The prophecies of Jesus...

W

wes

Registered Member
Ok I posted this at philosophyforums.com, but thought I would post it on here to get a different take on it. This one is mainly aimed towards my fellow atheists:

How do you argue/explain the prophecies of Jesus? I understand that some he did predict didnt come true, (the time span of his ressurection and seeing the kingdom of god come with power during his generation) but Ive also heard of prophecies that did come true. Such as the following:

"The fourth angel poured his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire" (Revelation 16:8)

"The sixth angel poured his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up in order to prepare the way for the kings from the east." (Revelation 16:12)

These talk of the drought in Africa, which to my knowledge has come true. But do these prophecies require one to twist words and such much like people do with nostradomus's prophecies? Are they otherwise explanable? Thanks.
 
This is the problem with prophesy: If an entity is able to see the future then the future must be set and unchangeable, that means we have no free will to change it and are doomed to experience whatever prophesised. Another words if God knows I'm going to hell when I die there's nothing I can do to change it.


Problem#2 Let's assume no one can see the future but makes nebulous remarks about the future. The reader in the future tries to connect the dots and connects them to his fancy. Sort of the ink blot tests. Those type of prophesies are constantly re-intepreted to fit the present situation.
 
I agree, but some of the prophecies dont seem like things that you could actually change they seem to be more along the lines of events that happen that arent under our control. Such as the event of the river drying up, that really isnt under our control.
 
wes said:
How do you argue/explain the prophecies of Jesus?
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you might want to read here www.geocities.com/inquisitive79/
"The fourth angel poured his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire" (Revelation 16:8)

"The sixth angel poured his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up in order to prepare the way for the kings from the east." (Revelation 16:12)

These talk of the drought in Africa, which to my knowledge has come true. But do these prophecies require one to twist words and such much like people do with nostradomus's prophecies? Are they otherwise explanable? Thanks.
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have you ever seen any angels doing these things?I didnt.
my guess is people thought back then,there were gods and angels controling the weather so thats what they wrote down.
how would they know what will happen?
theres droughts and floods every year somewhere in the world,its real easy to predict such things if you know what to look for ;) (nature)
ever read the Farmers Almanac,they can predict what the weather will be like all over the country pretty acurately.
secret to it is,watching the animals,how they build their nests etc,dont ask me how animals know how cold the winters gonna be,but they do.
they can also sense it when earthquake is about to hit.
people used to live close to the land then so they knew quite a bit more about nature,than we city slickers do now!
 
...are false.

There is no contest.

None have come true.

All inclusive arguments are bullshit.
 
wes said:
"The sixth angel poured his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up in order to prepare the way for the kings from the east." (Revelation 16:12)
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The Euphrates River has not dried up nor is it in Africa so how can this refer to a drought in Africa?

"Prophesies" are notoriously ambiguous and are often written or 'interpreted' after the event. They also rely heavily upon symbolism which is really just another form of ambiguity.

~Raithere
 
Raithere said:
The Euphrates River has not dried up nor is it in Africa so how can this refer to a drought in Africa?
~Raithere
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lol I realize it isnt, but i caught that on Discovery the other day so I decided to throw it in :p. And thanks Q25 that site is pretty helpful.
 
This is the problem with prophesy: If an entity is able to see the future then the future must be set and unchangeable, that means we have no free will to change it and are doomed to experience whatever prophesised
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An all-knowing God could see the end of the world....and you still have all your "free will"
He just sees the end.
That doesn't mean he controled you to make it happen.......
It just means He is God and saw what you would do.
 
"The fourth angel poured his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire" (Revelation 16:8)
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I'm sorry but I haven't yet seen an angel pouring a bowl on the sun. How can anyone get from the quote above to droughts in Africa or anywhere else for that matter? Of course, idiots would use it to whatever ends they wanted. I'm sure someone's even claimed it's a prophecy regarding 9/11, or the great fire of london. In essence you can use it to mean anything you want it to, and as such it's completely worthless. Something that can mean everything, means nothing.

"The sixth angel poured his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up in order to prepare the way for the kings from the east." (Revelation 16:12)
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Although I would be curious to know exactly what he 'poured' on to the Euphrates to dry it up, I'd also be curious as to why the Euphrates shows no signs of ever having been dried up.

What a bunch of non-sense.....do you atheist's just write anything you like and add "that means".
You'll have to do better than that to "prove" your point to me or any other thinking person.
A all-knowing God could see the end of the world....and you still have all your "free will"
He just see the end.
That doesn't mean he controled you to make it happen.......
It just means He is God and saw what you would do.
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Could we say that god himself has no free will? After all, he already knows everything that's going to be done, and because he knows it's already going to be done, it means he can't do anything else other than that which he already knows is going to be done.
 
I understand that some he did predict didnt come true, the time span of his ressurection and seeing the kingdom of god come with power during his generation
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That prophecy did come true.
He did "rise" on the third day.
The Spirit in Him came back on His disciples and endued them with power"
And as the bible says a day with God is a thousand years, His kingdom is revived in the third day......the "millineum" we are now entering.
I will restore saith the Lord., "In the third day"
Every prophecy shall come true or has already.
You sound as if you believe some have come true........but don't rely on the "atheist" crowd to point you in the right direction.
If you seek Him with all your heart, He will come to you.
But God is not mocked, He knows the secrets of your heart..Heb.4:12
You have to read the scriptures for yourself and let God speak to your heart, also He has sent men to earth with "gifts" to minister "the truth".
Without going through this apointed way, you will not find the truth on your own.
"For it pleased God that He by the "foolishness" of preaching, chose to bring His saints to perfectoin.
As for the ten kings of the east, and the river Eurphrates, ----this hasn't happened yet - in the natural, but in the spiritual type - "A River" signifies waters of life, God's Spirit, and for a season shall be lifted (dried up) and removed from the inhabitants of the earth who remain, durring the coming Great tribulation, leaving them open to demonic possession......the "great feast" where all the fouls of heaven are invited to feed on the flesh of men, during the judgement of the "Great harlot - Babylon" religious system that has usurped God on the earth to men.
 
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Lol, you and your 'demonic possession'. I'd say you were obsessed. Seriously Visitor, has anyone ever referred to you as a fanatic?

Btw, one more question that eluded you:

Could we say that god himself has no free will? After all, he already knows everything that's going to be done, and because he knows it's already going to be done, it means he can't do anything else other than that which he already knows is going to be done.
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Could we say that god himself has no free will? After all, he already knows everything that's going to be done, and because he knows it's already going to be done, it means he can't do anything else other than that which he already knows is going to be done.
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Could the all-powerfull God create a rock so big even He couldn't lift it....?
Come on.....questions like this are just a turn of words.
God is however bound by His Word, that doesn't imply He has no "free will"
To answer seriously, God is soverign in everything He does, choses, creates, and destroys.......this is free will.
Knowing the end from the beginning is omniesence.
This doesn't mean one conflicts with the other.
 
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God is not omniscient. It's a contradiction.

Omniscience
God is called all-knowing. This means that God knows everything but I believe it can be shown that this is a logical impossibility, and that no being can know everything.

1. Epistemology
Sentient beings realize that without verification from other beings than itself or science it cannot know if it is correct in it's world view. It doesn't matter how intelligent or knowledgeable a being is - if that being wants to verify it's knowledge to make sure that it is correct then it needs to look to something more intelligent than itself, or to science. But what if you are the creator of science? You couldn't then use your own construct to test if your own construct was true, it would be an invalid test. So:

If a God was to sit down and ponder the problem of epistemology and wonder whether it does not everything or not, it would realize that it has no way to verify that this is true. How does it know it knows everything? It merely thinks it does. The God has no test, method or possibility of finding out if it does indeed know everything. In short, it does not and cannot know if this is true. God does not know if itself is omniscient or not. God therefore does not know everything and is not omniscient.

2. Potential willed ignorance
Assume, however, that God does know everything. But, for some reason, god choses not to know something. Now, this is silly because god could simply recall that it had told itself to forget something, and then recall it. So, god choses to forget something then choses to forget forgetting it and to never be able to know what it was it has chosen not to know. This convuluted possibility brings us to a problem, wether or not God has done such a thing:


How would God know if had done such a thing?
The answer is that it cannot know if it has done this, in it's own past, or not. As the ultimate and only authority, it cannot "find out" if it has willfully consigned knowledge to the shredders, as it also might have erased knowledge of doing so. The result is the same conclusion as from the argument from epistemology: That God does not know if it knows everything therefore god is not all-knowing. God must doubt, and it's choices are more akin to the guesses of an old man, than the youthful and perfect predictions of a computer programmer.

http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/omniscience.html

If gawd means to destroy the world, he is not all good, but a mass murderer, if he knows the world is going to end, and does nothing, then he's not moral, therefore Visitor your making wild ass assumptions of something you don't know a damn thing about. and that is LOGIC. There's no logic in your arguments my friend just assumptions, and willd ass stories, that you've come to believe. here a little more from Vexen: Theists make many assumptions about the force that causes the Universe to exist. Whether this force or not is God is unprovable, hence we have theism being based on faith. In addition to the basic assumption that God exists, theists make many additional leaps of faith, such as God being all-powerful, emotional, benevolent, that God wants to be worshipped and omniscience along with other particulars of various monotheistic religions. This essay highlights those assumptions and reminds us that the existence of God does not mean that we can arbitrarily make these assumptions about God.

Godless.
 
Assume, however, that God does know everything. But, for some reason, god choses not to know something. Now, this is silly because god could simply recall that it had told itself to forget something
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God can "forget" things...................good point!
He put your sins in the sea of His forgetfullness and remembers them no more.
If you repent, and turn to Jesus.
And as for your vixen and her theist's :........they may asume what they want.
It's not something you can just "figure out".
God made sure of that.
The scriptures are "encrypted" sort of speaking.
The mind of man can't receive the correct interptation of them without God revealing it........supernaturally.
The people God reveals Himself to, are not left to theorize and hypotheize............they don't have to guess about it, they know.
 
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I have an aunt who is a JW and believes in prophesy. As a matter of fact her whole faith in religion hangs on prophesies coming true. Every time I see her she says we are right on schedule for armagedon because of all the clues in the prophetic writtings in the bible.

So I say show me. She starts telling stuff like the north king of such kingdom will fight the king of such a kingdom and there will be signs in the sky etc, etc. After while I stop her and say I dont understand what you're saying. Her responce always is I dont understand because I haven't study the bible and once I study it everything would be crystal clear. That means I have to go to bible studies for ten years so I can figure out what the're saying.

I tell her that's absurd that a book supposedly inspired by god would be so inscrutable to intepretation. All God had to do was prophesize such a simple thing as saying "on tuesday Feb 10th 2004 2PM PST there will be 5.6 magnitude earthquake in LA" If that happened I would be the first guy on my knees asking for salvation.

Why does God talk in such a crypto-enigmatic riddles? If he wanted followers he would have made his prophesies crystal clear.
 
Why does God talk in such a crypto-enigmatic riddles? If he wanted followers he would have made his prophesies crystal clear.
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Not all that calls the name of the Lord are ...the Lord's.
There is a false vine and a true one.
The Wheat and the Tares. He comes to save His own.
The tares will be deceived and receive "strong delusion" believeing a lie and being damned by it.
Because He is here to redeem that which was lost, redeem means bring back to where something once was.
It's all about predestination, not "He that willeth, or him that runneth, but God who shows mercy to whom he will.
Many desire to know the truth and see the events of this day and do not.
I was no more worthy than they, God came to me, thats all a mater of His chosing. Jesus called 12, out of a whole world that was then, the greeks looking for wisdom, the Jews looking for a sign........and He called only 12.
He told the multitudes truth in parables, then later with His disciples alone , ...the meaning of the parables.
He is the Word, every man's word is a lie.
He reveals Himself and shares this glory to be revealed in us this day, to whom He will.
He is still the same, yesterday, today and forever. Heb. 13:8
 
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God can "forget" things...................good point!
He put your sins in the sea of His forgetfullness and remembers them no more.
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But he only did this because he was forced to do it because he could already see that he was going to do it. Of course let's say he decides to ignore what the future is, and change it anyway - then his knowledge of everything is actually corrupt and he doesn't actually know everything. He can only do what he is destined to do, the same as all of us.

I would also ask that if he, god himself, forgot something, then how comes even man would know that he'd forgotten it, unless he told man before he made himself forget about it, in which case man knows more about him than he does.

"Btw god did you know you forgot all about sinners?"

"Can't say I remember that.."

In either case, he obviously doesn't know everything.
 
TheVisitor said:
Why does God talk in such a crypto-enigmatic riddles? If he wanted followers he would have made his prophesies crystal clear.
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Not all that calls the name of the Lord are ...the Lord's.
There is a false vine and a true one.
The Wheat and the Tares. He comes to save His own.
The tares will be deceived and receive "strong delusion" believeing a lie and being damned by it.
Because He is here to redeem that which was lost, redeem means bring back to where something once was.
It's all about predestination, not "He that willeth, or him that runneth, but God who shows mercy to whom he will.
Many desire to know the truth and see the events of this day and do not.
I was no more worthy than they, God came to me, thats all a mater of His chosing. Jesus called 12, out of a whole world that was then, the greeks looking for wisdom, the Jews looking for a sign........and He called only 12.
He told the multitudes truth in parables, then later with His disciples alone , ...the meaning of the parables.
He is the Word, every man's word is a lie.
He reveals Himself and shares this glory to be revealed in us this day, to whom He will.
He is still the same, yesterday, today and forever. Heb. 13:8
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Dont Bogart that joint my friend
Pass it over to me

Must be good stuff
 
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