Any Christians out there?

6  2012-06-18 by vaughngoeshard

So all the shit thats been happening...tell me how it ties into revelation. im getting ideas but wanna know what you guys think

33 comments

Honestly, you are asking a lot here. I don't want to sound presumptuous by saying that "whats been happening" is specific in Revelation.. however, it seems to me that we're actually seeing the lead-in to the one-world system that is mentioned in Revelation. Currently, I think that the antichrist is not going to arise until the one world government has been established. We are currently in the battle for our freedoms, however we're going to lose the battle (but that does not mean we should not resist this evil empire that is in the works).

I'd like to suggest some great videos that will help you better understand where we're headed, and the philosophies being propagated to lead us into the new age. A lot of weird stuff could happen. Read your Bible, understand that in the days of Noah, human DNA was corrupted. Noah and his family were the last people of unblemished genetics. This is why God chose his family to survive the flood. I'd love to share more if you're interested. The Bible says that the last days will be "as the days of Noah were". So what has happened once back then, is going to happen again. I'm going to end with one of my favorite/eye-opening videos. I hope you watch it and understand these are extremely well-educated Christians who have put this presentation together.

Age of Deceit: Fallen Angels and the NWO

good vid.

Thank you I'm working right now I'll watch the video when I get home . And ask questions if I have any and I'd that's okay

jdub is on the track I am on, I think. Just remember that only the Father knows the date of His Son's glorious Second Coming, but we're clearly told to watch for the signs. Watching Age of Deceit will introduce you to some interesting people, it's a good jump off point. And I second jdub's advice, study the Bible. God is good and He gave us a great source of knowledge and comfort in His word.

I hope you find it insightful. Please don't hesitate to ask me anything. I've studied many of the claims made in that video, and will do what I can to help confirm or better understand any claims made in the video. Some of it is hard to follow, but overall they do a great job of not over-complicating things.

Don't forget, we could win the battle and in say, a century from now there could be another one that we lose. Nothing says it's THIS battle. Just that we will lose a battle and get world government.

I just posted this in reply to the similar question...just my two cents...

Giants/aliens/inter-dimensional beings, I believe they are all one in the same as did our ancestors.

The way I see it playing out is this year there is a huge attack (false-flag, aliens, or both) which quickly escalates to a world-wide conflict. Throw in a couple earthquakes or tsunamis and you have a global crisis. This where the Bible becomes an important tool to understand the events.

The NWO will have a fantastic opportunity to seize the chaos ('order out of chaos') and implement a world leader (IMO Prince William , a.k.a. the Antichrist) to bring peace to all nations. Whether that is a peace treaty with aliens or simply a treaty among nations or both, it really does not make a difference.

Next, Islam's long awaited 12th Imam 'Mahdi' will emerge and take the the role of the false prophet described in Revelations and Daniel, along with the emergence of the beast (the next Pope, Bertone) to create an unholy trinity and to implement a world religion. This evil trifecta will take us into the battle of Armageddon which will be the war to end all wars.

Islamic prophecy says Imam Mahdi will fight against the Antichrist (al-Masih ad-Dajjal); some sects have him fighting alongside Jesus, others have him fighting alone. It also says the Antichrist will have only one eye; ring any bells?

Which bell is the one eye thing supposed to ring?

That eye which hovers above the masonic pyramid.

Preterism is a Christian eschatological view that interprets prophecies of the Bible, especially Daniel and Revelation, as events which have already happened in the first century A.D.

There has historically been general agreement with non-preterists that the first systematic preterist exposition of prophecy was written by the Jesuit Luis de Alcasar during the Counter Reformation. Moses Stuart noted that Alcasar's preterist interpretation was of considerable benefit to the Roman Catholic Church during its arguments with Protestants, and preterism has been described in modern eschatological commentary as a Catholic defense against the Protestant Historicist view which identified the Roman Catholic Church as a persecuting apostasy.

Just found it interesting that this viewpoint that Revelation is not a continual unfolding prophecy was partially or mostly spearheaded by a Jesuit to give fuel to the Counter Reformation. Personally I haven't looked much into Revelation but does anyone really need an ancient prophecy to notice that the pope is not a nice guy?

edit bad grammar

There is catholic prophecy that needs to come about yet, not to mention other traditions. I'll mention two that may be tied together.

First, that the current pope is the last antipope before Peter takes the throne. You can search for Malachi, the priest who gave this vision. Persecution of the church is a large part of the tribulation, and you can see the beginnings of this in the paedophilia and banking and mafia scandals - other things as well, I would imagine, and that will be revealed, to result in at least a general flight from Rome.

The second is the rise of the Lily King in France, who will conquer most or all of Europe, reinstall the pope (likely to be Peter, as above) in Rome and continue on into the middle east. He will die in Jerusalem. Then comes the antichrist, or perhaps the antichrist will be an enemy of his who obtains the fullness of his power after the Lily King's death.

I think people are attempting to correlate Revelations, with the state of the world today, in order to solidify the validity of the Bible. In order for one world government you must have one world religion. Or else, people's gods will cause wars as always.

My thing is...I truely believe angels, gods, and demons are all just aliens. Different life forms previous humans didn't understand as such. We have absolutely no definitive fact that we are the only conscious beings in the Universe.

To add to that; we have no way of knowing how advanced an alien race may be or what they would look like. Assuming that they would even be from this dimension.

If there is a Judeo/Christian one and Almighty Biblical God you should have nothing to worry about as long as you repent and believe in Jesus or whatever the book tells you.

I think everyone has historically thought their time was the end of times mostly because of ego. The one world religion is possibly money?

Aliens or other dimensional beings are possibly a scientific explanation of angels and demons.I think science and religion should help compliment each other instead of having to pick one or the other. There is more to religion and spirituality then most atheists can see. They are too wrapped up in their own illusion to see the bigger picture.

I have struggled with faith (and religion) for many years. I have written off religion completely. I have come to peace with my decision to be agnostic. It is the only personal decision which offers the balance that my hope and my skepticism can coexist with & endure.

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Christians have been looking to the heavens for Jesus return since he was taken up. It has nothing to do with the Left Behind Series. Many Christian theologians studied the end times prophecies contained in Revelation, Daniel, Matthew, 2 Thess, etc for thousands of years now. Your statement is obviously not based on research.

Revelations i.e. the "apocalypse" certainly did not refer to an "end times" in a sense of destruction of the world as you seem to be referring to. Think about the world revelations. This has nothing to do with destruction of anything besides perhaps ignorance. Apocalypse in Greek meant "The lifting of the veil." Seems interesting to me that prophets spoke of such a time, as the Maya people did as well. Quetzylcoatyl represented the birth of language, art and music in humans. To me, it's prefectly obvious that he is back, and lifting of the veil and the revelations have already begun due to the simple fact that we're having this conversation. The internet is the ultimate tool for mankind's communicative and artistic endeavors. It has only just begun. We live in a truly phenomenal time.

Christianity is a conspiracy. Over and over again, a small group of people, mostly men, gather in secret and decide what is good for the flock. Who translates the Bible? Who interprets archeology? Who interprets all the gobbledegook? Who makes this shit up? There are some good researchers who disassemble all of this and shed light on what has really been going on with these religions and myths. The Bible Unearthed is a good place to start, by top notch academic archeologists

There is no reason better than a decades-long game of telephone to suspect Jesus was even a real person.

Christianity is just a tool of oppression most akin to an infectious lobotomy; It is a scam at the very best. We are all capable of writing our own stories, but christianity teaches us to be happy with not even being the main character in it.

So what do I think? I think there is no good reason to believe Jesus was even a real person. We need to first establish this before we can even go on discussing this absurd sky-wizard hypothesis any further.

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See, I guess that is where we disagree. I simply treat others the way I would like to be treated, and if I was tricked and brainwashed into being a gleeful slave to a fiction zombie sky-wizard, I would hope so badly that people would try to help me to snap out of it. It makes me sad to realize there are people like you out there that would shame people just for trying to help me.

If this "movement" is wrong, how about linking some evidence Jesus was even a real deluded rabbi roaming that area at that time?? How could I possibly be expected to take you seriously when you can't even make a stab at validating your belief?

Christianity is just another hypotheses about the world, and frankly it is an absurd and unfounded one. It deserved no special ride, it is just another hypothesis about the world. Christians believe that some invisible sky-wizard sacrificed himself to himself to appease himself to save us from himself, and I am being disrespectful simply for calling this sky-wizard hypothesis what it is?

If you want to have a nice conversation with me, please provide some sort of evidence that Jesus was even a real person.

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There is just not reason to suspect Jesus was even a real person, so you ride off on your imagined high-horse to save your ego from finding out you have been lied to.

You wont even try to defend your beliefs yet you expect people to respect them?

There is, at the very least, solid circumstantial evidence to support a historical figure named Jesus. There are writings obviously from the early Christian Church (gospels, epistles, etc.) but more importantly there are several mentions of him within 50- 150 years of his death. For something that happened almost 2000 years ago that's not too shabby my friend.

Now yes some say Josephus has been tampered with, and it does seem like it's possible part of his writing may have had something added to it. However, when Josephus is quoted by Origen and Eusebius, in 250 AD and 324 AD respectively, the quote reads exactly the same. I know, I know, those pesky early Christian leaders changed it. Okay... but why? There was no need to change it. No one doubted the historical existence of Jesus at that point. The idea that Jesus was not a historical figure is relatively modern. Of course the Son of God thing was absolutely up for debate. In addition, the early Christian Church went through several periods of heavy persecution. They were not a group that wielded all this great power and altered/ hid documents from history. Now I agree we can make that argument with the Roman Catholic Church but we're still looking around 300-500 AD (ish) before that's something to consider.

Thallus was a historian who wrote a 3 volume history and while no copies of that history remain it was quoted by other writers. Such as the Christian historian/ apologist Julius Africanus in 221 AD, when he wrote his history of the world. The Thallus' account is compelling because it supposedly discussed events that are said to have occurred at the death of Jesus, in the Gospels.

There is more of course like Lucian's satire Passing of Peregrinus which is later than the previous two examples of course.

But the point is the same, these secular historians/ commentators mention Jesus. Now it's hearsay I guess, none of them hung out with Jesus I will give you that. But don't you think if someone really thought the guy didn't exist that they wouldn't have just flat out said that? They viewed Jesus the way many modern people view Charles Manson, Joseph Di Mambro, Charles Humphrey, or even David Koresh. He was a cult leader in their eyes, if they didn't believe he was real, they would have said.

You say "there are several mentions of him within 50- 150 years of his death." But this is just not true. There are a few mentions of the "christ" or "christu" (which just means anointed, or oily). But there are none, not one poet, eyewitness, historian or anyone, no one calls Jesus by name for the entire first century. This makes his alleged story a hundred+ year game of telephone played by illiterate desert people. This is not evidence.

Josephus is the closest to an eye-witness by far, and he was born at least 5 years after Jesus was allegedly crucified. Do you think a 15-25 year long game of telephone would hold up in court? Why should this be considered evidence?

Everyone else you are listing was born even after Josephus, making them less and less reliable. These people mention Christians, not Jesus Christ. The best evidence you have been able to present is the account of a decades long game of telephone made by Josephus, as well your assertion that "if they (historians I am assuming) didn't believe he was real they would have said so".

But no one ever said he was real till hundreds of years after he allegedly died, merely that christians followed his alleged teachings. The only evidence that a bunch of illiterate idiots believed a man named Jesus died lifetimes before they were even born, even though they could have no way of knowing such things. The beliefs of illiterate desert-people is not the same as evidence, at all. Neither is a decades long game of telephone.

There very may well have been some sort of deluded rabbi roaming that area at that time lying to people, but there is no evidence to believe this better than a decades-long game of telephone played thousands of years ago by uneducated desert-people. The account of Josephus is by far the closest thing to evidence, and he was born at least 5-6 years after Jesus allegedly died.

*ninja edit for punctuation

1) The Josephus account mentions him by name.

2) "...the man who was crucified in Palestine because he introduced this new cult into the world...Furthermore, their first lawgiver persuaded them that they were all brothers of one another after they transgressed once for all by denying the Greek gods and by worshipping that crucified sophist himself and living under his laws." -Lucian, The Passing Peregruis

Lucian pretty obviously is talking about Jesus, whether he uses his name or not.

3) We don't know if Thallus referenced him by name since the original histories appear to be lost to us. But we do have reason to believe that he describes and tries to explain the events that the Gospels say happened when Jesus was crucified.

4) When Justin Martyr writes to a Jew named Trypho in 147 AD and references Jesus by name and says, "You Jews knew that Jesus was risen from the dead, and ascended into heaven, as the prophecies did foretell was to happen." Now Justin Martyr is obviously a Christian, but within 120 years of when Jesus is believed to have died, he feels sure that Trypho 1) knows who Jesus was, 2) knew he was a real person who lived and died.

The Bible is far from a game of telephone and the fact that you said that shows me you've not done much research on the history of it. Scribes lovingly and carefully transcribed the Torah and the New Testament. Yes stuff was added but luckily we have remnants from those text (in particular the New Testament) that come from pretty close to the time they were written. So we're actually able to see where revisions were made or if they were.

The Roman Catholic Church did indeed change their Bible. The Greek Orthodoxy though held onto theirs.** Which worked out, because they were forced to flee under persecution from the east and many of them came into Europe, and brought their Bibles with them. It's these copies of the Bible that showed people the errors in the Vaticanus. Now flash forward a few hundred years and we've discovered more fragments of the New Testament and the Torah, which enables us to make further comparisons. And a good Bible with translation notes will tell you when/ if there are places that the manuscripts don't agree. And why they chose a particular translation over another.

5-6 years is nothing. My great-grandmother died 6 years before I was born, but I know she existed. People talked about her. Josephus' parents were alive when Jesus was around, he would have heard about him. Someone within one generation of a person is pretty close to the person, in particular when we're talking about history.

You really don't seem interested in truth. You seem interested in being snarky and belittling people you've never known (no matter what time period they lived in). And don't forget, Christians believed Jesus was a real person and not just illiterate ones.

edit:** I'm not saying the Greek Orthodox Church didn't change the Bible at all, but it was closer to the fragments we have from before Codex Vaticanus. Sorry I realized that what I was saying wasn't clear, I shouldn't rush.

You are right, Josephus does Mention Jesus by name in a book that was was completed in 93 C.E that has numerous signs of forgery. Jesus was an extraordinarily common name and Josephus does not mention a Jesus of Nazareth, but it indeed could have been referring to him. This however, is not evidence because it was written like 60 years after Jesus alledgedly died, which is even less credible than the 10+ year long game of telephone I claimed earlier. I had misremembered, Josephus does indeed call him by name only like 60 years after he allegedly died.

The point I am trying to make, is that if you presented this evidence you use as evidence for Jesus in Court, you would get laughed out of the room. If there was some dude drawing crowds and preforming miracles we would expect every literate person to have been writing about it, and for early Christian to have been preserving these hundreds if not thousands of pieces of evidence. All we have though is a few passing reference to some man with a very common name that has evidence of forgery in it... that was published about 60 years after Jesus allegedly died.

I guess Christians and nonchistians just have different expectiations for what constitutes as evidence. To a christian, a decades long game of telephone is all the evidence they need to devote their loves to some alleged invisible sky-wizards.

Do you at least understand why so many consider Josephus to be the only thing anywhere close to evidence, and why and then can easily throw it out because he was born so much after Jesus allegedly died? A person is not "pretty close" to someone they were not born in the same generation when we are looking for proof of something.

I am obviously aware of the forgery accusations concerning Josephus. But no I don't accept that many consider Josephus as the only close source. Most historians understand that in history having indication from people 200 years after someone existed is pretty good actually. Having manuscripts of ancient documents within 200 years of the original, historically, is actually quite close.

There is some archeological evidence that indicates Jesus was a man, such as James' ossuary. Which lists him as, "The son of Joseph, and brother of Jesus." I know those are common names, but it is consistent with an ossuary from the time James was said to have died (AD 62). The language used limits it to before 70 AD as well. The fact that James' brother is listed on his ossuary indicates that his brother, Jesus, was an important figure in 1st century Jerusalem. Jesus' father's name is Joseph and he has a brother named James.

Now, the coffin was supposedly excavated from Southern Jerusalem years ago. It was not dug up by archaeologists but was sold on the antiquities market, so yes it's impossible to know for sure at this point. But the Israeli man who bought it, had it tested to be sure it wasn't a forgery, so far there is no indication that it is.

You're continuation of the telephone and sky-wizard comments are kind of offensive. If you want to have a productive conversation with someone it's best not to set out offending them from the beginning, it doesn't tend to go well. However I am quite patient most of the time, but for the future you should think about it.

I do not understand your point about Josephus, because the Gospels are from the same time period, potentially earlier and those people did know Jesus. Now I understand that you might not find the Bible to be credible in a historical context, but many archaeologists and historians do. Including many that are not Christian and have no dog in the fight. Again I would say that I never knew my great-grandmother and she died 6 years before I was born, but I know people who knew her and they have given me a pretty good idea of who she was.

I think being Christian or not has little to do with what constitutes evidence. I think you are requiring more from Jesus than other historical figures. I also think you are limiting what you consider evidence based solely on whether His name is mentioned, rather than taking into account that many things from the Gospel accounts have in fact been verified, like the name of the Roman, Pontius Pilate, or that Caiaphas does appear to have been a high priest in Jerusalem during Jesus' lifetime. The Book of Acts has been gone over by several people and the historical information contained within has been found to be pretty accurate. That's a few examples. So no, I don't think that's a lack of evidence, I think it's quite a lot of evidence for the existence of a man named Jesus and the time He lived in. You don't have to agree but please stop pretending that you hold yourself to some higher standard than all of us mere Christians. It's insulting and not at all based on fact.

What about Paul never meeting anyone who had seen Jesus? He takes Jesus as a spirit or a prophet of an earlier age, not a recent contemporary. He doesn't even mention Peter when writing to the Romans. Christianity was a new mythology started by mostly Greek speaking Jews, most of whom had never been to Palestine. Its roots go back many years before 0 BC, and by the time the gospels were written in the second century, a huge amount of post Paul fabrication had taken place, on the lines of creating a cohesive system for a demographic that had been transformed by the Greek and Roman empires to the point that the older "paganism" had lost its appeal and the new Christianity hit on a lot of emotional buttons. Hell, it still hits on a lot of emotional buttons for some people.

Paul thought Jesus was a man. In Acts 9 the conversion and ministry of Paul is discussed:

9:20 and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “This man is the Son of God.” 9:21 All who heard him were amazed and were saying, “Is this not the man who in Jerusalem was ravaging those who call on this name, and who had come here to bring them as prisoners to the chief priests?”

Saul/ Paul persecuted believers of Jesus before Jesus appears to him on the road to Damascus. If the account in Acts was wrong Paul was around long enough to say it was BS and if you've read his epistles then you know he didn't shy away from calling crap out when it was warranted in his eyes. When Paul refers to Jesus as being invisible and such, it's because Jesus was in heaven with the Father when those epistles were written, not because he didn't think Jesus was a man.

We don't know when Peter arrived in Rome. My guess is that it was well after the events of the Book of Acts or it probably would have been included. The Roman Catholic Church really pushed this idea that Peter was the head of the Roman Church in the First Century. But there's no Biblical evidence of that, in fact there's more evidence that members of Paul's flock are the ones that spread the Gospel in Rome.

Now the oldest agreed dating for NT fragments is from like 120 AD. But there are several that have been dated earlier. The problem with them is that biblical scholars believe the dating for the Gospels is later than the fragments and because the fragments are so small they are hesitant to date them that early. There's a fragment of Mark that some have dated as early as 40-50 AD. Which is way earlier than we think Mark wrote the Gospel... but maybe we're just wrong, maybe the first thing Jesus' disciples did was sit down and write about the man they believed was their Savior.

And yes some churches made compromises to incorporate pagans beginning in like the 4th century, but we have records of what worship was like from before that and it wasn't pagan. But I agree many "Christian" practices/ holidays/ ceremonies are based in paganism. What does that have to do with the Bible? If you actually read the Bible you'll find a lot of the stuff we do that comes from Paganism, the Bible warns us about... you know like changing the Sabbath. Worshiping idols, calling anyone but God "Father." Church Leadership as an elusive elite class that controls the Faith. All of that is warned about in the Bible. So I guess I agree with you on part of that?

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I don't know what the reason is. I do know that before I was Christian I believed a lot of things about the Bible that I later learned weren't true. Christians are told to study the Scriptures for a reason, right? All you can do is pray for people and speak the Truth.

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Burp. That was a tall glass of kool aid. I guess I'll have to follow that with a shot of Galatians (its been a few decades), and find out who might have been the author. Or maybe if there was more than one Peter. I tend to think that Jesus and his disciples were mythological based on my favorite research. You might want to take a gander (studiously perhaps) at "Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ" by Alvar Ellegard. Another interesting read, for historical context is The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World". It really helps to understand the Greek and Roman worlds to put the tribal traditions into context. For the old testament you can't beat "The Bible Unearthed".

Tomorrow cannot be seen, even by God's prophets. Today's reality is best understood as the the consequence of thoughts and actions taken by our contemporaries and recent predecessors rather than as the revelations of ancient cryptic dreams. Experience the "here-and-now" without fear that God has pre-destined you to destruction.