Is Hell Real ?

King Mob wrote: »

*Lights the Oldrnwisr signal to see what he thinks about this claim.*

You rang?

antiskeptic wrote: »

To save time, how far have you followed the stock answer to find it wanting such that this becomes a favorite of yours. You say Joseph wasn't Jesus' father, when in fact he was, legally.

That means there is a legal lineage running back from Jesus. I take it the stock answer for the point of that also doesn't satisfy?

antiskeptic wrote: »

"Matthew traces the genealogy of Jesus from Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, through David, the King of Judah to whom God made the Davidic covenant. This shows Jesus in the line of Abraham and David, but Matthew does not say that Jesus is the actual son of Joseph—only that he is in the Messianic line through Joseph. By implication, he is the legal son of Joseph by adoption."

Legal reasons thus.

Well, here's the thing.

Matthew's objective in listing a genealogy for Jesus isn't to establish a legal inheritance through Jospeh but a familial connection. One of the recurring themes of Matthew's gospel is the idea that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. The objective in listing a genealogy for Jesus is to have Jesus descend from the house of David as stated in Jeremiah 23:5

“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “When I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; And He will reign as king and act wisely And do justice and righteousness in the land."

There are however, several problems with Matthew's genealogy.

Firstly, Matthew doesn't actually know Jesus' lineage or interact with any primary source capable of relating the lineage of Jesus. Instead Matthew borrows the one from 1 Chronicles 3:5-19. However, Matthew leaves 4 names out of the Chronicles list without any direct explanation (Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah and Jehoiakim). Presumably, Matthew's reason for doing this is to make the list fit within his miraculous numerology:

Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah.
Matthew 1:17

However, there are in fact only 41 names on Matthew's list not 42. Either way, Matthew's list is not reliable.

Secondly, as stated above one of the recurring themes in Matthew is portraying Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. To this end he misquotes, misapplies and fabricates prophecies from the Old Testament to make it look as if Jesus' coming had been foretold. He misreads Micah 5:2 by having Jesus born in Bethlehem, he misreads and misquotes Isaiah 7:14 thus creating the farcical notion of a virgin birth, he misunderstands Hebrew parallelisms in Zechariah 9:9 when he describes Jesus' entry into Jerusalem in 21:7 and finally he outright fabricates a prophecy in Chapter 2:13-23.
Matthew's downfall in this objective is that as much as he tries to distort the OT for his own ends, he can't run away from the fact that Jesus isn't the Messiah. The characteristics of the Messiah are detailed throughout the Old Testament and Jesus fails at almost all of them.
It is, for example, stated that the Messiah would be knowledgeable and observant of the Old Testament laws as outlined in Isaiah 11:2-5. While Jesus was certainly knowledgeable, observant he wasn't. He violates the dietary laws in Mark 7:18-19, the Sabbath law in Matthew 12:3-5, the commandment to honour your father and mother in Matthew 12:46-50 and the circumcision law in John 7:22-24.
The Messiah's political prowess is also documented in several places. In Isaiah 11:11-12, Hosea 3:4-5 and Jeremiah 23:7-8 and 30:3 it is stated that the Messiah will reunite the Jews in Israel and restore Jerusalem. In Isaiah 2:2-4, 11:10 and 42:1, it is stated that the Messiah would create a single world government in Israel. Furthermore, despite the Christian claims about Jesus' body as a temple, the Old Testament makes it clear that the Messiah would rebuild a physical temple in Jerusalem and resume sacrifices in it (Jeremiah 33:17-18, Ezekiel 37:27-28 and Malachi 3:3-4). Jesus never accomplishes any of this and his death runs counter to the idea of the Messiah as a combined spiritual and political leader ushering Jerusalem into a new era of peace.
Speaking of peace, the arrival of the Messiah is supposed to herald the beginning of the Messianic age, accompanied by a number of signs. These include an era of perpetual peace (Isaiah 2:4), predators and prey will coexist peacefully (Isaiah 11:6), the entire human race worshipping Yahweh (Zechariah 14:9) and following all his laws (Ezekiel 37:24). None of these, obviously, came to pass, then or at any time since.

Finally, the only other person in the NT capable of verifying Matthew's genealogy doesn't. Luke's genealogy disagrees with Matthew at every name except five (David, Shealtiel, Zerubbabel, Joseph and Jesus). It contains 57 names versus Matthew's 41. It traces the genealogy through Nathan rather than Solomon contrary to 2 Samuel 7 and 1 Chronicles 22.

The point here is that Matthew's genealogy is rather pointless. It is part of an objective to establish Jesus as the Messiah, which he isn't (per the criteria in the OT). It distorts its source material for the sake of some numerological significance and it is directly contradicted by the only other author to list a genealogy for Jesus. It has no independent verification.

In truth, we don't really know what Jesus' father might have been called. He's not mentioned in the earliest gospel, Mark, nor in any of the Pauline epistles. There's no reason to suspect that either of the genealogies listed for Jesus is remotely credible given the factual mistakes, contradictions, plagiarism and other problems present in the gospels.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Why not?

Do you think walking on water, raising the dead, turning water into wine, a guy stuck in a tomb for three days was resurrected, etc. actually happened? Harry Potter has as much if not more relation to reality than the gospels do. They're not even consistent with each other, never mind the historical record of the period. They are fiction constructed long after the 'fact' was supposed to have taken place.

A collection of fictions, perhaps, but not fiction in the same sense as Harry Potter is fiction. There may be some grain of truth in there somewhere. For example, Hitchens observed that the Bethlehem narrative is so contrived that it might actually point towards a real person. Of course at this stage we'll probably never know.

I don't think the shepherds were drunk, but quite possibly found some magic mushrooms and were stoned, come to think about it, the bible does mention people being stoned often, maybe all religions start with magic mush?

^^^^^^

That's what I was trying to say, but sometimes me no words good. Oldrnwisr can words super good.

harrylittle wrote: »

You have got that the wrong way round ... drugs open up portals to demons ... why do you think so many drug users become addicted lives fall apart ... become mental recks , homeless ... because they become infested with demons

Thread has jumped the shark. :eek:

Which drugs are we talking about? Caffeine? Alcohol? Morphine?

qwadb78ejp260i wrote: »

Pilate was a ruthless and merciless governor. He sentenced Christ to death, despite knowing that He was innocent.

Well, no. In Mark's gospel Pilate is repeatedly depicted as doing his best to let Jesus go:

"So again Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.”

“Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?”

“Crucify him!” they shouted.
“Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.

Finally, in verse 15, the true motive of Pilate in the gospels is revealed:

" Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified."

The gospels depict Pilate as a weak ruler, fearful of the Jews who only hands Jesus over to be crucified as an act of appeasement. This is contrary to the portrait of Pilate established by historians such as Josephus. Contrast Pilate's appeasement of the crowd in Mark with his ruthless treatment of them in Antiquities Book 18:

"But Pilate undertook to bring a current of water to Jerusalem, and did it with the sacred money, and derived the origin of the stream from the distance of two hundred furlongs. However, the Jews were not pleased with what had been done about this water; and many ten thousands of the people got together, and made a clamor against him, and insisted that he should leave off that design. Some of them also used reproaches, and abused the man, as crowds of such people usually do. So he habited a great number of his soldiers in their habit, who carried daggers under their garments, and sent them to a place where they might surround them. So he bid the Jews himself go away; but they boldly casting reproaches upon him, he gave the soldiers that signal which had been beforehand agreed on; who laid upon them much greater blows than Pilate had commanded them, and equally punished those that were tumultuous, and those that were not; nor did they spare them in the least: and since the people were unarmed, and were caught by men prepared for what they were about, there were a great number of them slain by this means, and others of them ran away wounded. And thus an end was put to this sedition."

The depiction of Pilate in the story as well as the invention of a Roman custom (actually a Jewish custom) is just one of the many reasons why the gospels are not reliable accounts.


Anyway, any time you feel like providing that evidence for the truth of the Bible that I asked you for, I'll be here.