Quote:
|
Originally Posted by WillyPete
I said exactly what Asaris said.
Show me where it actually said "within a typical human lifespan of 70 years" in those quotes two posts up?
|
It doesn't.
Quote:
He doesn't. So, taken with whatever salt you pinch if you take every single word in the bible literally, one can use the John the beloved loophole to say that it could happen anytime. Were you to even use a 'human life' as a measure of time, who's life sets the rule? Methuselah? Peter? Judas?
Saying that I or he or she thinks that that time is soon is not being presumptuous or putting yourself above God. He even says himself, that you may expect it soon after the fulfillment of those signs.
|
Those signs are very ambiguous. So ambiguous that people have thought they have happened 100s of times in the last 2000 years.
Given the loophole of "oh, I forgot to mention, someone who I am talking to will live for more than 2000 years" -- not something you'd exactly expect -- interpriting
any sign as being fullfilled is not something you can do reasonably.
Quote:
|
However, we'd typically only see that they were after the event.
|
Yes. If you believe you know the time of the end of the world, you are almost certainly wrong. If you think you see a sign or portent being fullfilled, you are almost certainly wrong. Apocoliptic Christian Movements are common and have cropped up throughout history repeatedly. They where absolutely convinced, based off scripture and the events of their era, that they where living in the end times. Every single one was wrong.
If there is any way whatsoever to weasle out of a sign coming true, given the "within the lifetime" and the experience of thousands upon thousands of earstwhile prophets of the apocolipse, you have to expect it to not be the sign. And given how vague the signs are and easy to weasle out of, only someone full of pride -- the hubris that you get to live in the end times -- could believe they are here.
God could appear to you and say "the end will occur before the clock on your mantle piece strikes midnight", then swap your clock with another clock that is in every way indistinguishable, then place your clock on pluto frozen in ice. And his prophesy would be 100% accurate. You, personally, would have no chance to know that God did this -- so even that 100% true message from God doesn't let you determine the hour of the end of the world.
To those present when Jesus told them "the end of the world will happen during the lifetime of someone present", God granting nigh-immortality of one of the listeners would be as unexpected as God undetectably swapping your clock with one on Pluto would be to you.
You are told in the Bible to live your life as if the world will end at any moment. You are told that even the Son of God doesn't get to know when the world will end. I hold that the overarcing lesson of revelations is that you should
not try to determine if the world is going to end this week, next week, or in 1 million years --- instead live a good life full of grace, humility, and love of god and your fellow humans.
Live as if you will die tommorrow, learn as if you will live forever.
Ghandi.