This is the most asinine, ignorant, immature thing I’ve read in weeks.
You should respect the beliefs of an organized religion, whether you believe them yourself or not. It has nothing to do with “VERY nasty things”, it has to do with respecting other people as people. YOU expect YOUR beliefs to be respected regardless of their merit, why would you deny this treatment that you would demand of others to others?
Are you so immature, bagkitty, that you do not respect any person with whom you disagree? Or do you claim divine knowledge which allows you to decide exactly which religion or belief is worthy of respect, and which isn’t? You are certainly no smarter or more intuitive than anyone else, so what makes you able to decide which beliefs are allowed respect and which aren’t?
I ask again: Do you not respect ANY person with whom you disagree, on any matter? Or only a religion with which you disagree? And if you answer yes to one and no to another, please tell me the difference between the two.
I wouldn’t even have to be an atheist to challenge some of those “prophesies”. How about a Jew? They made up the prophesies in the first place and are unconvinced about Jesus fulfilling them. To wit:
Matthew 2:5-6, the author talks about Jesus coming from the town of Bethlehem (I’ll ignore that he is called a Galilean and Nazarene throughout the gospels). Micah 5:2 discusses Bethlehem Ephrathah as a person, as does 1 Chronicles 4:4. Why doesn’t Matthew include “Ephrathah” when reciting the prophesy?
Matthew 2:15 tells us about Jesus leaving Egypt. He refers to Hosea 11:1 describing a past event, the Mosaic exodus. Exodus 4:22 calls Israel God’s son.
Matthew 21:5-7 has Jesus riding both a colt and donkey into Jerusalem. I want to know how he did this. Circus-style with a foot on each animal? Zechariah 9:9 uses parallel structure to refer to a colt as a baby donkey. Matthew couldn’t grasp this grammatical concept and got confused, although Mark and Luke only list the colt. BTW, Zechariah 9:10 refers to a military leader riding said animal.
Matthew 23:35 tells us Zechariah Berekiah was murdered. ZB in Zechariah 1:1 was not murdered. There was a Z (no B) in 2 Chronicles 24:20-22 murdered in the fashion Matthew describes. Oops.
Isaiah 53 is probably the most famous prophesy. However, Isaiah refers to the nation of Israel as the servant in 41:8 and 49:3-6 (Israel will be a light to the Gentiles). Besides, the verses really don’t describe Jesus accurately. Take 53:7. He was not a sheep led to the slaughter, he knew full well what was going on (remember Gethsemane?). Plus he opened his mouth quite often, especially lecturing Pilate in John.
Of course, I would be remiss without mentioning Matthew 1:22-23 where Matthew mistranslates “virgin” for “young woman” in Isaiah 7:14 (the baby in question was born in 8:3). Perhaps Matthew should’ve left it alone, it’s hard to have a virgin birth and claim lineage from David (to fulfill 2 Samuel 7:12-14).
Now, I would be more impressed if the OT addressed these extremely Jesus-specific prophesies:
Luke 24:46-47 Where was it written that the Messiah would rise in 3 days and preach to all nations?
Matthew 2:23 Where was it written that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene?
John 7:38 Which scripture said whoever believed in Jesus would get the Holy Spirit?
Jude 14-16 Where did Enoch say God would be a judge? (okay, that was a trick question, it quotes the non-canonical 1 Enoch 1:9)
Hey, HubZilla–what exactly was it your friend was saying? That Japanese psychics would have been stoned, if they had lived in ancient Israel, and had practiced psychic readings then and there? If so, true, but kind of irrelevant. Or was your friend saying that Japanese psychics ought to be stoned today, in the 21st Century, based on what the Bible says?
Basically, the Japanese psychic would be stoned today.
Okay, a little more background. We are both Godzilla fans, and the newer series of movies (1989-1995) have a psychic that communicates with Godzilla. Okay, not so much communicates, but can sense when Godzilla comes near.
Anyway, I didn’t like the character because she did some bad things, and she should’ve died in the ending of one of the movies (set in 1996). He retorted that it didn’t matter, that she would be stoned later as a psychic because the bible said so.
That’s pretty much the entire context. So I retorted the Japanese wouldn’t care what an old Hebrew book said.
Better catch a flight to Israel and tell that to the Jews and Palestinians trying to kill each other, then. Oh, and on the way, you might want to talk to that Governor?/Congressman? from a few months back who refused to meet with the Dhali Lhama because he was a “cult leader”…
(Sorry for the lack of details on that last one, but it got paged out of my short-term memory)
These are recorded as God’s direct words (Ex 20:22). Why would God condone slavery at all? Didn’t he just free “his people” from that immoral institution in Egypt? Slavery has been condemned by humanity over 100 years ago, and today there is nothing but revulsion that the cruel practice ever existed. What happened to the commandment “Thou shalt free thy slaves”?
Why was Moses, Paul, et al so virulent against homosexuality, yet silent on the abolition of slavery?
HubZilla, it sounds to me like your friend is pretty confused. Maintaining a decent respect for the deeply held beliefs of others is all well and good, but if someone is seriously maintaining that present-day Japan is governed according to the Mosaic Law, I think even the most sweetly reasonable of persons would be tempted to reply (to quote a little Scripture of our own): “If ignorance were cornflakes, you’d be General Mills”.
True there is a fishing village on the bare rock that was Tyre but that is in full keeping of the prophecy.
Hmm, a fishing village on the bare rock that is Tyre. Spreading their nets on the bare rock of Tyre. Hmm. It would seem the fishermen spreading those nets would have to erect a make-shift village in that area to live but the ancient city of Tyre is in the water. It is “no more.”
From your link:
From the Bible:
This prophecy has been completely fulfilled. Ezekiel wrote it around 570 B.C. The destruction took three waves but it was done over history so God could be proven.
Dunno how it is where you live, Rjung, but around these hyar parts, “people who are trying to kill each other” are not generally considered to be “thinking, rational, grownup human beings”.
As for the congressman–um, well, he’s a congressman, for heaven’s sake. And apparently he does this sort of thing frequently. It was Minnesota House Rep. Arlon Lindner, R-Corcoran.
Let’s put Ezekiel 26:12 back in a little context, shall we? (As I had already done in my earlier post.)
Once again, this time with emphasis added:
Ezekiel 26:21 does not say “Tyre will be reduced to a lowly fishing village”; it says Tyre “will be no more” and “will never again be found”. A town of more than 70,000 people is hardly a “bare rock”. And this town of 70,000+ is in exactly the same place as the Phoenician city, which was supposed to have been destroyed, by Nebuchandezzar, so thoroughly that it would never be found again. “Your city will be wiped off the face of the Earth so thoroughly that it will never be found again” would not normally be taken to mean “Centuries from now people will have trouble seeing the ruins of your homes and places of business, what with the thriving city which will still exist there being in the way and all”.
So, we have here a prophecy, supposedly fulfilled, which states Nebuchadnezzar would do such-and-such. The “fulfillment” of this prophecy is that a bunch of other guys–who were not Nebuchadnezzar–also failed to do what the prophecy said Nebuchadnezzar would do.
If that’s your idea of a “hit”, what would you consider to be a “miss”?
These are recorded as God’s direct words (Ex 20:22).**
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Pardon? Did I say that those were the direct words of God. I posted the biblical verses that you had condensed and rephrased. I do not believe that these are the “words of God”, but rather words from people who worshiped God. Not having the foresight to see that slavery would be condemned some 2500 years later, they wrote down a law that said you could not kill your slave and not be punished. This is not the only law in the bible that concerns the treatment of slaves. If read today they seem cruel, but back then the Jews were more just to slaves than anyone else, just by the fact that they included them in the law. That may be because they had the myth** about escaping Egypt.
I personally do not have a dog in that race.
** a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon
Actually, the current town of Tyre isn’t on the same exact spot but is near the ancient mainland city. I hardly think what is there now is a “thriving city” considering the considerable influence and power Tyre had in its heyday. They are the famous purple-dye folks who built Carthage, Rome’s biggest competitor in the west. What is there now is what it was reduced to.
The prophecy clearly says that “many nations” will be involved in the destruction of Tyre. Nebuchednezzar sieged the mainland city for 13 years. After breaking through the gates he found the city nearly empty. Most of the inhabitants had moved to an island 1/2 mile off shore. Nebuchednezzar destroyed the mainland city in 572 B.C. He was specifically named in the Bible to do this.
In this prophecy, “he” refers to Nebuchednezzar specifically, who was alive at the time of the prophecy. “They” refers to the “nations” that would conquer Tyre like waves.
In 332 B.C., Alexander the Great, who did not have his naval fleet, wanted to conquer the island city of Tyre. To do this, he stripped the mainland city and threw the debris along with dirt and trees in to the water to create a land bridge to the island.
Although the Tyrians fought him off for awhile, once the land bridge was completed he conquered the island city.
Finally, after 1600 years of rebuilding and getting knocked down, the Muslims conquer them through-and-through in 1291 A.D.
This once great city, the commercial center of the Mediterranean, is now a place for fishermen to dry their nets. Exactly as the prophecy predicted. This prophecy is true in the minutest detail.
“American has had many Presidents. The first was George Washington. He led the brave patriots of the Continental Army, who defeated the mightiest power in the world, Great Britain, to win America’s independence. They defeated the Nazis and withstood the tyranny of the Soviet Union for two generations, until they defeated the forces of evil for all time and made the world safe for freedom and democracy and justice and peace for ever and ever.”
There you go. A statement which is true right down to the minutest detail.
All, right. Try this one. On Inauguration Day, 1789, someone says:
“Today George Washington is sworn in as our first President–but surely not our last. He was the leader of our brave patriot forces who won our independence from Great Britain. Thanks to them, the threat of war between America and Britain is ended forever. Our nation’s unity will endure, and war will never again ravage our country’s soil!”
An astonishing prophecy, no? And true down to the minutest detail!
That’s 60 people I personally want to shake hands with. HH The Dalai Lama wrote a book on Jesus called The Good Heart. It was about how Jesus taught so many good things that people of any religious persuasion can learn from. He compared it to Buddhism in many ways.
FWIW, us Buddhists believe that Jesus was a Boddistiva, an enlightened man who gave up Nirvana to come and help others until everyone reaches enlightenment.
Certainly the Bible, as well as the Koran, the Vedas, even Homer and Ovid, have useful lessons for us today, atheist, agnostic or religious.
Hey, I’m an atheist, but at least the last seven of the Ten Commandments make a lot of sense to me.
Scriptures of all kinds try to do two things - explain the world and man’s place in it (including after death), and set out rules for a proper and ethical life.
I find wanting the various explanations of the world given in the scriptures of various religions, and I disagree with many of the rules set out in them, but there are many I agree with. If you take G-d out of the equation, the various holy books can be seen as the collected wisdom of a people. And as many of our day-to-day issues haven’t changed all that much in the past 3000 years, particularly as regards dealings with other people, a lot of the wisdom is still valid today.
Hey, I’m an atheist, so the idea of anybody getting all worked up over “holy land” just makes me roll my eyes. I still say give the whole thing over to Disney and let them run it as a theme park.
This wouldn’t actually be a prophecy. Just a summary of events that had happened before I-day, and a reasonable guess at what would happen in the future.
Ezekiel’s prophecy was written around 570 B.C. The first part of the fulfillment occured in 538 B.C. The final blow occured in 1291 A.D. Over 1800 years passed between the prophecy and the actual fulfillment–about six times the age of the U.S. Doesn’t seem like a lucky guess too me, especially considering all the prophecies that were fulfilled. At the time of the prophecy, there was no reasonable reason to believe that Tyre would fall–it was a major city.
If you wanted to impress me, I would want you to tell me which major U.S. city (NY, San Fran, Chicago, Miami, etc.) will fall. Not only the city’s fate, but how this will happen (invasions, weak economy, drought, ?) and what the city’s final destiny will be. And in a couple of thousand years, if you got all the details right, then I’d be impressed.
I still say give the whole thing over to Disney and let them run it as a theme park.