Why You Should Consider Becoming A Christian

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militarybrat
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23 Nov 2007, 11:30 pm

pandabear said "Which Messianic prophecies?"
The main one is from Isaiah about the maiden giving birth to Emmanuel, a title confered on Jesus. The Gospels quote several prophies concerning a savior and use other intances to infer such things like Moses and Elijah meeting with Jesus on the mountain showing his divine link back to them and to the tradition that Elijiah would return at the time of salvation.



monty
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24 Nov 2007, 12:22 am

militarybrat wrote:
pandabear said "Which Messianic prophecies?"
The main one is from Isaiah about the maiden giving birth to Emmanuel, a title confered on Jesus. The Gospels quote several prophies concerning a savior and use other intances to infer such things like Moses and Elijah meeting with Jesus on the mountain showing his divine link back to them and to the tradition that Elijiah would return at the time of salvation.


But wasn't calling him Emmanuel something that anyone could do? And being born of a maiden (virgin) is one of those speculative things taken on faith.

The Jewish idea of the Messiah is very different from the Christian idea; Christians seemed to modify and re-interpret the prophecies that didn't hold true. When Jesus didn't have great military victories, the Christians claimed that that was only a metaphor, that he really conquered death, etc. etc. When he wasn't a political leader in the sense of holding political power, Christians emphasized the other-worldly nature of his power, or the fact that his teachings ultimately had political influence. When the prophecy that the Messiah would foster Israel and safe-guard it (and instead the Romans actually destroyed Israel and scattered the Jews), this again was reinterpreted to mean that he would return some hundreds or thousands of years in the future to do so.


Quote:
The moshiach will be a great political leader descended from King David (Jeremiah 23:5). The moshiach is often referred to as "moshiach ben David" (moshiach, son of David). He will be well-versed in Jewish law, and observant of its commandments (Isaiah 11:2-5). He will be a charismatic leader, inspiring others to follow his example. He will be a great military leader, who will win battles for Israel. He will be a great judge, who makes righteous decisions (Jeremiah 33:15). But above all, he will be a human being, not a god, demi-god or other supernatural being.

...

Jews do not believe that Jesus was the moshiach. Assuming that he existed, and assuming that the Christian scriptures are accurate in describing him (both matters that are debatable), he simply did not fulfill the mission of the moshiach as it is described in the biblical passages cited above. Jesus did not do any of the things that the scriptures said the messiah would do.

On the contrary, another Jew born about a century later came far closer to fulfilling the messianic ideal than Jesus did. His name was Shimeon ben Kosiba, known as Bar Kokhba (son of a star), and he was a charismatic, brilliant, but brutal warlord. Rabbi Akiba, one of the greatest scholars in Jewish history, believed that Bar Kokhba was the moshiach. Bar Kokhba fought a war against the Roman Empire, catching the Tenth Legion by surprise and retaking Jerusalem. He resumed sacrifices at the site of the Temple and made plans to rebuild the Temple. He established a provisional government and began to issue coins in its name. This is what the Jewish people were looking for in a moshiach; Jesus clearly does not fit into this mold. Ultimately, however, the Roman Empire crushed his revolt and killed Bar Kokhba. After his death, all acknowledged that he was not the moshiach.


From the Messianic Idea in Judaism: http://www.jewfaq.org/moshiach.htm


Also a big difference in the divinity of the Messiah - nothing in the Jewish Scripture dealt with this 'Son of God who is God' idea that Christians believe.



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24 Nov 2007, 1:53 am

I was born into a Catholic family, and was never mistreated by either clergy or my parents.
What happened was that I asked too many questions, until I was 'uninvited' from bible school.

My main question was, "What kind of 'loving god' would condemn people to eternal hell just because they'd been born in a place that didn't have christianity?"

Later I figured out that there were other problems with the whole kit-and-kaboodle of xianity.



militarybrat
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24 Nov 2007, 11:17 am

The Christian and Jewish concept of Mesiah differ, its one of the reasons Christianity broke away from Judaism; the main one was the Christians didn't want to be assosiated with the zelots and thus have the Romans crush them like little bugs. They kind of miscalculated Roman's mistrust of the new.
The prophies were not misquoted they actually came from a different translation of the Tanak (Jewish Bible) than the one that continued down to us in translation, and then translated that into Greek, thus causeing the discrepancies. We have found other texts which have those versions. The ancient Israelites didn't care about the subtle differences in the same texts because for them the message was deeper than some literal word for word story. They honored all of them equally by carefully translating them, footnoteing differences and oftan kept them togeather.
Also, the prophesies were believed to be double prophesies, meaning they had a truth that was for much later in the future from the time they were written, to the time of Jesus, and a shorter truth that happened closer to the time they were made thus substanciating the prophet as a true prophet so he wasn't stoned to death as a false prophet.
Many Christians do not believe the version of if your born in an area or time where there wasn't Christianity your atimaticly going to hell because your not a Chistian view. Its seen as one of those outdated thoughts from a backward and ignorant time. The Catholic Church even conformed to this by eliminating limbo from its dogma.



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24 Nov 2007, 2:05 pm

So now people are considered to go to heaven if they are 'good,' as opposed to 'christian'? That's a much more enlightened view - I still hear fundies preaching the old version though.



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24 Nov 2007, 3:47 pm

Chuchulainn wrote:
I understand that a lot of you were raised as Christian, and were kind and honest but were returned with hatred. So was I. At times I wanted to leave my faith and become a druid, to "show them" and invoke their anger, to drink and have sex and live a sinful life. But I found that the true Christians--those that were kind and showed faith in God--treated me with the same kindness I showed others. You must understand that humans are flawed, that some people are inevitably going to be jerks. Some jerks will claim to be Christians, but aren't. These people serve as Satan's tools to turn you against the faith. I believe Aspies have a special connection to God. Don't let the actions of apostates deter you.


I didn't choose to be Christian, but didn't leave it because I ended up hating it. I left it because it didn't make any sense and had no evidence to provide that heaven and hell existed, or that prayer ever worked (it didn't). I believe I have no connection to God because my thinking is too logical and robotic to allow the acceptance of either prophecies written from little to no calculations and inaccurate and unevidenced descriptions of the world, to avoid skepticism, to allow faith, and simply accepting anything that is written in a book by some authors who were completely clueless about the world they were living in. It simply makes no sense at all.


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24 Nov 2007, 7:34 pm

Ditto.


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24 Nov 2007, 10:08 pm

militarybrat wrote:
The Catholic Church even conformed to this by eliminating limbo from its dogma.


No more Limbo? Everyone was evicted? Where did they go?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhs0Gp1XgFs[/youtube]



monty
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24 Nov 2007, 10:39 pm

pandabear wrote:
militarybrat wrote:
The Catholic Church even conformed to this by eliminating limbo from its dogma.


No more Limbo? Everyone was evicted? Where did they go?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhs0Gp1XgFs[/youtube]


To an even more wretched place - the Disco. The Bee-Gees, for 10,000 years!



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25 Nov 2007, 9:04 am

I was baptized and raised Christian, even played Mary in the Christmas pageant when I was eight and sang in the choir. Ironically, it was while I was in the choir that I realized that Christianity was kind of, well, illogical, considering people can't rise from the dead. I still have a soft spot for some parts of Christianity, though. The Sermon on the Mount is great, and some of the hymns and artwork are gorgeous.