A little personal religious history, if anyone is interested. What is yours?

@chisa96 Said

I've done that. It's not the position of catholics within christianity that I don't believe in; it's christianity itself. The bible makes for a hell of a fascinating read, but I believe it to have come from mankind, not god.

@MadCornishBiker Said

Fair enough. The only problem with that is that it doesn't explain the historical and prophetic accuracy. Every prophecy in it came true in it's due time, apart from the few that re still being fulfilled now, thousands of years after they were written down.

Come to that, it doesn't explain why the bible is so consistent, from Genesis to Revelation either.

To me, those are the proofs that it could only have come from God.

@MadCornishBiker Said

Fair enough. The only problem with that is that it doesn't explain the historical and prophetic accuracy. Every prophecy in it came true in it's due time, apart from the few that re still being fulfilled now, thousands of years after they were written down.

Come to that, it doesn't explain why the bible is so consistent, from Genesis to Revelation either.

To me, those are the proofs that it could only have come from God.

@chisa96 Said

I don't see the accuracy that you do. I guess I don't know which specific prophecies you are referring to, but we have no accurate time frame for when the stories of the bible originated, and beyond that when specific events clearly happened after the story was orginated, it follows the same combination of principles that make horoscopes accurate, and there's certainly no divinity behind that.

I can see some consistancy of the bible itself (if we're not comparing what's written to what's followed today), but it was organized and put together and editted many times over throughout history. It was directly put together to paint a specific picture of god, and to put forth a specific standard of living. There's really nothing to suggest that it was put together the way god wanted it to be as opposed to mankind putting it together the way they wanted it to be.

@Pcptrvanion Said

Old Testament
Repeatedly revised, editted, and re-written.
The "final" version was assembled from multiple sources around 500 BCE...long after most of the "prophecies" were supposedly "fulfilled".

New Testament
Written between 50 CE and 120 CE
The "prophecy" about the destruction of Jerusalem was "fulfilled" in 72 CE.
Assembled in the Third Century CE - over 200 books were considered, editted, and re-written before the current 27 were accepted (by men) as being "inspired".

@MadCornishBiker Said

Daniel 9:. 22 And he proceeded to impart understanding and speak with me and say:
“O Daniel, now I have come forth to make you have insight with understanding. 23 At the start of your entreaties a word went forth, and I myself have come to make report, because you are someone very desirable. So give consideration to the matter, and have understanding in the thing seen.
24 “There are seventy weeks that have been determined upon your people and upon your holy city, in order to terminate the transgression, and to finish off sin, and to make atonement for error, and to bring in righteousness for times indefinite, and to imprint a seal upon vision and prophet, and to anoint the Holy of Holies. 25 And you should know and have the insight [that] from the going forth of [the] word to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem until Mes?si?ah [the] Leader, there will be seven weeks, also sixty-two weeks. She will return and be actually rebuilt, with a public square and moat, but in the straits of the times.
26 “And after the sixty-two weeks Mes?si?ah will be cut off, with nothing for himself.
“And the city and the holy place the people of a leader that is coming will bring to their ruin. And the end of it will be by the flood. And until [the] end there will be war; what is decided upon is desolations.
27 “And he must keep [the] covenant in force for the many for one week; and at the half of the week he will cause sacrifice and gift offering to cease.
“And upon the wing of disgusting things there will be the one causing desolation; and until an extermination, the very thing decided upon will go pouring out also upon the one lying desolate.”

Though couch in prophetic language it is not that difficult to follow, The "weeks of years" are groups of 7 years, so each day mentioned herin is a year.

That prophecy not only gave the timing of the Messiah's arrival, but the length of his ministry as well as the ignominy of his death. When it says that the convenant "with Israel" must be kept open for 1 week, again it means 7 years, and iit is no coincidence that The Disgusting thing (Roman religious banners) stood in the vicinity of the Temple 7 years later, and that led to the destruction of the Temple itself. How was that the end of the Covenant with Israel? Because all of Israel's worship centered around the Temple and the Law Covenant prescribed the Temple as the one place where worship could be carried, thus preventing Israel from ever again worshipping God in the way He prescribed.

That prophecy was so accurate that many have tried to prove that it was written after the event, but it has been impossible for them to do so since Christ himself referred to Daniel prophecies.

There is also Matthew 24:3-14. "While he was sitting upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples approached him privately, saying: “Tell us, When will these things be, and what will be the sign of your presence and of the conclusion of the system of things?”
4 And in answer Jesus said to them: “Look out that nobody misleads YOU; 5 for many will come on the basis of my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will mislead many. 6 YOU are going to hear of wars and reports of wars; see that YOU are not terrified. For these things must take place, but the end is not yet.
7 “For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be food shortages and earthquakes in one place after another. 8 All these things are a beginning of pangs of distress.
9 “Then people will deliver YOU up to tribulation and will kill YOU, and YOU will be objects of hatred by all the nations on account of my name. 10 Then, also, many will be stumbled and will betray one another and will hate one another. 11 And many false prophets will arise and mislead many; 12 and because of the increasing of lawlessness the love of the greater number will cool off. 13 But he that has endured to the end is the one that will be saved. 14 And this good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations; and then the end will come."

Interestingly this is a dual prophecy, as some are, and not only applied to the end of the Jewish system of worship, but also to Jesus presence in Kingdom power, something which according to other prophecies was to start in 1914, very much running into our time and beyond. Verses 10 - 14 are of particular note today and explains why there are so many Apostate versions of Christianity around, as well as why the one group of true followers of Christ are busily engaged in their preaching and teaching work throughout the globe, even in lands where their work is banned. "the end" being Armageddon.

Talking of which, I for one am getting quite excited about that. I believe it is slowly increasing in its operation right now, and though I cold be wrong I see it as entirely possible that the current financial situation could well be the spark which causes governments to turn on religion, since it is such a rich source of funds for them, should they decide to "rob" it of it's lands and goods. That is part of the prophecy in Revelation 17, and as I say I can see it on the horizon, though I could be wrong. Prophecy is not always recognised until it has been fulfilled.

Is Armageddon something to fear? Well not if you follow the advice repeated in Revelations 18:4 "And I heard another voice out of heaven say: “Get out of her, my people, if YOU do not want to share with her in her sins, and if YOU do not want to receive part of her plagues".

@chisa96 Said

The problem with the first is the problem with any horoscopes though, not to dumb it down with comparisons silly starcharts as it's far more interesting and complex than that. It is inevitable that every civilization is going to experience hardships, there are going to be attacks, it will eventually fall. Whether it's viewed as a punishment or a cleansing of sin is only a matter of perspective; there will be hardships anyway. And an end of a culture by means of occupation of a stronger one was almost inevitable, particularily in the early days of our history. There are many groups that met their end in this manner. It's easy then to see these things happening and tie them to previous writing and calculate the appropriate time conversions to make it all fit together.

The writings that can't be made to fit are simply lost to time, but had history taken a different path and the holy city was instead buried in a sandstorm and then rebuilt (or whatever example suits you) the writings that made those predictions would be the ones that people deemed important enough to preserve through time. Even today people make many predictions about what course our future will take, and it's inevitable that some will turn out to be true. If those are the only writings that people have access to a couple thousand years from now when our lifetime is lost to the obscurity of time, then those who made those predictions too will seem prophetic.

As for the second, well... of course. Of course there will be war and famine and tradgedy, and people will persecute others for their differences and beliefs. Or course there are going to be groups that follow different messiahs. These things occur throughout our entire history; they occurred at the time he spoke those words. It's not so much a prediction as an observation of human nature. You can pick a multitude of points throughout human history and apply his words to the events of that time.

As far as fearing armaggedon should you be right and the various other beliefs wrong? Well, the best a person can do is to work hard to be a decent human being and to do what good they can for the world. If that's not enough, then... well, I guess we're simply s*** out of luck. What else can a person do? It's not faith if you only follow it out of fear of being wrong no matter what you really think and believe about it. God would know our hearts and be able to tell the difference anyway.

@MadCornishBiker Said

There is no problem with the prophecy from daniel, it is easy to understand and detailed in what ti foretells, all of which happened.

Yes I agree there almost always has been, but never so many and never so violent also never so widely known of. Jesus prophecy could only have been fulfilled in the we hear of wars and reports of wars, in any other time than this because there were not such good communications as there are now. In a very real sense that shows the power of the prophecy.

The same goes for disease, famine and natural disasters. They have always happened, but not with such regularity, nor so well known about. In fact modern ability to travel easily has increased the spread of disease a lot. Again that shows the power of the prophecy, not only foretelling what would happen but also that people would not be able to avoid knowing about them.

@chisa96 Said

There's nothing really to counter in your counter reguarding daniel. You simply disagree then? There's nothing further to discuss there if you bring up no more counterpoints. It's a shame really, because that one really is worth more discussion than revelations imo. Revelations is too easy, and all the points of both sides have been so covered already.

But as far as the other, I don't see our global awareness as demonstrating any power of the prophecy.

As far as disease and famine, they are actually much less widespread and more easily controlled. We're obviously not disease-free worldwide, but we are far better off today than we were even a century ago, let alone comparing to 2,000 years ago. New weaknesses have cropped up, but we are in a much better position to deal with them. I could be proven wrong, but I don't see how we would ever again experience something as decimating at the bubonic plague, and even if we did we stand a good chance of being able to contain it before half our population is rotting in the streets.

Wars today are also nothing in comparison of violence and bloodshed to taking your soldiers out on the field with swords and hacking each other to pieces until one is side is destroyed. At the least they are about the same in the level of violence and destruction.

To put it quite simply, the world is just wider now than what it was when they made the prophecies. That's really all there is to it; the world now encompasses the whole globe, and even if it didn't the signs of the end times would only be drawn from the limits of their known world. They believed the bubonic plague to be god's judgement arriving just as strongly and should we ever establish some intergalactic communication they would believe the wars between various planets to signal the same. You can apply the "revelations" to most any time frame you wanted and you will find the kind of suffering it describes.