People always loved reading fictional stories about the end of the world.
Bart Ehrman even credits these end-of-the-world "prophecies" to the popularity of gospels comparing them to some end-of-the-world bestseller book of the 1970s (when he was in college) that is now long forgotten for obvious reasons.
Bart Ehrman even credits these end-of-the-world "prophecies" to the popularity of gospels comparing them to some end-of-the-world bestseller book of the 1970s (when he was in college) that is now long forgotten for obvious reasons.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
