Choosing a faith

What Kleinman said.

That passage in Mark is about Jesus forecasting the destruction of the Temple as I have explained several times.

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26 “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. 27 Then he will send out the angels and gather the elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

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Yes, but not an earthly rebellion. If you notice in Daniel 7 Jesus is given dominion over all nations. He is making it clear that it isn't just about the Jews but for the whole world, so it can't be just a local rebellion. In the Lord's Prayer it has the request that "Thy Kingdom Come on Earth as in Heaven". This is about Yahweh establishing a Kingdom of those that follow the message of Jesus and gathered from the 4 corners of the world.

That's true, and He was correct. The war happened with the temple being destroyed in 70AD. Also, again I'm not saying that Jesus had supernatural knowledge of the future. It was because He understood the political situation in Judea and was lobbying against violent revolution. Yes, it is a successful rebellion but not an earthly one. It was about establishing a Kingdom from Heaven for Earth of those who follow Jesus.Look at these verses from Mark 13.

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14 “When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it oes not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
15 Let no one on the housetop go down or enter the house to take anything out.
16 Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak.
17 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers!
18 Pray that this will not take place in winter,
19 because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again.

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Verse 14 first references Daniel 7. It then goes on to advise the Judeans to flee to the mountains. If this is about the end of the world why go the mountains. If hwoever Jerusalem is under siege that sounds like as good a place as any.
Verse 15 and 16. If it's the end of the world why would you consider going back for anything?
Verse 17 and 18. If there is a war going on it would be hard on pregnant women and you wouldn't want to have to go to the mountains in winter. It doesn't make sense if this was about a cataclysmic end of the world.
Verse 19 Tells us that this will be the time of greatest tribulation in history and won't be equalled again. (I'm thinking that He didn't get the last part of that right.)

I'm not sure how someone can exist in an eternal fire so I'm going to say metaphor. If you want it to be an eternal fire then so be it. Hmm..., I put some thought into this and I think that you just may be right. I think rather than calling it a parable, it is really an analogy that shows what it is that God wants of us as humans. It isn't about getting our theology correct. it is about having a heart and mind that is not completely self focussed, but is about having enough compassion for others that you are prepared to act on that sense of compassion.Thanks for making the distinction.

Not looking for loopholes but Christian scholars now have new data such as in the Dead Sea Scrolls, they are gaining more understanding of 1st century Greek language and there is better communication and access to more information through the internet.I went through this with Paul K using Mark 13.What you quote is Jesus drawing a reference to Isiah Chap 13. Here is a part of that chapter.

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6 Wail, for the day of the LORD is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty.
7 Because of this, all hands will go limp, every heart will melt with fear.
8 Terror will seize them, pain and anguish will grip them; they will writhe like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at each other, their faces aflame.
9 See, the day of the LORD is coming —a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger— to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it.
10 The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light.
11 I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty and will humble the pride of the ruthless.
12 I will make people scarcer than pure gold, more rare than the gold of Ophir.
13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble; and the earth will shake from its place at the wrath of the LORD Almighty, in the day of his burning anger.
14 Like a hunted gazelle, like sheep without a shepherd, they will all return to their own people, they will flee to their native land.
15 Whoever is captured will be thrust through; all who are caught will fall by the sword.
16 Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives violated.
17 See, I will stir up against them the Medes, who do not care for silver and have no delight in gold.

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That quote starts out calling it the day of the Lord and then says it will be LIKE destruction from the almighty, but not done by the almighty. As you can see from that and from the whole of Chap 13 you can clearly see that it is about the Jewish nation dealing with the Babylonians and their suffering that brought on them. The passage you are referring to is Jesus forecasting what it is that the Romans will do in response to a military revolt, as the Babylonins had done previously.I'll repeat the last part of the your Biblical quote

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Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
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Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.

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When it says "coming on the clouds" Jesus is still referencing Daniel 7 where it says the following:

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13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.

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In this quote that Jesus is using we can see that it isn't about Jesus coming to earth on a cloud, but Jesus coming to the Ancient of Days or Yahweh.Jesus was in addition to being opposed to violent revolution was also very opposed to a corrupt Temple. In this He was of course opposed to the powerful Temple culture that it had become, which of course was one of the primary reasons He was crucified.Jesus is saying that with the destruction of the Temple His message will be a sign of His vindication and His message of peace and love will go out to the world in the hearts of those who receive that message. As we know the Temple was destroyed in 70AD. Once again I'm not saying that Jesus knew this supernaturally but was forecasting it from understanding the political situation as well as His understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures in the context of His 1st century Jewish world. Lewis IMHO was a great Christian philosopher. He was not as he often said a theologian. Probably the foremost and certainly the most well known Christian scholar in the world is N T Wright, and what I have written is completely consistent with his understanding of the passage.

This from Philippians 3.

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21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

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AS we can see from that quote that is not the case.
Resurrection was central to Paul's faith and if he differed from Peter and company on that issue he would have been very clear about it.I'd like to see your reference to that being a consensus view of resurrection. In the first place there would have been no expectation of one man being resurrected within human history so it wasn't something that they would have wanted in advance. That statement would be more apt after the witness of the disciples and whoever else was an eye witness to Jesus' resurrected body.

I agree with that but you are answering my response to what you had said earlier about Luke using Matthew. Certainly the Jewish expectation for a messiah was for an earthly throne but Jesus rejected that idea. I'm not saying that Jesus didn't talk about the next life but I was responding to your quote, as well as the quote by Tangle which is simply two different guys giving their accounts of what Jesus said. I have no idea whether or not the authorities were after them If I had to guess I would think that they weren't. The point is that the disciples thought that they might be.

Ya it was a typo. Yes and he did so by inventing Q and discounting the work of all the early Christians and that was still true right up until his time. There are as you know other arguments for Luke using Matthew that don't require the invention of an unevidenced documentAlso, Streeter claims that Mark was written about 70AD and then Matthew was completed in 80 to 90AD. This makes no sense at all. If Matthew was that late it would hardly have not included any mention of the destruction of the Temple. Also much of it was about the Jesus' argument against the Temple authorities which no longer existed by that time.The position that any of the synoptics would be written after 70 AD simply doesn't make any sense either internally or externally. The only evidence is what the church fathers wrote. However, as far as the argument for matthean priority goes it is inconsequential.M Why, is it because it doesn't fit in with your position. You left out the part of the kingdom which implies a throne.Also the Jewish nation at had two particular hopes for the future. One was the return of Yahweh to their nation and the other was that of a messiah who would be a man anointed by God to lead them against Rome. The Gospels story essentially sees Jesus as fulfilling both of those hopes but in a very different way than what the Jews expected.Jesus used the term "son of man" which combined both hopes. The Gospel message is that it was both with the earthly kingdom being a kingdom dedicated to bringing Christ's message of peace and love to the world, as we see in the Lord's Prayer where we pray "your kingdom come on earth as in heaven". I agree that it reads like a contradiction but it is by two different authors and if Jesus met some in Galilee and some in Jerusalem it could be a different times. I know that is just a speculative answer.

The fact that he chose to be a stone mason has nothing to do with the metaphor. What matters that he was given a stone to carve in a particular way without knowing how it was to be used. Then he is shown that it is used for something bigger that he ever imagined. The point is that God will take every little act of kindness and self giving love that is done, and use it in the renewal of the world to come where the wolf lays down with the lamb. Maybe a freely chosen marriage makes it harder as there is likely a higher expectation of the new spouse. Love at the time of a freely chosen marriage(usually hormone driven), will change, and it is a matter of how love evolves into a loving partnership from there. That is mostly correct but what I mean by ultimate is when this world is fully recreated sacrificial love will be freely chosen as the norm.I also contend that it does come from God as it is my belief that sacrificial love is not part of the evolutionary process but something that is outside of it namely God.
We in turn can accept that still small voice in out heart and mind or reject it. Yes that is my unproven belief.
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I would say that He doesn't say when it will happen for the simple reason He simply doesn't know. I would imagine that there would be numerous Jews at that time who could understand the political understandings from that time. They would know there was a strong sense of military rebellion and that the outcome was not likely to be a happy one if they went ahead with it.It isn't really about fulfilling Daniel but the destruction of the Temple would be a confirmation of it. Yes I've read Maccabees. It was 100 years of Jewish reign that didn't go as well as the Jewish nation hoped. I really don't get your point. It would make it even more likely that Jesus would predict that a violent revolution would end badly.Eventually it ended with the Romans taking over and installing Herod as their puppet leader.
Incidentally it is interesting to note that the 7 brothers all died heroic deaths, talked about an eventual resurrection and yet when they were executed the movement simply died. They had achieved military success, ruled for 100 tears but that was it. The movement has always been celebrated but there wasn't any talk of acrrying it on. Without the resurrection of Jesus, that movement with no victories and a humiliating death would have died even more quickly. Daniel 7 was a prophet who dreamed what is in that chapter. It was about a future event. Jesus certainly saw Himself in the role of the "Son of Man" as He referred to Himself that way many times. Yes that was the common thinking but it is not how Jesus or the NT writers saw it. Yes, the Zechariah quote is what the Jews hoped for. Yahweh was there god and nobody else's. The ancients all looked for a deity that would be with them in battle.Jesus embodied a very different god who was for the world.

You agreed the Bible was evidence so that was all that I was using. Others have said that the Bible isn't evidence which makes no sense but that doesn't seem to matter.Give me the definition you want for "evidence" and I'll go with it. What does it take to be rational and evidence based because I haven't been able to see a lot of consistency in the various poste in this thread? I agree, that is a difficult question for Christians. I see God in those who genuinely want to see the world a better place, and respond to all of those things you mention with acts of kindness, mercy, love etc.

Maybe instead of sending me to a site with a massive set of links to other sites you could explain in your words how it happened.Also of course it doesn't really matter anyway as your position assumes that the evolutionary process has nothing but mindless origins, which as you know I don't accept. Observing altruism as part of the evolutionary process works just as well for my belief is an evolutionary process is the result of an intelligence that is outside of our time and space.

But you quote it out of context and ignore the OT reference.

If you see that in there then tell me how many sheep and how many goats He was talking about.

Particularly on the longer posts I find it difficult to only use the EvC site. What I do then is to use my microsoft word program and copy and paste from the site and then reply to a specific point in word and then copy and past the final word document back to EvC.Hope that helps.