Jesus and Prophecy- 3 That don't Exist

When we were teaching Sunday School at Christmas time one year, we came across the first of these and filed it under ???? for the time being.





Matthew 2:23

Matthew 27:9-10





The video deals with these two from  2:45- 5:52 for those who want a condensed version. There is more in the video about other things, but I'm just dealing with these for now.



And one I found on my own when reading though Mark a few years ago.

Mark 9:11-13

11 And they asked Him, saying, “Why say the scribes that first Elijah must come?”
12 And He answered and told them, “Elijah verily cometh first and restoreth all things, and how it is written of the Son of Man that He must suffer many things and be set at nought.
13 But I say unto you that Elijah has indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they pleased, as it is written of him.”


Where is it written that John the Baptist (or Elijah if you please) will meet a fate that is "written of him?"

Prophecy and Jesus- The Virgin Birth

I thought I would touch on just a couple of these, as yaddy has provided some ideas for discussion.


To me, this is an easy one.

…22Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23"BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL," which translated means, "GOD WITH US. (Matthew 22-23)

According to the cross reference, the writer of Matthew is referring to a verse in the book of Isaiah:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)

If one reads the entire chapter, it is apparent that there is no mention of any future Messiah here, just a prophecy that a virgin (or young woman- the meaning of the word doesn't change the fact that this isn't a prophecy) will have a son and before he is old enough to know right from wrong, the land would have peace. (my very brief summary). That happened, prophecy fulfilled, done. Note that I don't argue that Isaiah's prophecy was genuine, either, but that's not what this is about.


Also, Mary and Joseph did not name him Immanuel, nor is he ever called that by any New Testament writer outside of this verse plucked from Isaiah.  It may seem like a small point, but God seems to make a huge deal of names in the bible, often changing one from another.


And that's it. That's the fulfilled prophecy that we are supposed to believe happened from an out of context verse in a book that has nothing to do with the future messiah.  

Prophecy and Jesus

I am grateful to have readers who are in disagreement as it gives me a chance to do more digging into the truth of things. Even if we all end up never changing from our original stance on an issue, giving both sides a fair hearing is (for me) the only intellectually honest thing to do.

In my case I have been on the other side, so I can say without any reservation that I understood it, or at least believed it for a time, so there is nothing new there that I don't really know. Or do I? I don't know I guess I'll have to see. 

In a recent comment yaddy states:

To prophecy is to tell the future....the one you talked about has not happened yet, but will/can still happen

The prophecy I was talking about was this one:

From the book of Matthew:

Setting the context, Jesus is talking to his real-time disciples.

24 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.

2 And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.

10 And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.

11 And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.

12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.

13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)

16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:

17 Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:

18 Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.

19 And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!

20 But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:

21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.

23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.

24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

25 Behold, I have told you before.

26 Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.

27 For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

28 For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.

29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:

33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

Clearly this didn't happen, or Christians would not still be waiting.  As yaddy states, it has not happened yet, yet Jesus said it would in the lifetimes of the people he was speaking to.  It was this realization that forced me to drop the premillennial, dispensational eschatology and begin to explore preterism. There is a whole other set of problems there, but that's not part of this discussion.

I will touch on OT prophecies that Jesus was said to have fulfilled in some upcoming posts. This has been done by many others, but I think it couldn't hurt to get my own take on it, and it will allow me to look at them again and see if there is something I'm missing.

More on Mythicism- Definitions

I've been doing quite a bit of researching and thinking and stuff this week. In the last post, I submitted a video, the gist of it being that Jesus cannot be a prophet since what he predicted did not come to pass. The maker of the video recounts the various ways that we get around the fact that the end of the world did not come to "the generation" Jesus was talking to in Luke chapter 21 and Matthew chapter 24.  We are left with three options, saying it did happen, but in a non-literal manner, push it into the future continually, or put it aside and focus on other aspects of the faith.


So, in my studies off and on over the last several months, the idea that Jesus (as portrayed in the gospels) may have not existed at all has been increasingly interesting to me. Not that Christianity didn't exist, but the Christ that the very first Christians worshipped was not an earthly figure. This Christ was revealed to Paul from the very pages of the Old Testament.



An intriguing video series is here. It does start out a bit confusing, but when you get to understanding what is really being said, it makes some sense in explaining why Paul is even there. Have you ever wondered that? Why after Jesus sets out his 12 that walked and talked with him personally, did we need a complete new apostle on the scene? Paul's letters were the first Christian documents, even before the gospels.

From the blog Jericho Brisance 





 I will be searching this out more. 

This Generation

I found this video that well articulates some of the thoughts I've been trying to put together lately (especially after being asked why I gave up Universalism for disbelief). Trying to get back to those days in early 2013 when it came tumbling down, I have to say it was still a huge struggle trying to make the Bible make sense, not in the why God sends people to hell, but what the heck does all this apocalyptic stuff have to do with anything.  I've been researching again after putting all this stuff away for a time. I've been so influenced by my extreme bias over the last couple of decades, that I need to hone my critical thinking skills.



When I first started believing, back in 1995, I was immediately fascinated by prophecy. The teachers on T.V. excitedly proclaimed that Jesus fulfilled oodles of  Old Testament prophecies and that the time of the End, prophesied by Jesus himself, was most certainly at hand. I bought it without question. I didn't check the scriptures, or church history, or secular history, I just believed it. Sure, I would read the pertinent passages in the way the teachers presented them to me, but I just didn't do the research.



It's about 40 minutes long. I listened to it on my phone as I cleaned the house, the audio is well enough to get the meat of it.

The God Concept

This is an introduction to Evid3nc3's masterfully done deconversion series. I revisit it from time to time. This time the idea of graceful degradation stuck out to me, as I am now researching the ins and outs of belief and the whys of deconversion. For example, how is it that some can not take the bible literally and still hold faith, while others see it differently?



Graceful degradation is the ability of a computer, machine, electronic system or network to maintain limited functionality even when a large portion of it has been destroyed or rendered inoperative. The purpose of graceful degradation is to prevent catastrophic failure.  (google)


As he says in the video the concept of God is a mega-belief held together by several smaller beliefs, and it's only after enough of these smaller beliefs are challenged that the system does break down.

Holier Than Thou

When I was a believer, I thought that I knew God, I was more serious about my relationship, more close to God than all those other people "playing church."  I really did. But of course, it was not me but Him who was doing it. I just did my part in loving Him with all my heart, soul, mind and strength.



Driving my son to school this morning, it occurred to me that we all probably think/thought that. No one strives to be lukewarm, we all want(ed) to please Him. Those who don't do things the way we do or read the scriptures with our own interpretation are not "filled with His spirit." It's impossible to know how sincere anyone is in their faith. Will we know them by their works?


Jesus in the sheep and goats judgement passage says plainly it is works and not right belief. In fact, many people who didn't think they were in, were, and those who did weren't.  In fact, I can't really think of any passage where right belief is the standard for holiness.


Wresting scripture? Good grief, everyone accuses everyone else of that. I finally got tired of all the doctrinal nit-picking and wanted to get down to the truth. It was when I left all the hills to die on that I gained (what I believe to be) some humility about this whole thing. What are the essentials. Believe. Believe what exactly? Well, thats the rub, isn't it?


Believe (and then????)



I once heard a sermon where the pastor was giving some sort of lesson about maturity in Christ, making points of the characteristics an immature, growing, and then mature Christian would display in their lives. Here I was a Christian for 17 years or so hearing that if I didn't think church attendance was important, I was immature. I didn't think church attendance was important. What did Jesus ever say about church attendance?

I longed for that personal, sublime relationship with the all that is all. I knew that church attendance, baptism, communion, boring re-hashed homilies, topical powerpoint sermons, tithing had nothing to do with that. (Note all those things are done inside the ecclesiastical country club).

Bible study, getting to the heart of what God says to us, that's where it was at. Yes.


What a mess that was.


Love, yes, that's it. God IS love.

But not so fast, he's also not ONLY love.



Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'

What We Deserve

We all deserve Hell.


I heard it over and over, I believed it, I taught it to Sunday school children. Why do we all deserve Hell?


All have sinned and fallen short the Glory of God. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.



Note Paul doesn't say the wages of sin is eternal torture.  That is pieced together from other places and in Jesus's proclamation of wailing and gnashing of teeth. The fire is never quenched, the worm never dies. The smoke of their torment rises forever and ever.


If Hell forever is your default setting, then yes, any way to avoid it would be preferable. Do you love Jesus or are you running to him to avoid Hell? If there were no Hell, would you still love Jesus?


I'll link to this post today. The last few paragraphs made me think about this.


Putting aside that there is no proof of hell outside of ancient books, I like this quote:

"...Now is there the slightest evidence for this? No, it just says so in Mark 9, Matthew 13 and Revelation 14. Perhaps you'll remember from The Lord of the Rings, it says that when the elves die, they go to Valinor, but they can be reborn in Middle Earth. I say that just as a point of comparison.”-  Sam Harris

 WHY does everyone who ever lived deserve to be in eternal pain and suffering for finite sins we commit on this earth during our short lives?


An eye for an eye is infinitely more merciful in the light of this and Jesus was supposed to be more compassionate than the Law of Moses?

The only unpardonable sin is not believing? What is going on here?



The disease is created so the cure can be sold.  Don't question it, or you'll be going there yourself.

Expectations

Yaddy asked me in the comments of the last post about what it is that I want from God?



That can be a quite complex question, but again quite simple depending on how deep one wants to get into it.


If one reads through my story and even before in the posts and devotions I did as a Christian, you will see that through it all, I tried to make it (Christianity, the Bible, the observable world, reality) make some kind of sense that I could live with and say, yes this is absolute truth.

I've been accused on numerous occasions by more than one of being too black and white in my thinking.  We are all that way in many areas of our life, not to say there isn't room for gray areas at all, but when dealing with the absolute truth of life and the nature of reality, I needed some proof.


Let's just deal with prayer for now.


Would I expect a good God to take away all/prevent all evil from the world? I don't know. How can one have light without darkness? If all were good for everyone all the time, would life be less worth living? That's a whole other subject, but I suppose I would not require a Utopia for me to believe in God.


Would I expect a good God to answer the prayers of his people? Yes. Did I see many many prayers of devout, faithful, self sacrificing believers go unanswered? Yes. Did I see tragedy heaped upon tragedy in real time to a family I knew as a Christian? Yes. My own prayers were hit and miss and as many have said before, we rarely count the misses.


The bible says over and over that God loves us and is listening and will answer our prayers. Think about the prayers you and others have prayed.



Why won't he heal you and  your loved ones? Why won't he save the sinner who you are constantly praying for? Why won't he bring in the Kingdom?


If he could part the seas and raise the dead and heal the lepers, why not now? Why are we going to doctors instead of praying for new limbs, hearts, kidneys?


I'm not asking in a selfish way as if he were a genie. I'm taking the scriptures (Jesus even) at their word.


And if this doesn't happen, ever, then what?


Apologetics, excuses, mental gymnastics, all the things I did to try and ease the dissonance.



I stopped believing in Hell as forever at least about a year and a half or so before losing faith and in that time, since the fear was gone I was able to really question. I discovered that it was just not true.



I expected the promises of the Bible, as far as prayer, to be true.