I guess this is one of the things I’ve never really “got” about religion. Why do people think we need a saviour? What do we need saving from?
Everything seems to be progressing normally to me. We don’t need to be “saved” from anything.
I can understand why people would want to believe in a God (afterlife comfort) but I don’t really understand why some kind of messiah/saviour/mahdi character is necessary.
Well, surely you see the world has problems. A “saviour” is an easy solution. It fixes all the problems without having to worry about the complex socio-economic psycho-sexual whatevers underneath. Solving problems in real life is hard. Waiting for a saviour is not.
I don’t need a “saviour” at all.
I think what you are debating here is merely a Christian concept.
Salaam. A
Forgot to say: The concept of the Mahdi in Shia Islam has no connection with the idea/belief/doctrine of “saviour” and “being saved” in Christianity.
Salaam. A
Depends on what one means by savior.
The concept of a savior is not a Christian one. The concept of needing a savior to wipe away one’s sins is a Christian concept, but even this exists in other religions. (One example that comes to mind is the Imam according to Ismaili Shia Islam, who can forgive sins and will usher his followers to Heaven on the Day of Judgment. According to some Twelver/Ithna Ashari Shias, one cannot enter Heaven unless one acknowledges the Imam of the time, which would make the Imam some sort of savior-figure.)
A savior is also one who will come and save the faithful from the trials, tribulations, and imperfections of the world, ushering in an age of righteousness, goodness, and universal rule by God.
According to some, this savior is also a warrior figure, who will fight against the forces of evil and save the faithful. This view is dominant in Christianity and Judaism.
The coming savior will come to preach and convert the world to Islam, after which the Day of Judgment will come. There are some Muslims, such as South Asian Muslims, who believe that Isa (Jesus) and Imam Mahdi will come before the end of time, although who will come first and what sequence of events will transpire I do not know. I do know that the Imam Mahdi is supposed to rule a pure state.
Another interesting commonality, at least between Christianity and Islam, is an anti-Christ figure - one parading around like one sent from God but in reality in the service of the Devil. Anti-Christ in Christianity, Dajjal in Islam. Both will be defeated by the Savior.
Oftentimes, this person to come is called the Messiah, but I hesitate to use that term because it has a very specific Jewish background that is not compatible with the views of the person to come in other religions. “Messiah” comes from the Aramaic “Mashiach,” meaning “Anointed,” as in having been anointed by God to rule and fight (anointing being a part of coronation rituals). As such, Kalki, Maitreya Buddha, Jesus in Islam, Imam Mahdi, and Saoshyant cannot be called Messiahs in the true sense of the term.
Having a savior-figure is, as others have said, very convenient. It gives the faithful hope. In addition is also allows the faithful to bear their persecutions without lashing out - the savior will come and seek vengeance for their grievances, and it is not for the faithful to seek it.
Keep the responses coming! I’d like to hear something from someone who believes in a savior-figure to come. I’m sure they’re out there!
WRS - may he come speedily, in our days! Amen!
Now, there is no other time, the past is memory and the future is creation. Not to say that neither exist, they are a part of what makes up form or dimensionality, simply that we are always evolving.
Usher in an age of enlightenment/evolution in otherwords it’s not a one time event, it’s always happening, but there are milestones that are oftentimes characterized by a great leader who leaves the world irrevocably altered by his/her conciousness. Some say there are more avatars alive at this moment than any other time on Earth. Christ/Buddha would be examples of such a conciousness, as would Ghandi, and then there are others such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Kurt Cobain who also have great impacts but not to a level where they are regarded as demi-gods such as Christ or Buddha.
With violence as those not included in the evolution fear that which they cannot control, and lose their place as the “top” of the food chain.
Sometimes yes, but anxiety at such an event is a misunderstanding of what is occuring.
I do not believe in redemption, it assumes that there was something wrong with the world as though there is anything else to compare it to. The world goes through cycles of growth and you can only make a comparison in retrospect, and then one is not superior to the other, it is merely an evolved version of the other, in that one grew out of the other.
A savior in the form of a person is merely the representative of the change that is occuring. For instance Jesus came about at the beginning of the Age of Pisces, we are now moving into the age of Aquarius, and approaching the end of the Mayan Calendar, whether these events are significant in and of themselves is irrelevant as the belief in them is so strong in the human conciousness that they will be catalysts. I believe we are moving to an awareness of hive conciousness. Humanity has the ability to emulate the strengths of other natural occurences, this can be seen reflected in our technology and behavioral patterns, I think the internet is the precursor to an acceptance of hive conciousness, at which point it will be discarded as all training wheels should be.
I do not believe in Good and Evil in the sense that there is some sort of battle. I believe Good to be a description of the spiritual, the Father conciousness, that which penetrates, and Evil is a description of the Mother the Material the Matrix (Mater in Latin) that which is penetrated or that which reflects the light, also known as the darkness because it casts a shadow. In Kabbalah this is reflected in Kether and Malkuth the opposite ends of the Sefiroth, the tree of life. It’s not so much a matter of one overcoming the other, but of both coming to understand their relationship to the other and an acknowledgement that they are just on different sides of the line that springs from the point at infinity. In otherwords, Polarity.
Erek
Kurt Cobain mentionned in a thread about saviors? This one made my day.
WeRSauron,
Your idea about the Shia beliefs is for a part incorrect and for an other part incomplete. I don’t have time to write a longer post (in this language) about it right now. I shall come back to it later.
But I said already that Muslims don’t believe in a “saviour”. We don’t need an intermediate between God and humans and nobody can “forgive sins” or “make God forgive sins” but God.
To claim otherwise is even blasphemy (you give the power only God posesses at someone else).
Salaam. A
Forgot to say: The Mahdi traditions and also the one you mentioned about dajjaal (= a figure comparable with the anti-Christ idea) are only traditions =
= They are not to be found in Al Qur’an at all (although a Shia Muslim shall make every stretch possible to defend his views of course).
Salaam. A
Aldebaran,
Please do enlighten me as to where I am wrong, including the sources you reference.
As far as Dajjal is concerned, it is true that no mention of him is made in the Qur’an, but neither is there any mention of many fundamental points of Islam (gestures for prayer, what to recite when praying, what the azaan should be, qualifications for one who leads the prayer, etc.). Information on Dajjal may be found in the hadith.
Ask-Imam.com (or www.islam.tc) has some information on the end days from a Muslim perspective. These people are ultraorthodox (or ultra-conservative) Muslims - no radio, no TV, etc. - and I believe they are originally Deobandi. They are based in a madrassa in South Africa. In any case, they base their points on the Qur’an and hadith.
On Dajjal
On Imam Mahdi
On Isa/Jesus
Furthermore, the point of my post was that even if Muslims do not believe they need to be saved or have their sins forgiven by any person (although whether this concept exists or not in Islam is debatable), Muslims do believe that this world needs to be saved from evil (and the Muslim community from the world), which will only come about with the coming of Hazrat Isa/Jesus (and/or Imam Mahdi), who will usher in al-Yom ad-Din (Day of Judgment) or al-Yom al-Akhirah (Last Day), when the living and the dead will be judged.
WRS
I’m sorry, but that is not “debatable” at all. It is an impossibility. No one but God can forgive sins. I would like to hear a Muslim say otherwise and debate with him about that blasphemy.
What you present here as the idea of a “saviour” and as the idea “the world needs to be saved from evil” (I don’t understand quite well what you mean by “and the Muslim community from the world” ) should in fact be relocated to the idea that Islam itself is the saviour of humanity = Al Qur’an saves humanity from the Evil.
In this I fully support the interpretation of one of my former teachers who very clearly described it as follows (my translation):
“Because Al Qur’an is “a warning” and “admonition” or reminder of this warning, it causes the sifting” (= on the Last Day and between those who did wrong or renounced what is good). See for reference (and further information on Jesus in Islam) http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=4599702#post4599702 posts 3 and 11.
There are also Quranic verses who give a direct reference to this role of Al Qur’an (see for example 21;48 and 25,1).
All of this has nothing to do with “return of Isa” or with “reappearance of the Mahdi” and with if you believe in their coming or not. Those who believe stories about/propagate the return of the Mahdi and the return of Jesus (and what shall happen then) make of course a lot of efforts to prove their points. Some of them try to establish a connection with a few Quranic verses and all of them use the traditions. Shia Muslims use other hadith compilations then the Sunni but they often compare their stories with some Sunni traditions to prove that the validity/confirmation of their points is supported by the Sunni traditions. (Of course looking at it from Shia perspective, the Mahdi and his return is an indispensable part of the doctrine).
My suggestion as historian is that these particular traditions (including those on dajjaal) could be - and I would even say: were most likely - influenced by, or are the results of, contacts with Christians and their doctrines/beliefs/stories, who then were transmitted in a Muslim interpretation.
See for my explanation on the historical value of the traditions http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=219860&page=2&pp=30 Post 42.
Salaam. A
Aldebaran, I am afraid I must bow out of any debate on Islam with you. It is evident that the information I have presented has not been considered by you.
Furthermore, I refuse to believe there is any one type of Islam, correct or otherwise. There are many different ways Islam is practiced through history and throughout the world, and no one has the right or divine inspiration to make any judgments regarding the correctness or falsity of any Muslim tradition.
I will not respond to any more posts by you on Islam.
As-salam aleikum wa rehmatullahi wa barakatuhu.
WRS