What if Jesus had failed?

[gall]

Did he will it, or did he also require a "mechanical" process to occurr - Jesus dying for the sins of humanity?

Both.

If the mechanical process was all that was required, then what happens to the souls of men like David, (a man after God's own heart) Abraham, Isac, Jacob, Moses, Daniel, and everyone else not under this new covenant/mechanical/Christian scrifice??? A mechanical sacrifice (like the animals sacrificed before) repersents the cost of sin and the forgiveness God gives. That is why Isaiah records in chapter 1 These thoughts of God:11 “The multitude of your sacrifices—
what are they to me?” says the Lord.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
12 When you come to appear before me,
who has asked this of you,
this trampling of my courts?
13 Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
14 Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
I am not listening.

Your hands are full of blood!

16 Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
17 Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.[a]
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.

18 “Come now, let us settle the matter,”
says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.
19 If you are willing and obedient,
you will eat the good things of the land;
20 but if you resist and rebel,
you will be devoured by the sword.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.


Clearly from what was written above, God is not bound to the mechanical. And, that is exactly what the sacrifices of the jews had become in the days of Isaiah. Empty and mechanical, that is why He did not accept them. This Means God is not obligated to follow through with the forgiveness the sacrifices made in the above passage. for it is not the 'mechanical' sacrifice that brings forgiveness itself, (It is not the process or cermony) but God who gives one forgiveness.

The 'mechanical' part of the sacrifice, is for our benefit and not His. (That is why I believe there will be so many shocked "death bed converts" on the otherside.) Same principle applies under the covenant of Christianity. God is not the 'fool' many think Him to be. He is not bound by the chanting or recitation of a given prayer nor our participation in a given cermony. The sacrifice Christ gave us is for us to know what the Spiritual cost was to God. 'We' are supposed to acknoweledge and respect this sacrifice. Not in the physical beating and death Christ took (which was a very big deal in of itself) but the lengths it took to explain the pain and perhaps even death of the part of God that Requires/Demands Death to all who sin against Him. What it truly cost God we may never know in this life, but what He has shown us to be the cost mirrors the most horrid and feared way to die. (in that time, maybe even in this) with a beating of all beating piled on top of it. Because of this we can have some sense of the price of our attonement, and as such should prompt those who seek a relationship with God to not only look in to what had happened and why, but to also do what has been asked of the believer to do.

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If any action on God's part causes him spiritual pain, that asserts limitations and weaknesses in God. A truly all-powerful and all-knowing being could not go through 'spiritual pain' if his every act is good, just and righteous because there can be no doubt or reluctance.

Look at the Story of the Prodigal son. The 'Father' was pained by the son's decision to leave, and over joyed when he returned. Even though the Father was pained at His sons departure, it does not mean the Father lost his position as the Father, just because he felt pain.

Put another way, it costs God nothing, not time, energy, or even patience, to offer 'atonement', especially when we are 'atoning' for acting according to our nature as he specifically and carefully designed it. It would have been effortless for God to have simply said "I forgive you and require nothing in return", because by definition, God needs nothing in return. The whole Jesus story is a fraud of the worst sort, proven by the fact that the only limitations God ever has are those Christians assign him, so as to make sense of their very senseless fairy tales.

How can you possiably know what it did or did not cost God if you refuse to accept anything written in the bible about it?

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Do you have any numbers for this large proportion of Jews that converted? I can't find anything on it but at the same time there doesn't appear to be any great reduction in the number of Jews in the century following Jesus' death.

Most sources I have seen cite the majority of Jews as not being convinced and therefore remaining Jewish.

So, what was the book of Hebrews? Who was it written to?

What of the recorded arguements between Peter (who was converting people to Judaism first and then to Christianity) and Paul in 2Galations?
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?sea...ersion=NIV

In this chapter Paul (The Gentile apstole) rebuked Peter and the other Apstoles for keeping their distance from the gentile believers and giving all of their time to the Jews, Unles the Gentiles first converted to Judaism.
Even in scripture there is a clear line (in the beginning) between the Jewish side of the Church and the gentile side. In the 1st century only one apstole was needed to minister to the 'gentile' part of the church. The rest spoke to Jewish converts.

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Even if you take the Bible as the Gospel Truth, you are still faced with the harsh reality that Jesus must have failed because his his most critical prophesy failed to come true. In Matthew 24 Jesus is asked to reveal the signs of the end of the age and of his coming. In response to that he gives several examples of things to look for, but more importantly, he puts a strict timeline for when to expect the events of his second coming to have transpired:

"Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened"

This verse, and it's implications, are reinforced in several other locations of scripture.

Now, of course Christian apologists have went to great lengths to explain this away because accepting the implications would thoroughly destroy their entire basis for belief. It's funny how Christians have turned the bible into some sort of super code book that only the most spiritually enlightened can understand.

LOL

Meanwhile, Jesus is at least 1900 years past due, so it might be time for religious fanatics to consider a different religious angle to commit/waste their time with. Scientology is waiting with open arms, I hear.

The 'word' in Koine greek that we translate into 'generation' is:γενεά genea which can mean:
1) fathered, birth, nativity

2) that which has been begotten, men of the same stock, a family

a) the several ranks of natural descent, the successive members of a genealogy

b) metaph. a group of men very like each other in endowments, pursuits, character
1) esp. in a bad sense, a perverse nation
3) the whole multitude of men living at the same time

4) an age (i.e. the time ordinarily occupied be each successive generation), a space of 30 - 33 years

It even has been translated into the word Nation.

You have to remember the bible (most of them anyway) are literal translations, as apposed to contextual translations. Meaning they are translated in such a way as to give a syntaxtually correct translation (as close to the orginal) as possiable. Meaning things like illiterations, sayings, cultural usages of a given word maybe lost in the initial translation. It is up to the reader to either find a contextual translation or a bible with commentary or to do the research for himself.

Seriously all this above...

why do you think you have a shred of a chance to get anyone to accept what you are saying when almost every person that is replying does not believe that what the bible says is the truth. They first would have to accept that for any of your statements to have meaning.

Without that you mine as well be making the most annoying sound in the world...

Seriously it makes you want to kill