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Posted

:) The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation

by Barbara R. Rossing

 

Tell me your views on this book. Does this book suggests that all millennial Scriptures in the Bible are merely symbolic? Does it suggest that everything in the book of Revelations was in the past? What's your take on all this? Thanks!

Posted

Haven't read the book but that shouldn't stop me from commenting on it. :-)

I don't think much of Revelations (and any other end time type script) as anything

BUT symbolic. When you start talking about "new heaven" and "new earth", what the

OLD heaven wasn't good, perfect, etc. enough, you need a new one. I think they are

quite nonsensical on the literal level. But, and I haven't spent that much time on Revelation to be honest, I am quite sure on the symbolic level it is quite rich.

 

 

 

--des

Posted

It has beem long held by many Native Americans like the Hopi and SunBear that the Fundamental Protestants interpretation of a New Heavens and NEW Earth as meaning a literal destruction of both...is in error. This is quite correct. Sun Bear wisely brought out that the Fundamental's translation as the "end of the world" cosmos is wrong and that the orginal Greek word WAS Aeon which means AGE and NOT the literal planet. This can be verified by simply checking the footenote in the New Living Bible at Matthew 24:3 and also matthew 24:34.

 

I realize that many Progressive may not care to study Greek and Hebrew words and definations..however, since many Evangelicals are so into trying to interpretate precise Greek and Hebrew words..this helps show where their understanding of Greek and hebrew words is WRONG and this gives power to the concept that Fundamentaists are NOT withOUT error in their understandings of Bibical words and their precise meanings.

Posted

In the thread on Preterism and Futurism, XianAnarchist mentioned the book: The Navarre Bible: Revelation.

 

A review on amazon.com had this to say:

 

"Gives a thoroughly Catholic understanding of the Book of Revelation. We're so used to the modern "premillenialist" view of the book so typical of Evangelicalism, but this commentary brings out the traditional Catholic understanding of the Apocalypse. Has the text of the book in English (RSVCE) and Latin (New Vulgate) plus commentary drawn from the writings of Saints and Church Fathers."

 

In that same thread I posted these links:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_times

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_eschatology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_the_world

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennialism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preterism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armageddon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribulation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Coming

 

It's everything you ever wanted to know about every view of the "end times" but was afraid to ask!

 

Aletheia

Posted

This is a good book. A nice antidote to the Left Behind madness of late.

To read editorial descriptions and reviews, search for that title at http://www.amazon.com - but, try to obtain it from your local independent bookstore! : )

Posted

There seems to only be '3' interpretations of End Times or Millennialism. Two of a fundamental nature....

 

(1) The Fundamental Protestant's "Left Behind"/ 'Rapture' belief.

 

(2) The Jehovah's Witnesses non-rapture..but exclusive Armageddon interpretation...

 

(3) And finally..the only Liberal/Progressive Millennial view offered...

Preteristism...which is embrace by Liberal Lutherns.

 

Millennial beliefs #1 and #2 are both fundamental in nature..and #3 millennial view is based on the concepts that all revelations happened in the past.

So what we have is '2' Millennial beliefs that promotes an elite salvation hope to only a special class or faith group, while the third and only Liberal Millennial belief is not based on any hope for the future at all..accept, "Let's just hope for the best."

 

So, really the #3 is not about the future it's all about the past and beliefs #1,and #2 ARE about the future but it bleak and hopeful only to a small elite group. There needs to be a 4th belief option for Progressives that gives hope for the future but is obviously NOT based on any elite salvation theory..but is open to all...

 

And I think this is what SunBear was trying say....

Posted

Better yet, get "The Last Disciple" by Hank Hannegraaff and Sigmund Brouwer. :)

 

(BTW, the church mostly believed preterism up until about 150 years ago, including the ultra-conservative Reformers.)

Posted

I don't know how I managed to post this previously in the "SpongeBob" topic. Maybe he is the AntiChrist???????? :o

 

 

Anyway. We studied End Time events (I cannot spell eschatology) in my old church. If you believe in the rapture, then you will have to decide if you are pre-tribulation, mid-trib, or post-trib. As far as I know, they haven't figured that one out yet.

 

 

So how are we to know when (if) the tribulation begins? I have been hearing it preached for years and yet nothing has happened. I mean how bad would it have to get?

 

I am just wondering about all of this. If these events have already happened, when did it happen? I am serious here. Do these books give us a clue?

 

I have never really been overly concerned about this. I guess it will all pan out as my pop used to say. ;)

Posted

"If you believe in the rapture, then you will have to decide if you are pre-tribulation, mid-trib, or post-trib. As far as I know, they haven't figured that one out yet."

 

I guess that is wht none of these pertain to me cause I don't believe in the rapture...pre, post or mid

 

"So how are we to know when (if) the tribulation begins? I have been hearing it preached for years and yet nothing has happened. I mean how bad would it have to get?"

 

If you consider the day for a year belief, where every 1,000 years is like 1 human day to us..then we could be in the last of a thousand years....So maybe we have been in it since Jesus left earth? It's possible..i suppose..

 

"I am just wondering about all of this. If these events have already happened, when did it happen? I am serious here. Do these books give us a clue?"

 

I forget who is was, mayb Atheia, who explained that in this Liberal luthern gal's book she explained that she thinks everything talked about in the book of Revelations..pertained to the past. While I DO appreciate that such lineral/Progressive Lutherns stand in contrast to the Fundamental Protestnats such as Assembly of God and Southern Baptists, with their 'bleak outlooks for the future..the problem, at least from my own perspective...is that where the fundamental Protestant elite and bleak future is removed..the Lutherns don't replace this negative view of the future with a positive hope belief.

 

 

It is interesting to me. I am presnetly reading this book, "Ten Wrong Things I Learned From a Conservative church." This book is written by a Progressive Christian who once was in the Southern baptist and first baptists churches. What is interesting to me is that he speaks of interpretating all the mircles stories of Jesus as not literal...yet, he voices strongly that he just knows in his gut that the resurrection is literal.

 

This is very interesting to me..cause i have found that many Liberals and Progressives don;t believe in the resurrection literally because they voice that they can not dissassociate the resurrection from the hellfire threats to the unchurched...But as one Progressive Presbyterian said, he siad that 'he' felt that you make the whole Bible and Jesus' ministry merely metaphoric based on the negative parts that the fundamentalist wrongly interperate as 'literal..and thus because of this it all MUST be a metaphore..BOTh the negative and positive... then you loose a hope that holds faith together .

 

Likewise, it seems to me that vast majority of Liberal Christians feel that to stand in contrast to fundamental elite and fear-based millennial beliefs..they MUSt NOT have ANY at all....And why question is WHY? So the fundamentalist have an eite and fear-based type millennial belief..so why can't Progressives have an all inclusive non-fear-based concept of millennialism with HOPE for the future rather than doom for the non-elite? Why can't Progressive christians believe in the resurrection withOUT any fear based elite hellfire threats attatched?

Posted (edited)

The Kingdom of God is spread about the earth but men do not see it... that's one way to look at it. :> Perhaps we're not taking now seriously enough. Lots of choices in terms of mindfulness, gratitude, having enough, contentment, etc.

 

Another is spelled out in The Great Divorce - yeah, sorry to keep bringing up the same book. But really, the whole premise of the book is the divorce between heaven and hell. No unpassable chasm, but choices... it is hard to explain, but actually pertains well to the above paragraph as well. Every choice counts and, to some extent, determines whether you experience heaven or hell. As a practical example, imagine walking into a group with a big smile and pos. attitude or a scowl and a neg. attitude. It will go differently. Free will; choose carefully. Remember the sum of the law.

Edited by Cynthia
Posted

Well, actually that does kinda relate to something I was thinking in connection to all this...and that is...a hellfire threats is not needed to make people straighten up and fly right....when people do wrong and selfish things then it usually comes back around to bit them in the end anyways..and that is people's own self-created hell.:)

Posted (edited)

Exactly! Look at all the people who told you that they "survived" Christmas.... a perfect example in my mind. It's so very sad to see people existing instead of living. As John Eldridge says, Christ said He came to give us life, abundant life, not a list of chores. :>

 

Cynthia

Edited by Cynthia
Posted (edited)

Well I took a look at the reviews from Amazon. Interesting. I expected the worst critics to be those of fundamentalist beliefs. But no, the worst ones were people who might not have been Christians at all (under any definition). The reviews sounded like I might have trouble with it. NOt the idea of preterism. (I had to look this up as I am not as theologically savvy as some of you'll.) I don't particularly care for it-- as it still takes the whole Revelation thing as "factual" rather than symbolic.

 

I, like you, Beach, appreciate than someone has written a book to counter some of this end times stuff.

 

 

Beach:

>

This is very interesting to me..cause i have found that many Liberals and Progressives don;t believe in the resurrection literally because they voice that they can not dissassociate the resurrection from the hellfire threats to the unchurched...But as one Progressive Presbyterian said, he siad that 'he' felt that you make the whole Bible and Jesus' ministry merely metaphoric based on the negative parts that the fundamentalist wrongly interperate as 'literal..and thus because of this it all MUST be a metaphore..BOTh the negative and positive... then you loose a hope that holds faith together .

 

Hmm, I haven't decided on the resurrection, if I think it is literal or symbolic. But it isn't because I think you can't disassociate it with threats fo hell fire. I feel that it is a part of many myths and cultures (didn't Mohammed supposedly ascend into heaven?) Then there is the rebirth aspects of many pagan religions.

 

BTW, in regard to all this. I am really enjoying Spong's book: "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism". There isn't anything, so far as I can tell, on Revelation. I wonder if he will write something, now that there is all this hype.

 

I wonder what specific cultural event has people hyped up on the rapture? Is it the book series itself? Political power of the Religious Right? etc.?

I think that would be interesting from a socialogical standpoint. I think there were other eras where end times were "big". I read recently that "hell was in" and "angels were out". I don't know what made angels in in the first place. Only thing I can think of is the tv series "Touched by an Angel" or was it hte other way around. And why angels are out these days. I suppose this might be a new topic.

 

BTW, Seeker, the reason you confused this with the Sponge bob thread is that Sponge Bob is the beast. :-)

 

 

 

--des

Edited by des
Posted

"Well I took a look at the reviews from Amazon. I don't particularly care for it-- as it still takes the whole Revelation thing as "factual" rather than symbolic."

 

The problem I always had with the fundamental Protestants and their interpretation of Revelation is that with THEM everything negative (fire, brimstone,ect) is literal but everything pleasent, positve and peaceful..the renewl of the earth, peace betwen animals, was symbolic..where as I see it the other way around and therefore see it countering fundamental millennialism. It seems to me that the author who is Luthern and thus perist...while viewing all the negative parts such as fire,ect as symbloic then also the positive is too. She sees everything in the Bible as being in the past... I CAN see the wisdom of ditching all the fear tactict groom and doom..but along with this any hope for the future is also tossed out...Like throwing the baby out with the bath water sort of thing...

 

"I, like you, Beach, appreciate than someone has written a book to counter some of this end times stuff. "

 

i only hope there shall be more. Maybe a progressive Presbyterian of D of C could write a book? I hope..

 

"I am really enjoying Spong's book: "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism". There isn't anything, so far as I can tell, on Revelation. I wonder if he will write something, now that there is all this hype."

 

I might add that to my list and also the Steeling Jesus book.:)

 

"I wonder what specific cultural event has people hyped up on the rapture? Is it the book series itself? Political power of the Religious Right? etc.?"

 

Yes, all of this and it ALL ties together. Beliefnet wrote a very eye-opening article on this.

 

"I read recently that "hell was in" and "angels were out"."

 

Hell never goes out of style for the Fundamental Protestnats like Southern Baptists..but maybe angels are out cause the far right sees that New Age has taken a special foundness for them and trying to figure out how they can aquire one for their very own body gaurd..and you know the far right is scared of anything "New Age." :lol:

Posted

Here's another EXCELLENT book about these matters:

 

Wes Howard Brook, N.T. scholar (in the Ched Meyer's school of thought), wrote Unveiling Empire: Reading Revelation Then & Now; this book totally undermines the "Left Behind" notions and instead posits that Revelation was written to serve as a handbook to help Christian believers live as faithfully as possible in the midst of empire... much like we are trying to do now!

 

See also these other related threads on this bulletin board:

 

The Rapture Belief Exposed, TCPC Article On Rapture+My Thoughts:)

http://tcpc.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=157

 

Armageddon - are we there yet?

http://tcpc.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=74

Posted

To all:

 

As a physicist, I feel the astronomers and cosmologists have the upper hand in this area of discourse. Why are they so neglected in theological circles? Is it not clear that the "Rapture" clearly involves space science but it is never consulted. The "End of the Earth" can clearly be predicted as the earth moves slowly toward the sun and the sun begins to exhibit the signs of exploding and enveloping its planets as the cosmos evolves? Yet these areas of new knowledge never are mentioned in theological discourse.

 

As we find the sciences and theology increasingly integrated under the influence of the Tempeton Foundation's sponsorship of research and teaching along these lines we can't help but progress. Stand by!

 

Jeep

Posted

Jeep, I'm glad we have a physicist among us, but I don't think that the rapture would ever be meant to tie into the events that you are describing. I think that it is reasonable to assume that the earth will have an end at some point (some billions of years or so), just as it had a beginning. I think the Biblical stories (and other religious stories) are often cosmology as it existed at that time (Sun rotating around the Earth, the Earth at the center of the universe, stars as points of light--and that's it, etc.). They were honest atttempts, but not Truth. They were only Truth to the extent that we know that at some point the Earth began (and I believe Truth in the part of having a Creator).

 

But as for the end of the Earth, as described by physicists of the Earth eventually say going into the Sun (or I should say the sun expanding to encompass the Earth), well we aren't talking about people being pulled out of their cars and other silliness. I doubt there will be people. (Maybe cockroaches will be pulled out of their little roachmobiles :-o).

 

What physicists talk about is not an anthropocentric or even geocentric view of the universe, and since nothing can be proven basically what you deal with are scenarios.

Mostly Christianity doesn't deal with it. I think Matt Fox has made a decent attempt to deal with it, and even has a physicist on his staff.

There's a little book called "The Universe is a Green Dragon" by Brian Swimm. One of the things Swimm talks about (not sure in the book) is sacrifice and rebirth by planets, stars, galaxies echoing the sacrifice and rebirth by Jesus. A friend and I wondered re: the actual physics in the books and whether they really followed post-Einsteining physics.

 

Bear and Co. is the publisher and it's prob. only off the web??

 

--des

Posted

The Delusional is no longer Marginal...

 

There Is No Tomorrow

By Bill Moyers

The Star Tribune

Sunday 30 January 2005

 

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

 

Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."

 

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true - one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index.

 

That's right - the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the "Left Behind" series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious-right warrior Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.

 

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): Once Israel has occupied the rest of its "biblical lands," legions of the antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon.

 

As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to Heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

 

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed - an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144 - just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of God will return, the righteous will enter Heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

 

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist Glenn Scherer - "The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed - even hastened - as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

 

As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election - 231 legislators in total and more since the election - are backed by the religious right.

 

Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos on the Senate floor: "The days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land." He seemed to be relishing the thought.

 

And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 Time-CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations, or in the motel turn on some of the 250 Christian TV stations, and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth, when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

 

Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the Lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, "America's Providential History." You'll find there these words: "The secular or socialist has a limited-resource mentality and views the world as a pie ... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "[t]he Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's earth ... while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people."

 

No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on Nov. 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern American politics.

 

It is hard for the journalist to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think of my friend on Wall Street whom I once

asked: "What do you think of the market?"I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so worried?" And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."

 

I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian and the Center for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that - it's just that I read the news and connect the dots.

 

I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration:

 

That wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the government to judge beforehand whether actions might damage natural resources.

That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections, and ease pollution standards for cars, sport-utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.

 

That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep certain information about environmental problems secret from the public.

That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting, coal-fired power plants and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies.

That wants to open the Arctic [National] Wildlife Refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America.

 

I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency had planned to spend $9 million - $2 million of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council - to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.

 

I read all this in the news.

 

I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's friends at the International Policy Network, which is supported by Exxon Mobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate change is "a myth, sea levels are not rising" [and] scientists who believe catastrophe is possible are "an embarrassment."

 

I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to

it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.

 

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer - pictures of my grandchildren. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."

 

And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice?

 

What has happened to our moral imagination?

 

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"

 

I see it feelingly.

 

The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free - not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. What we need is what the ancient Israelites called hochma - the science of the heart ... the capacity to see, to feel and then to act as if the future depended on you.

 

Believe me, it does.

 

-------

 

Bill Moyers was host until recently of the weekly public affairs series "NOW with Bill Moyers" on PBS. This article is adapted from AlterNet, where it first appeared. The text is taken from Moyers' remarks upon receiving the Global Environmental Citizen Award from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.

 

-------http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/013105F.shtml

Posted

I take the preterist option out of the three. I also think there is rich symbolism that has meaning for the Church in any age, but in terms of 'literal' future happenings, I don't believe in any. With one exception...

 

A de-mythed understanding of the 'second coming'. I believe that we have to have hope that the gospel will be successful, that someday God will be 'all in all' and that Jesus' presence will be felt everywhere.

 

That's really all I have to say on this entire issue.

Posted

Cynthia:

 

I read that in"The Gospel according to Thomas"(Thomas 113). Anyone know why this Gospel has remained excluded from the Bible until just recently? How long must Christianity be defined by a book whose dimensions were set 2000 years ago?

 

Jeep

Posted

Because the ancient manuscript evidence isn't reliable, it has gnostic influences, and it wasn't accepted by the early church.

 

(114) Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."

Posted

DCJ:

 

To my view, the Quote in Thomas was never said by Jesus. This language is quite foreign to the historical Jesus.

 

The question for me reflects the debate over the place of women in society, and the nature of their cultural roles. This was never an issue with Jesus, but was with the wider culture which viewed men and women with very different eyes. The eyes of men who, as we know today, could come up with such notions in abundance.

 

Jeep

Posted (edited)

Jeep - the way I understand it, the politicians did it!!! :> Do people ever change??? I think that a consensus was created at the council of nicene with the initiation of the current tax breaks and special status for churches that signed on to the state sponsored religion. It had little to do with manuscript reliability or God... mostly to do with what worked for the state. Sound familiar?

 

DCJ - curious... I haven't been able to get any of my friends to find this discussion interesting... if you don't, feel free to opt out :D

 

In many "evangelical" churches/writings now, the role of satan is emphasized. He is seen to be an active force in human lives. Given that, if seems so very likely to me that he (satan) would have really put some effort into corrupting the scriptures and the focus of religions. Ex. - the passion of Jesus vs. the life/message of Jesus. Any thoughts?

Edited by Cynthia

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