OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
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User ID: 359
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3hr ago
The flood came and Took them all away. Then Jesus uses the word taken again. Taken means dead.
We have this cultural idea of the Second Coming and then look for passages that might pertain to it. However, if you strip away a lot of the cultural baggage and try to read the words in the way they would have been written a different picture emerges.
We live in the Age to Come already, we have been experiencing two thousand years of birthing pains, the Son of Man has come, Jesus' prophecy in Matthew refers to the fall of the Second Temple and might also refer to the inauguration of the New Heavens and New Earth we all await. The parable definitely refers to each of our individual deaths whenever they might happen.
It would not be a bad thing to be on Earth when Jesus comes to make all things New. We will have glorified resurrected bodies and live an embodied existence serving our purpose as God's image and likeness in material form.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
4hr ago
...I am not in schism with St. Augustine. I'm BFFs with his mama.
And the point is that the dumb form of Christianity is relatively recent, local, and not representative of Christianity, so if someone intelligent converts they are not necessarily going into the dumb version.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6hr ago
There are actually two separate groups that make up each generation:
Millennials have Boomer parents who largely had GI Bill parents and so on.
Gen Zs have Gen X parents who largely had Silent Generation parents and so on.
There is some intermingling and drift, some people were born to parents in their early 20s and have kids in their early 20s, but by large there are actually two sets of Americans with different genetic makeups and values living beside each other.
Gen X and Gen Z tend to be the more pragmatic generation.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6hr ago
The pre-trib rapture seems to be based on a misunderstanding of one of Jesus' parables:
"Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left." (Matthew 24:40–41)
So there will be people who are taken, raptured, right? Except what was the context of this:
For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man...
So the people "taken" are taken by the flood. Being "taken" doesn't seem to be a good thing here. It seems to be saying that people will die suddenly.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6hr ago
Maybe that's the difficulty - you have only encountered the weakest versions of Christianity. Most educated Christians for most of history regarded the first 11 chapters of Genesis as myths that present theological truths about our identity as humans in relationship with God. Reading the Garden of Eden as something that has to be literally true or else all of the Bible and Christianity is false is something that developed relatively recently.
Origen:
I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance and not literally" (The Fundamental Doctrines 4:1:16 [A.D. 225]).
Augustine:
"at least we know that [the Genesis creation day] is different from the ordinary day with which we are familiar" (Genesi Ad Litteram, AD 415).
Also St. Augustine:
It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.
With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.
That said, it's not like there are no miracles either. There are books of the Bible that consider themselves to be histories, some that consider themselves to be biographies, some that are poetry, some that are advice. Each book needs to be read according to its genre. For example, this is an interesting look at how an event in 2 Kings shows up in the historical record of surrounding nations.
OracleOutlook
🇺🇸 Fiat justitia ruat caelum
7hr ago
It being impossible is the whole point! If people could just rise from the dead all the time on their own then it wouldn't be a big deal! Why is the objection to miracles "but that isn't what physics allows?" That's how you know it's a miracle. It's no surprise to the Gospel writers that it's impossible, that it was impossible and happened anyway is what made it paradigm-changing!
Hooray then! Dilemma solved.
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