Fullfilled Bible prophecy

moved here: Message Three of the Is there evidence that dating methods MUST be invalid? in the Dates And Dating ForumThis message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 06-09-2004 11:25 PM

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So what is it, almeyda, do you reject all methods of measurement because they rely on "assumptions", or not? If you mean something specific, then say so.

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When you check your watch you can be alot more sure its right. If your going 60km in a car you can be sure you are going 60km. Dating the age of earth is a whole different scenario. It just doesnt come with the same authority as other scientific methods and assumptions.JONF -

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Eugenie Scott is not an expert on radioisotope dating. Nonetheless, please produce the source of this claim. And, BTW, "based on assumptions" is not evidence foir "is invalid".

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It was between a debate between herself and Ken Ham. It goes for 50min and i dont know whereabouts she said it. She just "of course" when asked if dating methods are based on assumptions. If you still want the link ill give, just ask again.

so, the pythogrean theorem is also wrong because it's based on certain geometric axioms (assumptions) such as "parallel lines do not cross?"

Almeyda, No, no, no. You are moving the goalposts. You are claiming that radiometric dating is invalid because of assumptions. All measuring methods rely on assumptions, so being consistent we have to reject them all, right?When you check your watch you assume it has kept the correct time. You've never looked at a slow or fast clock? How do you know your tachometer is accurate? Have you ever calibrated it?Please post your answer here, a new thread JonF started specifically for this purpose.Let me make it clear, if you reject one method because of unstated assumptions & accept another you are guilty of hypocricy.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

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Matthew 21:15,16

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And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the son of David; they were sore displeased,
And said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise ?

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The KJV translators, in this passage, use the Septuagint/LXX to quote Jesus who is citing Psalm 8:2But if you go to Psalm 8:2 in the KJV it reads differently:

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Psalm 8:2

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Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

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Here, a different KJV body of translators used the Masoretic Text/MT to translate Psalm 8:2The crucial difference is "PRAISE" in the Matthew/LXX quote, and "STRENGTH" in the Psalm 8/MT quote.The MT translation makes no sense unlike the LXX translation.The MT deliberately changed the original meaning of the hebrew word as a reaction to the perceived christian takeover of the LXX source.The LXX was produced hundreds of years before the MT and its manuscripts were of Ezralitish origin.Now, Jesus enters Jerusalem and the Temple, when immediately children who are in the Temple see Him they spontaneously begin to cry out praises to Him. The Pharisses see this and become angry. Jesus responds to their anger by quoting Psalm 8:2 which identifies the enemy as those who are angered by this outburst of praise !God, centuries prior, through David speaks a Messianic prophecy that little children will praise the Messiah on sight. Little children are too young to be influened by the hatred of the "enemies"/Pharisees.When the Pharisees saw the little children cry out praises spontaneously they became angry and said to Jesus, Matthew 21:16, "do you hear what they are saying ?"Jesus responds by quoting Psalm 8:2 and fulfills the prophecy and identifies the enemy of that verse to be those who became angry with the little childrens praises.The power of God to forsee the reaction of little children and their ability to recognize the Messiah on sight !A stunning prophecy fulfillment !This message has been edited by WILLOWTREE, 06-22-2004 11:41 PM

I thought I had already established in post 14 above that Matthew was a shocker for manufacturing Bible prophecy, and in most cases he couldn't even quote the OT correctly. Matthew's integrity is somewhat in tatters.See:
Farrell Till Prophecy » Internet InfidelsAlso, seeing as the life and times of Jesus were recorded (and probably largely made up) by the writers of the NT who weren't even eyewitnesses, who had access to the OT before they started writing, how do we know they simply didn't fabricate scenarios about Jesus where prophecy was seen to be fulfilled?They certainly had the motivation to try to make it look like their messiah fulfilled prophecy. And Matthew can be seen to be caught red-handed by anyone who is capable of comparing to pieces of text.This message has been edited by Gilgamesh, 06-23-2004 12:03 AM

You have established nothing except to assert that the Bible is false.Your opinion which is shared by many is noted.The link you provide is one of probably thousands. They all say the same thing over and over.I respect your position that Matthew was a liar.He was a liar OR he reported the truth - nothing in between.Your post does nothing to threaten or refute what I reported.Providing a link and not summarizing the content says nothing.But, in fairness, you did summarize - you asserted Matthew a liar which is what your link says.

Willow wrote: The prophecy in Matthew looks like nasty manufactured tripe to the non-Christian, but I will grant you that from the perspective of Matthew he may have had honest intentions.... which is actually somewhere in between lying and truth telling:From
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It seems most unlikely that Matthew's presentation would change the mind of anyone who was not already inclined to believe that Jesus was the messiah. Perhaps some people neither knew what the prophets really said nor questioned whether Matthew's stories were literally true; those people might be convinced that Jesus had fulfilled prophecies. And while this may well have been the effect of Matthew's gospel on a few, we need not conclude that Matthew's purpose was to trick the gullible. A more responsible line of inquiry into Matthew's purpose in correlating prophecies with stories about Jesus is to imagine the circumstances that would allow Matthew and his audience to honestly believe in his presentation of Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecy.Scholars generally agree on what those circumstances were. We have to try to see things the way Matthew and his people did, regardless of whether we see things that way today. Matthew and his audience already believe that Jesus is the messiah. They also believe that God must have been dropping hints about the long-awaited messiah in the scriptures, especially in the books of the prophets. So Matthew goes back to the scriptures and studies them carefully, looking for clues about Jesus the messiah. For Matthew, the recognition of Jesus as the messiah is the newly revealed key that will unlock the hidden meaning of prophecy. When Matthew finds a prophetic statement that could be about Jesus, he tries to match it up with something he already knowsor believesabout Jesus' life. Furthermoreand this is crucialwhatever a prophet says about the messiah, or the future Davidic king, or God's son, Matthew can take to be information about Jesus not previously recognized as such.The net result of all this is obvious: The early Christian belief that Jesus fulfilled prophecy arose after and because of the belief that he was the promised messiah. This very important finding needs to be emphasized. The belief that Jesus was the messiah was the basis for the belief that he was the fulfillment of prophecy. It was not that people noticed that Jesus had fulfilled a series of prophecies and so concluded that he must be the messiah. The process worked the other way around. It was because Christians were convinced that Jesus was the messiah that they went searching through the scriptures to discover which prophecies he had fulfilled. The proclamation that Jesus fulfilled prophecy is a testimony to Christian faith, not a description of its origin.With this in mind, we can easily see why Matthew's Jewish contemporaries were not persuaded by his "proof from prophecy." It had nothing to do with having hard hearts or closed minds, or being deceived by their leaders. All of that is Matthean caricature. It had to do with the fact that Matthew's presentation of prophecy makes sense only from the perspective of prior belief in Jesus. Outside of that perspective, Matthew's use of prophecy has no persuasive power, and can even look like a deliberate distortion of the scriptures aimed at deceiving those who are uninformed and easily impressed.

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Poignantly ends with:

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The belief that the prophets were pointing to Jesus, though perhaps helpful at the time Matthew wrote his gospel, has long since outlived its usefulness. It is a belief that distorts the scriptures and has had ugly consequences in history. Out of respect for Judaism and for the Bible, therefore, I propose that Christians have an intellectual and moral duty to abandon this obsolete, self-serving, and dangerous belief.

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You specifically called Matthew a liar now you say he was mistaken, but you lean back and forth through out this post of yours.You want it both ways all the time.Matthew is either a liar or a gospel truth reporter, nothing else can possibly be accurate.How do you "mistakenly" make claims in a source about the central figure fulfilling alleged Messianic prophecy ?The Jesus Seminar understands this argument (christianity's worst critic). This is why they claim Matthew is a pseudepigrapha, which means some unknown person committed a forgery using Matthew's name, and the source known as "Matthew's Gospel" was really written decades after the Resurrection. This is their theory and there is no evidence of this at all. This theory exists because they do not want to call Matthew a liar. The gospel writers are just too respected so they invent what I just said.

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The prophecy in Matthew looks like nasty manufactured tripe

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You say this because it looks just the opposite - honest truth reporting.Matthew records what happened when Jesus entered Jerusalem/Temple. The descrepancy in Psalms 8 (KJV) not matching the citing of Jesus via Matthew in chapter 21 has been explained.The Masoretic Text deliberately changed every word meaning that could of been construed to evidence Jesus as the Messiah. Go to Google and type "Rashi change text" (11th century Rabbi who made a career of telling the world what the hebrew words "really" mean) The LXX was produced by JEWS way before Christ's birth. The LXX in Psalm 8 says "praise" and not "strength".You are arbitrarily saying Matthew searched the Pslams and found the passage in question, then he decides to lie and say Jesus quoted this to the Pharisees when they complained about the spontaneous reaction of the children in the Temple. This is pure fictitious nonsense. The only thing you can do is change your story and say Jesus never entered Jerusalem or maybe He never even lived.

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It seems most unlikely that Matthew's presentation would change the mind of anyone who was not already inclined to believe that Jesus was the messiah.

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This comment assumes Matthew a liar. Back to square 1.

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Scholars generally agree....

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You mean scholars who do not believe in miracles. Can they objectively assess a religion that begins with the claim of a miracle - the Resurrection ? Yeah right. Their bias negates any conclusion that a miracle didn't happen (fulfilled prophecy). The "evidence" that these scholars base their anti-miracle conclusions on all ignore contrary evidence..... The Jesus Seminar completely acts as if 7Q5 doesn't exist.

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When Matthew finds a prophetic statement that could be about Jesus, he tries to match it up with something he already knowsor believesabout Jesus' life

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In other words he is a liar. I agree he is a liar or he told the truth.

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The net result of all this is obvious: The early Christian belief that Jesus fulfilled prophecy arose after and because of the belief that he was the promised messiah.

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Agreed.

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The belief that Jesus was the messiah was the basis for the belief that he was the fulfillment of prophecy.

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Agreed.

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It was because Christians were convinced that Jesus was the messiah that they went searching through the scriptures to discover which prophecies he had fulfilled.

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Agreed. (generally)And what they found was so convincing it infuriated Jewry as to produce a source that they could reclaim as their own. Yet, every honest person knows the LXX was produced by Jews well before the First Century with manuscripts that are believed to have originated from Ezra, and by implication Moses. How could the MT be more accurate than the LXX ? The MT COULD NOT have had better manuscripts. This means the Jewish produced source of the LXX is eminent, and the Jewish produced MT is a biased and corrupt reaction to the LXX which clearly contains messianic passages that give mirror image to Jesus.

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With this in mind, we can easily see why Matthew's Jewish contemporaries were not persuaded by his "proof from prophecy." It had nothing to do with having hard hearts or closed minds

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Isaiah 6 says it is hard hearts and closed minds. So does Psalm 8, they are the enemies who became angry when they saw children instictively praise Jesus on sight. There is no way around it - unless you take the Jesus Seminar position or ignore the evidence and its explanation and call Matthew a liar. And if you call Matthew a liar then produce your evidence or the bias of your worldview is speaking.

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Matthew's use of prophecy has no persuasive power, and can even look like a deliberate distortion of the scriptures aimed at deceiving those who are uninformed and easily impressed.

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How do you know that you are not deceived ?Your position is laughable.Millions of people are deceived by their ignorance and proclivity to believe such things and you are an elitist messiah trying to convince everyone of how God doesn't exist.

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The belief that the prophets were pointing to Jesus, though perhaps helpful at the time Matthew wrote his gospel, has long since outlived its usefulness. It is a belief that distorts the scriptures and has had ugly consequences in history. Out of respect for Judaism and for the Bible, therefore, I propose that Christians have an intellectual and moral duty to abandon this obsolete, self-serving, and dangerous belief.

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The truth comes out at the very end. Everyone is ok except for christians - pure biased hatred distributed under the disguise of objectivity. I could actually respect you if you would forsake this fascist attitude of thinking you know whats best for everyone else.Gilgamesh you perfectly symbolize the God sense removal declared in Romans 1. Atheism is a penalty for defying God and not a choice of the recipient. (even though they think otherwise)

After carefully reading Almeyda's evidence I did some reading myself and found a great deal of biblical prophesy that appears to foretell my life!1 Kings 8:12 "The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness"
I live, get this, in Alaska where for part of the year it is always thick darkness!Judges 12:1 "Why did you cross over to fight against the Ammonites" Fighting obviously means digging. As an amateur fossil collector I have collected several ammonites and other extinct cephalopods.Psalm 142:3 "In the path where I walk they have hidden a trap for me" One of my very first jobs here in Alaska was proof-reading a report to stop clear-cutting because it would affect the livelihood of trappers.Jeremiah 16:16 "I am now sending for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall catch them" I am an invertebrate biologist who hires fishermen every summer to help capture my research material.Lam. 2:15 "All who pass along the way clap their hands at you" Must be referring to one of the talks I have given.Hosea 9:7 "The prophet is a fool, the man of the spirit is mad" Clearly, although they got the wording wrong (probably it's my version of the Bible) this refers to the lyrics in the Violent Femmes' song "Hallowed Ground". I just saw the Femmes last saturday!Daniel 22:22 (this proves it) "He reveals deep and hidden things, he knows what is in the darkness" I am a deep-sea marine invertebrate zoologist!Anyway, is there some kind of registry or something, do I get on a list? I am not trying to be a bastard, it's just to illustrate that you can find prophesies for anything you wish in the OT if you are willing to ignore context, leave out half of the verse, rearrange words, etc.What I am more interested in are the prophesies that clearly never happened. In my experience those are politely ignored. The best example (I discussed this at length in an earlier post) is the non-destruction of Tyre. There is nothing vague about Ezekial's prediction. And certainly the fact that it is still occupied and Lebanon's 4th largest city is not part of the prophesy. I hear people telling the story and ignoring the final bit (it's much more impressive if you end the tale with Tyre being destroyed and gone forever!)

Skeptics skeptic skeptics....skeptics toward the word of God. "As the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." Matt. 24:37-39. So sad...so sad indeed. But painfully true.What is amazing is that all the skeptics against the Bible are fulfilling prophecy, so although it breaks my heart that such skeptics exist, I say to them "thank you for fulfilling prophecy", for if you were not skeptical against God's existence, then the prophecy would not prove true.Skeptics will forever until the end of time continue to discredit the Bible by finding seemingly inconsistencies and apparent contradictories. This is only hurting them, and God looks down with weeping tears upon them because he knows their hearts. He knows that in their inmost souls they do not want to have to submit to a higher power but rather do as they please.The world in it's current condition is showing signs of God's soon appearing. The immorality that is teaming everywhere. Gay rights and homosexuality is becoming more and more rampant as in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. The years pass by and skeptics and athiests continue to say "Jesus is never going to come...look...everything is as was before, and people have been saying that for years!" Sad to say, that is the exact language that was used of inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, and those before the flood. Scientists declared that a flood was "scientifically impossible"!So shall it be in the last days when Christ appears in the clouds. People will be drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage, until Christ comes "as a theif in the night" (when they least expect it).For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.-- 1 Thess. 5:2When this day comes upon us, all the skeptics, all the athiests, all the unbelievers, all the wicked, all the lovers of sin will stare in the skies and say to themselves "we knew all along that you were there, but we did not want to admit it".....There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.What a sad day that will be. I just pray that as many skeptics as there are, some will wake up some day and see the reality of their impending doom. God wants to see them saved more than we can possibly comprehend, but since God is a loving God, He has given us will-power---the power to choose. If those who decide to not choose Him, God has no choice but to destroy them.This message has been edited by Lysimachus, 06-26-2004 06:53 PM

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~Lysimachus

That sure sounds all-powerful and all-loving, all right. "No choice" imposed by whom?
This message has been edited by Coragyps, 06-26-2004 08:03 PM

It is all loving. He doesn't destroy them, he destroys sin. When God sends his fire to destroy the wicked, the fire is aimed at destroying sin, and sin alone. However, since man has will power, he can choose to either give up sin, or hold on to sin (therefore he becomes attached to sin). Sin is what? It is the transgression of the Law.Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law." 1 John 3:4So God destroys sin, and if man attaches himself to sin, what happens? The individual is destroyed with the sin. It is the individual who attaches himself to sin and gets destroyed along with it because he was unwilling to give up his/her sins. He chose to cling to them in favor of eternal life.So afterall, God is still a loving God. He loves the sinner, but not the sin. Sin will be no more, and all those who cling and attach themselves to sin automatically get destroyed with it. It was there choice, not God's. God has no choice in the sense that if man chooses to become one with sin, He cannot force them otherwise.This message has been edited by Lysimachus, 06-26-2004 11:19 PM

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~Lysimachus

Earl Doherty on his Jesus Puzzle web site discusses this as midrash. I've not seen mention of midrash in these discussions but I've read that it was a common approach to the Torah in those times. Folks looked to the Torah for hidden connections and used the passages to arrive at new formulations. For example, Doherty sees the Gospel according to Mark as a midrash to explain Paul's mystical Christ. This was accepted in those times when folks believed in layers of being rising up into space or the heavens. The result was that mystical Christ came to be identified as an actual historical person though that was not the messiah that Paul was talking about.Check his site if you wish to learn more, or the Jesus Mysteries group at yahoo. This is modern scholarship of course and those who are emotionally attached to the religion presented to them by the various churches will not be happy about this. I find Doherty and the mythicist position to be the most convincing argued. I no longer think there was a historical Jesus at all. The early Christians created this Helenized version of the Jewish messiah along the lines of other solar saviours like Mithras and the centuries of absolute rule by the Roman church has resulted in the myth being thoroughly imprinted on European culture. It's hard to let go of comforting cultural myths even when the evidence overwelmingly reveals them to not be literal truth. On the other hand myths are not lies. The modern christians are engaging in self deceptive thinking though but that is more complicated than lying and involves a misplaced sincerity and often as I see here an inability to deal logically and factually with these powerfully emotional expressions of humanities needs that have been formulated in mythic ways.peace,
lfen

Lysimachus wrote If you are going to create a religion, you must surely have a prediction of and an explaination as to why some people will reject it. Even Scientology has that. I would have thought it would have been a mandatory clause to help believers understand why all others think they are wrong. The only weeping heard is from the believers.Like you, I can be bought. Prove to me that your Christian offer of enternal life is anything other than hopeful nonsense and my life is entirely in your God's hands. How many more generations will pass before the Christian rapture? I'll wager what you call my mortal soul that Christianity will cease as a religion before your messiah shows up. And that, unfortunately could take many more centuries. As I see it, the world is more moral than it has ever been, in part due to the decline of religious influence and blind adherence to totalitarianisms and the rise of humanism. For starters, we don't burn people anymore (although some US states do on the chair). Not burning people is a good thing. Phew! It's just as well that those stories are make believe!Everthing is not entirely as before. With stops and starts, we are slowly trying to move towards a better world, where human rights prevail. Religion is still dragging us down. I am more certain that this tale is nonsense than you are that it is true. I base my knowledge gathering techniques on science, not religious faith. I trust science with my life on a daily basis, when I trust in technology. I'm going to test and demonstrate that faith tomorrow night when I fly 1000kms in a plane. Try to achieve that with faith.I can demonstrate vast aspects of your faith are false: want to put the efficacy of prayer to the test? faith healing? Bible Codes? Bible Numerics? Pyramidology? want to see me demonstrate glossolalia? want to compare your evidence of creation/world-wide flood against the demonstrable sciences based on evolutionary principles? Want me to show you more parts of the Bible where there are contradictions, absurdities, unfulfilled prohecy, made up prophecy etc?Aren't you justifiably worried about wasting your life pursuing a religion that is so unconvincing, demonstratbly false in every material claim, built up on lies and distortions, based on reprehensible history and so terribly intellectually bankrupt?Convert before it is too late! The atheist rapture and it's messiah, Science, beat your Christian rapture by an eternity.(Sorry, I wanted to know what it felt like to go off the handle like a Bible thumping evangelist. Feels good!)This message has been edited by Gilgamesh, 06-28-2004 04:04 AM