RE: What would it take?
December 10, 2017 at 8:57 pm
(This post was last modified: December 10, 2017 at 9:12 pm by vulcanlogician.)
(December 10, 2017 at 8:20 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: More than any other type of literature, the prophetic literature has never lent itself to a plain reading.
More than 90% of your fellow Christians disagree with that. You're just an exception. The problem is that it isn't so clear when one should read it plainly or dig deeper for meaning. That's why you see the Bible used for so many bad ends. "You will know them by their fruits." It's a bad idea to see some text as authoritative when nobody can agree on what it means. Would you agree, Neo, that one who reads the bible as if it were an authority, yet misunderstands it, is obedient to the wrong authority? If this is the case, you ought to have as many problems with Christianity as anti-theists do.
(December 10, 2017 at 8:20 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: IMHO a reasonable person would recognize that temporal references are particularly difficult - from the seventy weeks of Daniel to famines in Pharoah's dream that Joseph interpreted, and anything in Revelation. I generally avoid putting too much effort into the interpretation of prophecies, even those of Jesus, precisely because they are so cryptic and laden with allusions.
Yes, it reads a lot like a strange work of fiction.
(December 10, 2017 at 8:43 pm)JairCrawford Wrote: But claiming to predict the second coming is ludicrous. It's in the red letters themselves that such a prophecy cannot happen.
Just out of curiosity, do you put more credence in the red letters than elsewhere in the NT?
Do you consider letters that were written by Paul to various churches to be the Word of God?
It just seems that the red letters alone ought to be considered so, if anything; it is a stretch to throw a bunch of letters from Paul into "the Word of God." Those are the words of Paul, aren't they? Is Paul God?
