Are You Religious?

[geodave]

Well, these arguments have been going on for centuries -- we won't solve them here.

There is a difference between oral traditions written down hundreds of years later in a language like Hebrew, and eyewitness accounts written in Greek. One reason most of us scoff at the Gnostic gospels is because they are not eyewitness accounts, where as Acts, for example, IS. (Also Matthew and John. Mark and Luke were associates of Paul and probably never met Jesus.)

The "this generation" thing kills me. It's been interpreted and reinterpreted over and over and still it doesn't match the facts. The best I can figure is the dispensational-type argument that prophetic time basically has "stopped" during the Christian era, and will start up again at some point when the end is near.

Also, unless Jesus returns during my lifetime, it doesn't really matter to ME PERSONALLY if he ever returns. (Oh, I think he will, eventually, because I trust Luke's account.) The truths about how to live and how to treat people are the same for me as they are for a first-century Christian (who probably believed Jesus was coming back during HIS lifetime. After all, Nero was AN antichrist.)

Frankly, the world has been "ending" since I was born. Serious, honest people told me how it was going to end in 1978, 1982, 1990, 1992, 2000, 2001, 2009 and of course this year. Puh-lease. We don't know the hour or the time. Just because Israel is a country, that doesn't mean anything else will happen in the next 100 years. You need to take the long view -- we just don't live long enough to understand (thanks to that genetic engineering stuff.)

I'm surprised you haven't asked me about the 666 thing yet. I'll see if I can find a good reference (or I'll make one.)