Clearing the Muddle that is Jesus

Well, here’s some more to the muddle:

I just saw a YouTube advert from a group called “One for Israel”.  Not sure how the omniscient Google algorithm tagged me for this one?

Seems this lot are Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah.  Now, ignorant to the ways of religion that I am, I’d have thought that would basically make them Christians, right?  Apparently not.

Can anyone explain this to me?

Wow, I thought this thread was dead, so I stopped looking. Then suddenly there are about six new posts. I can't answer them all.

Ummm to answer your question though. Judaism isn't about rejection of Jesus as the Messiah.
It's a racial thing (meaning Soros is a Jew despite being very anti-Israel), it's a national thing (meaning non-religious Jews can nonetheless be devted to the nation of Israel), and a religious thing.

Some of this religion is about traditions, some is about worship of God. Messianic Hews keep kosher (unlike Christians ) and celebrate Jewish holidays, but they see Jesus as the Messiah. They may or may not also see him as the Son of God.

Complicating mattees is that nany Jewish rabbis arw deeply anti-Christian and tell other Jews that these are false Jews and that they would become cut off if they accepted Jesus was the Messiah.

The so called Judaism and Islam of those sand people that y'all talking about are inventions of the Beast System that we are living in!

Human civilisation began in central and northen Europe, probably British Isles! Hence British Israilism!

Also thank God for the Spanish! If it wasn't for them there would be no Mexico. Mexico rocks!

Complicating mattees is that nany Jewish rabbis arw deeply anti-Christian and tell other Jews that these are false Jews and that they would become cut off if they accepted Jesus was the Messiah.

Complicating matters is that many Christian ministers are deeply anti-Jewish and tell other Christians that these are false Christians and that they would become cut off if they denied that Jesus was the Messiah.

I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental efforts that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.

Thanks for the reply, but I personally don’t believe any of it, so you probably shouldn’t waste too much time on me.

I have no issue with other peoples’ religious beliefs as long as they don’t interfere with everyone else who doesn’t agree.
[/quote]

My statement was for those who have retarded their thinking with supernatural beliefs.

Not a good way to think. It is for the mentally lazy.

Regards
DL

Quote from: bulmabriefs144 on April 29, 2023, 08:48:19 AM

Complicating mattees is that nany Jewish rabbis arw deeply anti-Christian and tell other Jews that these are false Jews and that they would become cut off if they accepted Jesus was the Messiah.

Complicating matters is that many Christian ministers are deeply anti-Jewish and tell other Christians that these are false Christians and that they would become cut off if they denied that Jesus was the Messiah.

That's Revelation. You're talking about the so-called "synagogue of Satan", no?

Some background on that. Everyone thinks that it's Christians talking about the Jews that stayed in Judaism.
Frank Harding of The Apocalypse Deception: The Book of Revelation is not what it claims to be disagrees, making a connection between Christians who taught circumcision of the flesh mentioned... mostly in Acts, I think (the Judaizers), and the text of Revelation which is very anti-grace, and seems to have borrowed heavily from Ezekiel. In other words, this is not Christians talking about Jews. It's a sect who wanted Christianity to be moralistic like Judaism but spread it to Gentiles (gave lip service to Jesus, but didn't understand his message of repentance and forgiveness), talking about Christians who did things like eat sacrifices or let women preach or eat pork. These were things Christianity could do, that the Jews resented. And so a bunch of false Christians call Christians false Christians. Do you get why Christianity is kinda a funny religion yet? For years, what's not funny is that Christianity labored under a false teaching (known as Roman Catholicism) where works not grace were important, where Mary not Jesus forgives sins, and importantly back then, where priests forgive sins and do so by sale of indulgences. Of equal importance is that priests reading this crap text, saw Jews as the synagogue of Satan and pogroms against them started. I ripped Revelation out of several copies of the New Testament, and you should too. Especially since it lets you take some steam off the rest of the Bible.

Gnostic Christian Bishop, it looks like you messed up a quote. Also, why do you call yourself that when you are clearly not Gnostic, not Christian, and not a bishop?

"Rip out revelation?"Picking and choosing ....nice





Also
Irrationally hating jews possibly comes from remnants of nazi whitespremacy.
There are christian persians and arabs

No, on the one hand, you accuse Christianity of being too brutal and point to this end times vision of a bunch of people getting tossed in to a lake of fire.
On the other hand, you tell me to uphold canon on a book you probably don't even follow or believe in.

Make up your mind.

As for me, I have. A loving God would not toss people into a lake of fire.

 

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 18He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.

Directly contradicts Revelation.

So does this:

6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!

The very first thing "John" says is that an angel told him all  of this!

As for the second point, you're confusing truth for hate.

Christianity is a reform of the gospel of works that Judaism labored under in 1 century and before, where Jews lost sight of the relationship with God, and fixated on laws. There is nothing inherently wrong with kosher or with Jewish people. But there is plenty wrong 1st century Judaism. Jesus tells in detail about the "pay to win" nature of Jewish temple, and how the widows and orphans are neglected, and how the Sabbath laws are making the poor struggle that much more.

As a side topic, I found this today after crawling the web on Tears of the Kingdom.

Make up your mind.

Nothing like cherry-picking from the most cherry-picked book ever to have existed. So trite and obvious. "My god would never murder everyone on the planet except for a handful. No, not my god." Ask the next person,"Oh yeah he would...He had to purge and start over, murdering babies and saving the mosquitoes had to happen..."

Fast forward rounding out the wrath of god in Revelations, here we go again..."My god would never murder everyone on the planet except for the faithful. No, not my god." Ask the next person,"Oh yeah he would...He had to purge and start over, make way for the second coming and all that..."

Nice bookends.

So yeah, just pick and choose what you like and don't like. That's pretty much how religion works. Though you gotta hand it to the creationist/literalists even though they are a bunch of psychopaths. At least they are all in, no whishy-washyness. What's in the book is the word of god, it all happened and will all happen. Buck-up and fly right. Or else!

Or else?

Good to know that the people who accuse Christians of being hateful and evil are not above resorting to threats. Or else what? You'll come to my house and hurt me? Or maybe, you'll sic God on me, even though you've decided the Bible is mostly nonsense?

The  reason Revelation is removed by me has alot to do with the fact that at the beginning, there was a need for God to say "or else". Certain behaviors had to be corrected because people only knew laws. But after Jesus came, there isn't. So Revelation directly contradicts the gospel by making things once again about the wrath of God. But there isn't an "or else" any more.

But don't take my word for it. The letters even say this.

The Purpose of the Law
(see also Romans 7:1–6)

15Brothers, let me put this in human terms. Even a human covenant, once it is ratified, cannot be canceled or amended. 16The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say, “and to seeds,” meaning many, but “and to your seed,” meaning One, who is Christ.

17What I mean is this: The law that came 430 years later does not revoke the covenant previously established by God, so as to nullify the promise. 18For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God freely granted it to Abraham through a promise.

19Why then was the law given? It was added because of transgressions, until the arrival of the seed to whom the promise referred. It was administered through angels by a mediator. 20A mediator is unnecessary, however, for only one party; but God is one.

21Is the law, then, opposed to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come from the law. 22But the Scripture pronounces all things confined by sin, so that by faith in Jesus Christ the promise might be given to those who believe.

23Before this faith came, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. 24So the law became our guardian to lead us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. 25Now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

The guy who was on the cross with Jesus? The one he said would join him in paradise? A murderer and a thief. The people he told God "forgive them for they do not know what they are doing"? They were calling for his crucifixion.



There isn't an "or else" anymore. The law still exists, and you would be arrested by cops if you tried anything against me. But unlike before, your sins are forgiven.

Therefore no matter how many mushrooms John had, there cannot be a Revelation. I'm not "cherrypicking." Canon was established by men, not God. Corruptmen in the Catholic church, who even though Luther said,

About this Book of the Revelation of John, I leave everyone free to hold his own opinions. I would not have anyone bound to my opinion or judgment. I say what I feel. I miss more than one thing in this book, and it makes me consider it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic.

First and foremost, the apostles do not deal with visions, but prophesy in clear and plain words, as do Peter and Paul, and Christ in the gospel. For it befits the apostolic office to speak clearly of Christ and his deeds, without images and visions. Moreover there is no prophet in the Old Testament, to say nothing of the New, who deals so exclusively with visions and images. For myself, I think it approximates the Fourth Book of Esdras; I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it.

Moreover he seems to me to be going much too far when he commends his own book so highly (Revelation 22)—indeed, more than any of the other sacred books do, though they are much more important—and threatens that if anyone takes away anything from it, God will take away from him, etc. Again, they are supposed to be blessed who keep what is written in this book; and yet no one knows what that is, to say nothing of keeping it. This is just the same as if we did not have the book at all. And there are many far better books available for us to keep.

Many of the fathers also rejected this book a long time ago; although St. Jerome, to be sure, refers to it in exalted terms and says that it is above all praise and that there are as many mysteries in it as words. Still, Jerome cannot prove this at all, and his praise at numerous places is too generous.

Finally, let everyone think of it as his own spirit leads him. My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book. For me this is reason enough not to think highly of it: Christ is neither taught nor known in it. But to teach Christ, this is the thing which an apostle is bound above all else to do; as Christ says in Acts 1, “You shall be my witnesses.” Therefore I stick to the books which present Christ to me clearly and purely.

the Catholic Church went around telling people that anyone who didn't accept Catholic canon (including the book of Revelation) was a heretic.

So sorry, but ummm I have my own canon, and Revelation is at the top of the list of things left out.

Or else?

Good to know that the people who accuse Christians of being hateful and evil are not above resorting to threats. Or else what? You'll come to my house and hurt me? Or maybe, you'll sic God on me, even though you've decided the Bible is mostly nonsense?

No. It has nothing to do with me. I'm just saying that religious texts are chock full of fear and "or else's". The bible and the quran pretty much top that list.

You're all a bunch of sinners worshipping false idols and no me. So I'm gonna murder all of you and reset.
You believers get the rapture awesomeness, the rest of you lot are destroyed by the 7 seals, four horsemen, fire, earthquakes, famine, pestilence, bowls of gross shit poured all over the place, etc. And all the other other craziness in between. The quran fairs no better.

So sorry, but ummm I have my own canon, and Revelation is at the top of the list of things left out.

Thanks for proving my point.

First off. Fare refers to fortune, fair refers tpo something being at least okay. Fairs, therefore is not a verb. If you're gonna sat something wrong and stupid, at least use good spelling/grammar doing it.

Second of all, Islam is actually a Christian heresy. Oh they'll deny it up and down, but this is pretty much what went down. Early Christianity had a bunch of people who either didn't get it, or were actively trying to distort the message of the cross. Galatians discusses this.

6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!

So what is this false gospel? Well read on!

10 Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

People pleasing. Living according to human ideas of morality. Moral law instead of forgiveness and love. The idea of constructed laws.

Islam came about from a bunch of people living in Petra. We think they're Arabs, but they had contact with people who taught the Trinity was Father, Child, and Mother. There wasn't a Muhammad. There wasn't a Mecca. We can conclude this from several clues. But the point of just as bad is something everyone says. Load of crap. Islam is backsliding by a bunch of heretics that believed in laws rather than grace. They have laws on how many times you pray, what women wear, what direction you face when praying, even what hand you use to eat/masturbate/wipe your butt.
 Same exact goofballs that tried to add Revelation to the Bible pushed this shit. You know how I know this? Because Islam to a very large extent talks about end times! In other words, precisely the problem is the Muslims were propagandized by people who thought in final days, all heretics will be killed so they go ahead and do just that. Moral of the story: thinking you have to go convert everyone because it's the final hour is the problem.

Thanks for proving my point.

Actually, no I didn't? Your point is that people say the Bible is filled with peace and love, yet kinda excuses things like THE FINAL JUDGEMENT or Noah's Ark. My position is that canon is not written by God, and anyone who tells you that either (1) doesn't know that they are talking about or (2) is trying to sell you something. I am not making excuses for it, I am saying that without exception everyone is saved by Jesus but some people have a harder time than others.

Jesus mentioned blaspheming the Holy Spirit as a bad sin (the only one that isn't automatically forgiven). Essentially, when you tell people lies about who Jesus or God is. Jesus according to the gospel, said he is NOT here to judge the world. Cannot get more clear than that! That means all these plagues, famines, signs, and weirdness? Garbage. Lies. Nonsense.

Jesus says this:

24 Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2 “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

4 Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. 6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.

9 “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

15 “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. 18 Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. 19 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 20 Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.

22 “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. 23 At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. 24 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you ahead of time.

26 “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. 27 For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 28 Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.

29 “Immediately after the distress of those days

“‘the sun will be darkened,
    and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
    and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.

I omitted the heading because it's wrong. This is about the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, and the incredible turmoil surrounding that event. in fact, some of these signs happen with the death of Jesus. Some will always happen, as they are part oc the struggle of being a Christian. Not some grand future event. In fact, Jesus tells us not to put stock in signs or be alarmed.

There is NO official canon. There are books in the Bible that are universal, while others are not. Some groups accept some scripture, some do not.

But Revelation should be tossed into a dumpster, have oil poured on it until it turns to ash. Then sucked into a vacuum. Tossed into an urn. Sent to the middle of the ocean and dropped in with a rock added. It has nearly 2000 years of leading people away from Jesus and into fundamentalist thinking. The fundies are wrong. They have always been wrong, and they have centuries of violence and murder to answer for. And I'll thank you to stop hating on Christians for what fundies, Muslims, and Catholics do.

But Revelation should be tossed into a dumpster, have oil poured on it until it turns to ash. Then sucked into a vacuum. Tossed into an urn. Sent to the middle of the ocean and dropped in with a rock added. It has nearly 2000 years of leading people away from Jesus and into fundamentalist thinking. The fundies are wrong. They have always been wrong, and they have centuries of violence and murder to answer for. And I'll thank you to stop hating on Christians for what fundies, Muslims, and Catholics do.

Thanks again for proving my point about you cherry-pickers.

Thanks again for proving my point about you cherry-pickers.

Here's a funny thing about picking cherries (or any fruit really). Something I know from garden/farm work.

So, if you expect to get paid, you take as much fruit as possible. But the master isn't going to look fondly on you wasting paid time picking rotten fruit. Nor unripened fruit.

Prophecies are unripened fruit. We ignore them until they seem like they are likely to come to pass. And as I know from figs, some never do. They were unripe near the end of the season, so before they come to fruit, they die. These are like prophecies where they miss the window of opportunity. They just can't work anymore because there no longer are any Hittites. Some have enough time to fruit, in which case, we pick them when they start to ripen. We don't do like those damned food industry people and put it on a truck to gas ripen. In the same way, there is no sense worrying about predicted things that haven't happened yet. The prophecies of several books in the Bible either came to fruit, died on the vine, or still haven't happened. If it hasn't happened, unless there is good cause why it should, there is no sense stressing over it. Revelation is filled with prophecy, and unfortunately, the writing is so vague that  much like the garbage of Nostradamus, it could be true or complete crap. There are people who are convinced Nostradamus accurately predicted 2020, and will know exactly how the Earth will turn out. Rubbish.

Next we have rotten fruit. These are works of scripture that do not speak to the Bible. The Bible actually contains a curse against scripture that is against the gospel. And guess what? Revelation meets all standards.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!

1. Against the teachings of the gospel
2. John actually mentions that an angel from heaven gave these prophecies

Rotten fruit is fruit that you shouldn't pick because it potentially rots the core teaching. Just as "one bad apple can ruin the entire bunch" (this isn't just a cute expression, rotting apples have ripening agents), including faulty scripture creates a canon that is bad overall. Revelation disregards the Resurrection of Jesus when it instead talks of the Second Coming. It disregards the idea in Romans that nothing can separate us from the love of God, when it tries to tell people that if you have some sorta tattoo or mark on your body, this will somehow brand you as not God's. It disregards the doctrine of grace, when it over and over again teaches that bad works will result in you being tossed in a lake of fire. And in fact, nowhere in the gospel is there mention of this lake of fire until you get to Revelation. It's also one of the most violent and destructive books in the Bible, made to sound happy only by virtue of 1000 years of peace (but let's talk about that; this peace is a bunch of licentious behavior, effectively the equivalent of if I said free love was suddenly gonna be okay, even though before all that everyone got AIDS if they slept around alot) and this pretty sounding Eden-like place for the worthy (just one problem: there are no worthy, by the Bible's own standards, as only with Jesus's grace freely provided do we have salvation).   

How did this rotten fruit make the cut?
https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/13997/what-historical-reasons-resulted-in-revelation-being-included-in-most-christian

As a source, the book of Revelation is something of an outlier for a book of the Bible that got accepted into the canonical New Testament of most branches of Christianity: it is the only explicitly eschatological work in the New Testament, its date of composition is generally taken to be far later than the other books, its content is dramatic, and its author is not certain.

Of the authorship, they say...

However, scholars debate the exact identity of the John who wrote the Apocalypse. Briefly, they give four possibilities: 1) John the Apostle; 2) John the Elder; 3) John Mark; 4) an unknown/pseudonymous John. As Revelation displays no similarities with Mark's gospel in style or grammar the third option has never been a serious consideration.3 Likewise, an unknown or pseudonymous John would be unlikely to gain major acceptance in the churches. Indeed, a pseudonymous work had little chance of becoming canonical.

Are you sure about that? It was not included in the canon until 419 AD, long after any of the authors who might have written it were dead. We have no idea who wrote the Gospel of John (it does not sound like John, somewhat arrogant brother of James, "son of thunder", as this "John" won't even mention his name). You see, writing styles can be analyzed. The book of Revelation has several expressions that linguists and historians connect with Egyptian Jews, not with Christians under Roman occupation who Further, this Patmos story only exists in Revelation and in writings outside the Bible. There are a number of works that didn't make it into the Bible. These are called Apocrypha (extra stuff) and Pseudepigrapha (false writings). So yes, it is that damned important that text actually be properly authored, or we can't call it the word of God. That would make a forged text, written by people who didn't know Jesus, didn't like Jesus, and didn't want the message of the gospel to actually be understood.

And so, we have what is called a canon. A canon is a group of accepted books. How were these texts made canon? Divine light from heaven? Sorry, no. A bunch of people basically said it is. Forgive me, but I think I'll stay skeptical.

Some indeed of those before our time rejected and altogether impugned the book, examining it chapter by chapter and declaring it to be unintelligible and illogical, and its title fake. For they say that it is not John's, no, nor yet an apocalypse, since it is veiled by its heavy, thick curtain of unintelligibility; and that the author of this book was not only not one of the apostles, nor even one of the saints or those belonging to the Church, but Cerinthus, the same who created the sect called ‘Cerinthian’ after him, since he desired to affix to his own forgery a name worthy of credit. . . . But for my part I should not dare to reject the book, since many brethren hold that the interpretation of each several passages in some way hidden and more wonderful.

We see in the comments of Dionysius that some Church Fathers were reluctant to reject the book, simply because they did not understand it. Not understanding it, they feared that it might contain hidden mysteries that should not be lost. For others, the fact that the book was signed by a man named John meant that this otherwise unknown author might be the apostle John, in which case they dared not reject the book.

I dare. I dare to reject this book, even though its author says that anyone who adds or removes from the Bible is damned. "John" cannot damn me, only God can. As to this "John", nothing about the way he writes is at all similar either to the Gospel of John, nor 1/2/3 John. That you accept it as canon is not reassuring, since your vested interest is not in following the gospel but in accusing the Bible. So yeah, I dare to reject this book. And you should too. Anyone who follows the contents of this book desires a war where everyone is killed, then revived, and people who don't believe the right way are enslaved. This is a prophecy written as a sort of wet dream by Satan. Rotten fruit.



You okay with me picking this cherry out of the finished bunch? Or you wanna keep it?

John of Patmos: Errors, Contradictions and False Prophecies
by Michael R. Burch

As we count down to 2012, should anyone believe the Revelation of John of Patmos aka John the Divine? Or is the book of Revelation full of errors, contradictions and false prophecies? Was the writer of the Apocalypse a prophet, or a deeply disturbed lunatic?

Robert G. Ingersoll branded Revelation "the insanest of all books."
Thomas Jefferson considered Revelation "merely the ravings of a maniac."
Martin Luther said "Christ is neither taught nor known in it."
John Calvin "had grave doubts about its value."

Mark Twain said, "Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand."

What bothers me about the Revelation of John of Patmos is not the parts I don't understand, but the parts I do understand: the parts where God, Jesus Christ and the Angels abandon every ethical teaching enshrined in the Bible and becoming a pack of rabid, religion-besotted serial killers.

Clearly, the book of Revelation is full of errors and horrors. And the errors and horrors are not only factual, scientific and prophetic, but also theological, because John of Patmos clearly refuted core Christian beliefs. For example, John called Jesus the "bright and morning star" when that was Lucifer's designation (Isaiah 14:11-15). John then went on to describe a God who acts like the Devil: killing women, children and innocent animals, then torturing human beings with fire and brimstone, "in the presence of the Lamb and Holy Angels." What sort of "God," what sort of "lamb" and what sort of "angels" torture other beings with fire and brimstone, or sit idly by and watch them being tortured? Will heaven be like Auschwitz? Will Jesus Christ turn out to be another Mengele and God the Father another Hitler?

In his bizarre, palpably evil "revelation," John of Patmos said Jesus would kill the children of an adulteress "with death." Crude grammar aside, according to the Bible, Jesus rescued an adulteress from being stoned, so why would he kill innocent children for something their mother did, when the act didn't merit death even for her? Why do so many Christians insist on turning Jesus into a woman-killer and a child-killer, when they say he will return to destroy multitudes of non-Christians? Good men do not kill women and children purposefully for any reason, and to kill anyone, even an adult, for having sex is barbaric. When Christians calmly assume that having sex is a valid reason for other people to be killed, then tortured for all eternity, one must question whether they believe that Jesus Christ is actually the Devil. If like John of Patmos they believe Jesus will kill children because adults have sex, they make him seem perverse beyond all belief.

Of course one can "prove" that their is an afterlife, or the God exists, or that Jesus continues to live in some other dimension. But it almost seems not to matter, to me. What's the point of "belief" if the the only "hope" is that beings worse than Hitler and Mengele will allow their obedient slaves to watch them kill, then eternally torture, other human beings?

And why such unbelievable punishments for trivial things like eating, drinking and having sex? According to John of Patmos, Christians are condemned for eating food sacrificed to idols, but according to Jesus, Peter, and Paul, all food is clean. Paul said that he could eat food offered to idols with a clear conscience. Jesus said that it is what comes out of our mouths (words) that we should worry about, not the food we ingest. Among Christians, only the Judaizers that Paul opposed so vehemently believed certain foods were "unclean." Obviously, John of Patmos was a Judaizer. There is no reason to worry about food being offered to idols, because the "gods" represented by idols are not real. So John of Patmos was a superstitious man, according to Jesus, Peter and Paul, if he believed that offering food to a nonexistent "god" made it "unclean."

Contradicts even basic teachings of Jesus

That John is a Judaizer is clear, because even if a church is doing well, it must continue doing works to be saved. Salvation is not by grace, but depends on works, eating the right things, not having the wrong kind of sex, etc. This is clearly illustrated in these verses:

Revelation 20:12-13—And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done.

So obviously grace had nothing to do with salvation, according to John. The only thing that mattered was works.

It is also important to note that Hades was not "hell," but the grave. This is also true for the Hebrew word Sheol. Sheol and Hades were not hell, but the grave or the abode of all the dead (not just the "wicked"). It makes no sense to say that God sent people to "hell" only to judge them and decide that they were righteous, after all. So Bibles such as the KJV are obviously wrong when they translate Sheol and Hades as "hell." Job asked to be hidden from suffering in Sheol; King David said God would be with him if he made his bed in Sheol (i.e., if he died); the sons of Korah said God would redeem them from Sheol; and Israel himself said that he and Joseph would be reunited in Sheol. Obviously, they were not talking about a place of eternal suffering that could never be escaped. They were talking about the grave: a place where there would be no more suffering. But Christians have been terrified of a place called "hell" for centuries because of a Bible they fail to understand. There is no reason to believe in a place called "hell" as a revelation of an all-knowing God, because the God of the Bible never mentioned "hell" or suffering after death to his best human friends: Adam, Eve, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob/Israel, Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon, or a long line of Hebrew prophets (the prophets said even Sodom would be restored in the end). Nor did Paul ever mention a place called "hell" in his epistles, the earliest-written Christian texts. Nor did the word "hell" appear in any of the early Christian sermons recorded in the book of Acts (ostensibly the self-recorded history of the early church). When Peter spoke directly to the men who had murdered Jesus forty days before Pentecost, he spoke of the "restitution of all things to God, spoken of by all the Holy Prophets since the world began," but he never mentioned anyone going to a place called "hell" for any reason. The only Sheol/Hades references in the book of Acts are two quotations of David saying that his soul would not remain in Sheol (the grave). The early Christians were clearly using the resurrection of Jesus to claim that verses in the Hebrew Bible that prophesied a resurrection had been fulfilled. They claimed that this proved that Jesus was the Messiah. But there was nothing in the Hebrew Bible about a place called "hell" where people suffered after death. So while most Christians today assume that the Jews and early Christians believed in a place called "hell," this is obviously not the case. Because Sheol and Hades did not mean "hell," people like John of Patmos actually created a new, nameless place where human beings would be tortured after death. Later, it seems Sheol, Hades and this nameless "lake of fire" became confused, but if any of the parts of the Bible that prophesied the Messiah and a resurrection and a peaceful kingdom came from God, there never was a "hell" or a "lake of fire" for anyone to fear.  Ironically, according to the Jewish historian Josephus, it was the Pharisees who introduced the idea of suffering after death to the Judaism of their day. So even more ironically, it seems John of Patmos may have been a Pharisee, one of the sworn enemies of Jesus.

Invents a hell where the rest of the Bible (if translated properly) does not have one!

And here's another area of disagreement: the Bible clearly teaches that human beings die only once, but John spoke of a "second death," which Christians were in danger of. If there is a second death, why didn't God or Jesus or any prophet or apostle ever mention it anywhere else in the Bible?

John said that Jesus would turn his back on Christians if they grew cold or even lukewarm, but this refutes the promise of Jesus never to leave or forsake Christians, "even to the ends of the earth."

John’s "God" is evil and unjust, a monster. For instance, John heard all the creatures of the earth praise God, after which he turned around and destroyed them.

John’s "God" made ridiculous mistakes. For instance, all the grass was destroyed by fire, but then later God "forgot" that the grass had been destroyed and told the giant locusts not to harm the grass.

John said Jesus had "paps" (female breasts). Nowhere else in the Bible is God or the Messiah described as being a hermaphrodite, although some pagan "gods" had such attributes.

John said Jesus would search the hearts and kidneys ("reins") of believers. Kidneys, really? No one believes kidneys play a role in how we think, act or feel, today. We know the will and emotions spring from our brains, not our kidneys!

John obviously believed that the earth was flat, with corners, and that the stars were tiny pinpoints of light.

If you agree that Revelation is part of the Bible, this means you accept flat Earth theology. Otherwise, at the very least you should agree that there are some things to reject about Revelation.

He said he saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth. We know that his earth was flat because he said that every eye would see Jesus when he descended from the clouds. That can only happen on a flat earth. And John obviously believed that this would happen in his own lifetime, because he said that the people who had "pierced" Jesus would see him return.  The people who had pierced Jesus were the Roman soldiers who crucified him. John may have written his original text while living in Jerusalem as it was being beseiged by the Romans (circa  AD 70). If so, John was understandably full of hatred for the Romans and wanted Jesus to return and destroy them. In John's vision, which seems to have been wishful thinking, the people who had murdered Jesus would see him return to judge the "Beast" (the Roman emperor) and "Babylon" (the Roman empire).

His hatred of the Romans probably led John to say they would be tortured with fire and brimstone "in the presence of the Lamb and Holy Angels." But Jesus had asked God to forgive his murderers because they didn’t know what they were doing. How can these two very different visions of Jesus be reconciled? And how can anyone believe Jesus and the Angels are going to torture human beings, in heaven? So much for hell being "separation from God."

While most Christians now believe that Revelation forecasts future events, it seems clear that the early Christians  believed Jesus would return to their generation:

Mathew 16:28―"I tell you the truth, there are some standing here who will not experience death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

Luke 9:27―"I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God."

Mark 13:30―I tell you the truth, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

Mark 14:62―[Jesus speaking to his accusers said] "You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven."

And he was right! Stephen, when he was being stoned, says exactly that. The resurrection of Jesus was the second coming.

Yet another disagreement: John said God has seven spirits. This is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible.

John also got the names of the twelve tribes wrong, leaving out Dan and Ephraim, but including Joseph. Joseph's sons were generally considered separate tribes in their own right because they were allotted tribal territories within Israel, but if Joseph’s sons are included there are fourteen tribes rather than twelve (or thirteen if Joseph is not counted). It seems highly unlikely that an all-wise God would have forgotten the names of the twelve tribes of Israel! But it's easy for human beings to make mistakes, when they think there are twelve tribes but there are actually fourteen.

John said the things he described must soon take place because the time was near. And in a way he was right, because Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70 by the Romans, and the Jews who lived went into Diaspora. So their world really did end. But even if he was right about the timing, John was wrong about the victors.

In John's book, the churches are judged collectively, not as individuals, and it is not faith in Jesus that saves the churches, or the grace of God, but works.

The early church fathers knew the writer of Revelation was not the writer of the Gospel of John, because Revelation is a poorly written book. Ancient church fathers who denied that the author of John also wrote Revelation included John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, Denis of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Gregory Nazianzen. For example, Eusebius wrote of Revelation: "The phrasing itself also helps to differentiate between the Gospel and Epistles of John on the one hand, and the book of Revelation on the other. The first two are written not only without errors in the Greek, but also with real skill with respect to vocabulary, logic and coherence of meaning. You won't find any barbaric expression, grammatical flaw, or vulgar expression in them. ... I don't deny that this other author (John of Patmos) had revelations ... but I notice that in neither language nor in style does he write accurate Greek. He makes use of barbaric expressions and is sometimes guilty even of grammatical error ... I don't say this in order to accuse him (far from it!), but simply to demonstrate that the two books are not at all similar."

Eighteen hundred years ago, Dionysius (Bishop of the Patriarchy of Alexandria) stated that Revelation was not written by the same person who wrote John's Gospel and Letters. He compared the writing styles and found John of Patmos to be unlike any other New Testament writer.

Tom Harpur describes Revelation's Greek style as "barbarous."

Martin Luther believed Revelation contradicted much of the content of the Gospel of John and the synoptic Gospels, so he relegated it to an appendix in his German translation of the Bible.

John of Patmos contradicts John the Apostle at nearly every turn. And we should remember that Revelation was doubted by many early Christians and was not generally accepted as part of the New Testament canon until AD 508. Some Christian sects still do not include it in their Bibles. Therefore criticism of Revelation is not new.

And if the number of the beast is so important, why do different texts have different numbers: 666 and 616?

The early Church father Irenaeus knew of several occurrences of the 616 variant. The testimony of Irenaeus is important, because he was a disciple of Polycarp who according to his followers was a disciple of the apostle John.

In May 2005, it was reported that scholars at Oxford University using advanced imaging techniques had been able to read previously illegible portions of the earliest known record of Revelation (a 1,700 year old papyrus), from the Oxyrhynchus site, Papyrus 115 or P115, dating one century after Irenaeus. The fragment gives the Number of the Beast as 616 (χ ι ϛ), rather than the majority text 666 (χ ξ ϛ). The other early witness Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C) has it written in full: hexakosiai deka hex (lit. six hundred sixteen). Significantly, P115 aligns with Codex Alexandrinus (A) and Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C) which are generally regarded as providing the best testimony to Revelation.

Dr. Paul Lewes in his book, A Key to Christian Origins (1932) wrote: "The figure 616 is given in one of the two best manuscripts, C (Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, Paris), by the Latin version of Tyconius (DCXVI, ed. Souter in the Journal of Theology, SE, April 1913), and by an ancient Armenian version (ed. Conybaere, 1907). Irenaeus knew about it [the 616 reading], but did not adopt it (Haer. v.30,3), Jerome adopted it (De Monogramm., ed. Dom G Morin in the Rev. Benedictine, 1903). It is probably original."

Professor David C. Parker, Professor of New Testament Textual Criticism and Paleography at the University of Birmingham, thinks that 616, although less memorable than 666, is the original. Dr. Ellen Aitken said: "Scholars have argued for a long time over this, and it now seems that 616 was the original number of the beast. It's probably about 100 years before any other version."

The remainder of this page consists of a letter by Thomas Jefferson:

Quote

TO GENERAL ALEXANDER SMYTH MONTICELLO
January 17 1825

DEAR SIR,
I have duly received four proof sheets of your explanation of the Apocalypse with your letters of December 29th and January 8th; in the last of which you request that so soon as I shall be of opinion that the explanation you have given is correct I would express it in a letter to you. From this you must be so good as to excuse me because I make it an invariable rule to decline ever giving opinions on new publications in any case whatever. No man on earth has less taste or talent for criticism than myself and least and last of all should I undertake to criticise works on the Apocalypse. It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it and I then considered it as merely the ravings of a maniac no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams. I was therefore well pleased to see in your first proof sheet that it was said to be not the production of St John but of Cerinthus a century after the death of that apostle. Yet the change of the author's name does not lessen the extravagances of the composition and come they from whomsoever they may I cannot so far respect them as to consider them as an allegorical narrative of events past or subsequent. There is not coherence enough in them to countenance any suite of rational ideas. You will judge therefore from this how impossible I think it that either your explanation or that of any man in the heavens above or on the earth beneath can be a correct one. What has no meaning admits no explanation and pardon me if I say with the candor of friendship that I think your time too valuable and your understanding of too high an order to be wasted on these paralogisms. You will perceive I hope also that I do not consider them as revelations of the Supreme Being whom I would not so far blaspheme as to impute to Him a pretension of revelation couched at the same time in terms which He would know were never to be understood by those to whom they were addressed. In the candor of these observations I hope you will see proofs of the confidence esteem and which I entertain for you.

A second person says that it was Cerinthus, not John. So do I, tbh.

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson By Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Adgate Lipscomb, Albert Ellery Bergh, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson memorial association of the United States

Anyway, that's why there is a muddle about Jesus. Because we hear him talk about forgiving even the people trying to kill him. And then we have these lovely writings about end times where both he and God are behaving like psychopaths (almost like the author of this book worships Satan as God). And then we followers, listening that rather than remembering that he rose from the dead, become crazed types who declare it's the end of the world and fight people they think are evil.

You see yet why I had to write this thread? It's because there is a real gap between what Christians believe about Jesus, and what he actually promised. "He will come again in glory to judge the Earth" is something they say every Sunday in the Nicene Creed. Uhhhhno? He explicitly says in John 3:17

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Judge the Earth? What are you smoking?

And this is also the divide between Christians and non-Christians. They think Christians are going to condemn them.
 I might decide that I personally don't like how you live.  But there is a vast difference between that, and you being condemned to "Hell". And what do you care if I did think you're going to Hell (I don't)? You don't have to believe in this stuff.

"Rip out revelation?"Picking and choosing ....nice

Also
Irrationally hating jews possibly comes from remnants of nazi whitespremacy.
There are christian persians and arabs

Sorry, this should have updated sooner, but I think I missed a comment somewhere.  First off, I don't hate on Jews. I rightly understand that they have rejected God's Word to instead follow kings, manmade rules, and worship of the Temple. Now what do I mean by God's Word? Do I mean the Bible? No, I do NOT. The Bible is written text. It is not the Holy Word of God. The Bible tells us in Colossians 2 not to put our stock in manmade rules (using the laws about festivals and moon rites and what you cannot touch as an example; this closely parallels Jesus's own word about Jews practicing handwashing). John explicitly tells us that the Word of God is Jesus.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.

Look, I can pick up a Bible and rip out random pages, then soak some of them in water, burn others, and feed others to a goat. The Bible is not the Holy Word of God, and should not be called the Holy Bible. However, the Bible contains the words of Jesus. Jesus is the Holy Word of God. The Bible is holy for that reason, not Holy as an object (that's idolatry). So yes, if something other than the Gospel (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) offends, Jesus himself said to pluck it out. Despite attempts to muddle his words for two millennia, you can still very much piece together everything he meant to say. Which brings us to an argument between Cerinthus, a notable heresy writer and John.

Cerinthus (Greek: Κήρινθος, romanized: Kērinthos; fl. c. 50-100 CE) was an early Gnostic, who was prominent as a heresiarch in the view of the early Church Fathers. Contrary to the Church Fathers, he used the Gospel of Cerinthus, and denied that the Supreme God made the physical world. In Cerinthus' interpretation, the Christ descended upon Jesus at baptism and guided him in ministry and the performing of miracles, but left him at the crucifixion. Similarly to the Ebionites, he maintained that Jesus was not born of a virgin, but was a mere man, the biological son of Mary and Joseph. (see Adoptionism)

Early Christian tradition describes Cerinthus as a contemporary to and opponent of John the Evangelist, who may have written the First Epistle of John and the Second Epistle of John to warn the less mature in faith and doctrine about the changes Cerinthus was making to the original gospel. According to early Christian sources, the Apostle John wrote his gospel specifically to refute the teachings of Cerinthus.

All that is known about Cerinthus comes from the writing of his theological opponents.

And also...

A late second century heretical Christian sect (later dubbed the Alogi) headed by Caius of Rome alleged Cerinthus was the true author of the <Gospel of John and> Book of Revelation. According to Catholic Encyclopedia: Caius: "Additional light has been thrown on the character of Caius's dialogue against Proclus by Gwynne's publication of some fragments from the work of Hippolytus "Contra Caium" (Hermathena, VI, p. 397 sq.); from these it seems clear that Caius maintained that the Apocalypse of John was a work of the Gnostic Cerinthus."

You can call them heretical all you want, but they are right about the book of Revelation. I used <> to indicate a part that should be excised. No sane or reasonable person would think Revelation and John are written by the same author. That's a smear. John has told us that Jesus was referring to his bodt when talking about the rebuilding of the temple (invalidating the idea in Revelation of a new temple built by the Antichrist), and John also says Jesus has come to save the world not to condemn it (invalidating Revelation, where Jesus condemns the world rather than saving it). Either "Cerinthus" is arguing with himself according to Caius, or he believed (as do I) that John was written in opposition to Cerinthus (as even Wikipedia admits earlier), and you can pretty clearly tell which wrote which.

Basically you don't have a response to this, and are instead trying to bury it.