Posted on 01/02/2005 9:06:26 PM PST by freedom44
I suspect there's some wiggle room . . . for the following reason(s).
1) I don't believe that God will allow even the AntiChrist to fulfill AS MANY PROPHECIES ABOUT THE MESSIAH AS CHRIST DID. Just my belief. Doesn't sound like something God would do.
2) The AC WILL HAVE TO FULFILL A CHUNK OF THE KEY ONES or I don't see how authentic Israelites could accept him as the messiah as they must to fulfill Bible prophecy.
3) I suspect the AC will have to be seen as having been born in Bethlehem; being of the line of David and some other important prophecies, probably.
4) We don't know how much of that fulfilled prophecy stuff will be trumped up hoax on the part of satan and his forces. In any case, Israel, most of the Jews world wide will fall for it hook, line and sinker. That much is clear in Bible prophecies.
5) Israelites already believers in Jesus Christ should know the score if they have studied the prophecies and escape such dellusion. And then we have the 144,000.
just imho.
Thanks for your kind words.
That why if I didn't I meant to include a disclaimer to that effect. Sorry!
bookmark
re: Every knee shall bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord!
Amen, praise God. I believe it will be because the evidence of his existence and his unlimited power will simply be impossible to deny at that time.
You make an apt, fitting point, imho.
However, there's some Scriptural evidence that THOSE WHO SEEK GOD WILL FIND HIM.
No clear evidence that God will be wishy washy about those who didn't bother to seek Him.
There's some Scirptural evidence that those who fail to SEEK/FIND God, will be sorry.
Thankfully, the Hound of Heaven is fairly relentless in wooing us.
Still, particularly willful avoidance, aversion etc. is highly likely to bear an uncomfortable penalty.
No, you have a claim that 500 witnesses saw him. Legally, it's called hearsay. You have no actual witnesses you can produce.
I freely admit I have none. I never claimed otherwise. I can't say the same of you however.
The validity of the documents written by some of those witnesses is the best of any documents from ancient history.
We have many generations of the Illiad later than the original documents--much later--which are accepted as valid, authentic etc.
The New Testament documents are MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH closer to the originals and much MORE VALID AND AUTHENTIC.
There were many of those 500 witnesses running around loose at the time the documents were distributed to the various congregations.
It's still true that, murderers are convicted and sentenced to death on much flimsier evidence than the documentes that attest to NT events.
Check out Josh McDowell. He was a fierce Christian and Bible hater. His alcoholic father beat him and his mother and made Josh a fierce, fiercely hostile hater of any and everything having to do with Christianity--especially the Bible.
He decided to devote a big chunk of his life to proving the documents false.
He had enough integrity to realize he was wrong and became a devout Christian after very, very, very extensive study, including learning the original languages as well as a lot about that era and other languages of that era.
"God didn't create evil."
You are wrong, there, brother. God created everything, even evil. In fact, He is the only one who can truly create in the sense of causing something to come out of nothing. Which is the highest form of creation. If God did not create everything - including evil - He would not be God, right? Someone else would be God.
But that is not what scripture says.
I believe the common belief is that Christians use the "escape clause" of grace to continue being more than fallable humans. They don't appear to be striving for a Christ like walk, but rather say I've accepted Christ as my savior and by the way if I change I lose the fancy home and car so I can continue to live as I always have. That's the hypocrite issue with most folks.
So you believe that Achilles mother dipped him in the river Styx when he was an infant, granting him near invulnerability? I'm glad you brought this up, because it stands as testament to the power of myth over truth.
The New Testament documents are MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH closer to the originals and much MORE VALID AND AUTHENTIC.
Entirely possible. However, just like the aforementioned work by Homer, the authenticity of the document in no way validates the contents.
The contents of the documents is important--The Illiad never pretended to be more than a story.
The New Testament documents assert that they are accurate and true narratives of the events.
The citizens alive at the time made no convincing refutation of those facts. Partly, because there were toooo many witnesses alive who knew the widely distributed narratives to be true.
Check out the facts of the documents.
I have NEVER heard of any remotely fair-minded atheist doing a broad, deep, serious, prolonged study of the documents ever come away with their atheism in tact.
It is written on the hearts of all men, in all the nations. The Father and the Son do not permit themselves to be hidden from anyone. This is affirmed in the Old Testament and the New.
Those who harden their hearts and live in rebellion against their own conscience, will not know Him. Those who open their hearts and listen to their conscience, thereby invite the Holy Spirit into their lives and will know the Father and the Son -- even if they have never heard the name Jesus Christ and know nothing of the Bible. If they take God's hand, he will lead them where they need to go.
Melas, I cannot produce a single living eye-witness to the historical existence of Julius Caesar. Did he therefore not exist? The same is true for Abraham Lincoln. Is he also just a fictional character who never existed?
Just as credible historians attest to the historical existence of Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln, credible historians attest to the historical existence of Jesus Christ -- such contemporary and near-contemporary historians as Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Suetonius. Even Jesus' enemies admitted to his existence, his teaching and his crucifixion. Lucian would be one of them. The writers of the Babylonian Talmud and the Toledoth Yeshu would be others.
You have applied the legal standards for courtroom testimony to the question of the historical Jesus, but what you overlook is that a Supreme Court Justice who incorporates Chief Justice Marshall's Marbury v. Madison conclusions in a contemporary decision has no living eye-witness to the historical existence of John Marshall, only the testimony of written history. Are all judicial opinions based on written precedents older than 100 years invalid based on the hearsay rule?
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