Only the resurrection of Jesus from the dead can explain why Christians believed Jesus was divine. It also gives credence to the fact that Jesus claimed to be God.
Many skeptics think that Jesus never made claims to deity – that such claims were merely put on his lips by his followers. But why would they do so? The Jews had no concept of a divine messiah. Indeed, the idea that God could become a human being was considered blasphemy to the Jews. If the gospels are to be believed, the reason Jesus was condemned to death by the Jews was precisely because he claimed to be God.
Given Jewish theological beliefs, why would the disciples proclaim Jesus as God? It surely wouldn’t win them any fans among the Jews! Some say they came to believe Jesus was divine because they came to believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, but there is no logical connection between the two. One need not be God to experience resurrection. Indeed, most Jews expected to experience resurrection in the future, so a resurrection in itself wouldn’t cause the disciples to believe Jesus was divine. The best explanation for their claim is that Jesus Himself made such claims while alive. The disciples understood Jesus’ resurrection to be God’s vindication of Jesus, and hence a verification of Jesus’ claims. In other words, Jesus’ resurrection proved that Jesus was who He claimed to be, and since He claimed to be God, the disciples proclaimed Him to be God as well.
Thinking to Believe 
June 27, 2017 at 2:43 am
Many were resurrected from the grave at the time Jesus died, Matt 22:57, “And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,”
Those saints, and all others that were resurrected, returned to the grave. No other person that died, and was resurrected, other than Jesus ever ascended up to heaven, Acts 1:9-11, “And after He had said these things, He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. 10And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them. 11They also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.”
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June 27, 2017 at 12:02 pm
T.R. I’ve noticed that your comments are very logically expressed, and it almost seems like the only comment followers like myself can make is something such as, “Yeah you’re right!” Be that as it may, I’d like to share something from Professor Larry Hurtado:
“Why did early Jesus-believers practice such devotion to Jesus? The answer seems to be that they held the conviction that God had exalted Jesus to an exceptional place of heavenly glory (e.g., Acts 2:36; 1 Peter 1:21), had enthroned Jesus as universal ruler (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:20-28), had declared him to be “the son of God” (e.g., Rom 1:3-4), had given Jesus to share in the divine “name” (e.g., Philippians 2:9-11), and now required that Jesus be reverenced in an unprecedented manner (e.g., John 5:23). Indeed, these early believers appear to have felt that to refuse to give Jesus the devotion reflected in the early Christian sources would be to disobey God.
In short, the reason for treating Jesus as so central in their devotional practice was fundamentally theo-centric: God required it.”
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June 27, 2017 at 9:45 pm
TR:
Your reasoning is oh so simplistic but you miss the metaphorical aspect completely.
Max sats :”Those saints, and all others that were resurrected, returned to the grave.” How can Max possibly know such a thing; he cannot but speculative imagination is not wanting here. how could he even know that many rose from the dead and returned to the tomb. This should have been so overwhelming an event one would think that history would have recorded such an event yet all we have is a believers speculation……
And Don Eames, so quick to commend TR for logical expression but what in the world is so logical about quoting scripture from Paul and after the fact but nothing about Jesus’s own claims……When Pilate asked Jesus if he was the King of the Jews “……………….. And he answering said, ‘Thou sayest it.’
Luke 22:70 “Then said they all, Art thou then the Son of God? And he said unto them, Ye say that I am.” That is not Jesus confining that he claimed to be God, that was Jesus acknowledging that they, the masses to be sure, labeled him because the masses noised the rumour abroad and thereby the rumors persisted because the religious zealots needed excuses to condemn him and blasphemy was right up there as a capital punishment..so they claimed the label and tagged him as often as they could lie they were the true,pianos broadcasting fake news way back in the day.
Please consider this simple illustration. As all authors and peoples do, Moses and the Jews used figures of speech. Some of the Bible’s figures of speech are euphemisms that promote modesty. For example, instead of saying that Adam had sexual intercourse with Eve, the Bible more politely says that “Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived” (Gen. 4:1). And Moses writes, “the man who lies with” rather than using the modern and more crude phrase, “has sex with.” The reader who misses these common figures of speech will misunderstand the plain meaning of various passages.
We should all heed Kurt Vonnegut’s advice: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” People tend to become who and what they are by the expression of their behaviour. Jesus believed that he was a microcosm of the whole human race; Jesus believed that the spirit of the goodness of God was within everybody: and that all there is of the good of God within is available to the man who makes himself available to all of the good of God within. All there is of God is available to the man who is available to all there is of God. And if that is your true value then that is what the reflection of your invisible self will communicate to the outside world…as you behave. Like all good psychological explanations, self-perception theory has practical uses.
Take the simple notion that you are what you eat. The notion that to be fit and healthy you need to eat good food.
Origin
Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, in Physiologie du Gout, ou Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante, 1826:
“Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es.” [Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are].
In an essay titled Concerning Spiritualism and Materialism, 1863/4, Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach wrote:
“Der Mensch ist, was er ißt.”
That translates into English as ‘man is what he eats’. This is only a slight variation of “a man is as he behaves”. Remember the earlier time in Jesus life when the Pharisees called Jesus a wine bibber, a drunkard and a glutton because he drank and ate with his disciples (the publicans and the sinners) in the local pub after a successful fish catch?
Neither Brillat-Savarin or Feuerbach meant their quotations to be taken literally. They were stating that that the food one eats has a bearing on what one’s state of mind and health is.
And when Jesus claimed to be the son of God he was merely quoting their own scriptures in Psalm 82.
John 10:34-36
34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? Psalm 82:6 6 I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.
35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; (my understanding of why Jesus said it this way….”As you drill into the heads of your synagogue goers over and over and over and over, day after day, sabbath after sabbath, that scripture is woven into a chain from one end to the other that cannot be broken- typical of church dogma.)
36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemes; because I said, I am the Son of God?
So can you not say the same thing? If you have the mindset of Jesus….Why of course not because you cannot have the mindset of Jesus when you harp un the supernatural of people being raised from the grave from the dead instead of raising from the place of the dead and without knowing this truth that the supernatural is a magician’s wish and a believer’s haven you are walking dead and you life is already in the place of the dead…I say you better wake up while you still have the ability to use the common sense for which Jesus was famous. Not miraculous event, but common sense events that he handle one event after another like most people could not. He was what he believed and he was what he believed by the way he behaved.
They talk incessantly about the Jesus who died for us instead of talking about the Jesus who lived for us. The myth about Jesus death is old hat, pharisaical nonsense that aligns with their dogmatic nonsense belief that the only remission for sins was the taking of life, spilling of blood and sprinkling it on the people for their sins…what utter nonsense and they killed birds and chickens and goats and calves and bulls; whatever they wanted to kill because that was their religion, their ritual, their dogma and so when the Pharisee community hijacked the Jesus’ followers, they simply projected the blood of goats and calves and sheep onto a human and claimed erroneously that the spilling of human blood was the New World Order but in fact it was still perpetuating the dogmatic nonsense of a religious cult out of its cotton picking mind, to justify sacrificing a life….But long before
Jesus was born it was said: “sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, oh Lord, But you have provided me a body to do your will oh Lord.”
And yet, Christians eat it up,( and you are what you eat!) and took it in like a hungry fish in water, hook, line and sinker and thus kept the myth alive that something, and now someone, had to die for the remission of sin and what the Pharisees actually did was transfer their idiot ritualism onto the crucifixion of Jesus and justified his death for the remission of sin…
I mean if it wasn’t so tragic it would be laughable so here we have Christians today talking about the death of Jesus and dying for our sins over and over to the neglect of his life which is why he came….to reveal the true nature of god…..Jesus the real man, not man as you and I are but Man as he is God, created man to be, and to give a demonstration of living for the Father:
I know I cannot convince anyone through logic or reason because most minds are made up by indoctrination of the values of the society they are born into, too dogmatic to be easily persuaded to see another point of view but I have studied The Way and Jesus all my life since I was 12 years old. Jesus is none of the things said of him in churches by preachers, pastors, priests and popes.
I know and understand Jesus and while he may have been a person at one time who walked the earth, his legacy is one of attitude and disposition, graceful and genuine in compassion and kindness, always ready to forgive those willing to receive it; a man full of common sense and sound judgment, not for his own ego but from the recognition of the Father within, not the supernatural gods created by charlatans, magicians, Popoffs and snake oil salesmen selling miracle water in ketchup packages.
No sign but the sign of Jonah will be given this generation. But just as Jonah rose from the place of the dead, (SHEOL) so will the son of man raise from the place of the dead. And you know what Jesus is not saying…he is not saying that Jonah was alive and not dead so he did not rise from the dead but from the “PLACE OF THE DEAD. That’s the sign.
What in the world has changed since then? can you not understand the simplicity that was in Jesus’s life. Talk about his life for a change. Talk about Jesus, about what he said, how he lived, the messages he left…forget the followers; they still didn’t understand that Jesus was not a ghost when he appeared to them after healing but had to make a big supernatural issue.
Like levitating up in the clouds rather than what actually happened, that a cloud took him from their sight, when a dust cloud will take a car from your sight on a dirty, dusty unpaved road. I grew up in a community before they had paved roads and in the dry summer almost everything left in a cloud as the dust cloud took everything out of our sight, uneven kids’ bicycles trailed a cloud behind them…so imagine a horse team jogging pulling wagons of people and supplies. Over the brow of a hill or shrinking over the horizon in a dust cloud…….in a cloud dust….in a cloud.
There’s a cloud over the eyes of Christians I’m afraid.
Watch an exaggerated example:
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June 27, 2017 at 9:49 pm
IN THE CLOUDS
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June 28, 2017 at 9:26 am
You say Jesus never claimed to be God. What about this passage:
Rev 1:17-18 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last:
I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
Yahweh claimed to be the first and the last many times in the OT and here
He adds that he died, but came back to live for evermore.
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June 28, 2017 at 4:37 pm
Donald W. Eames:
Give me something from the Gospels that Jesus made the claim. Revelation is almost all delusion probably after a night on the town with a healthy dose of Salvia divinorum (also known as sage of the diviners, ska maría pastor, seer’s sage, yerba de la pastor and just salvia) is a psychoactive plant which can induce visions and other spiritual experiences.
Allude’s to the Mazatecs’ post-Columbian belief that the plant is an incarnation of the Virgin Mary, with its ritual use also invoking that relationship.
Salvia divinorum remains legal in some countries and, within the United States, it is legal in some states.
while there sections of revelation that make sense, although that’s to me and not to Christians because all of it would made nonsensical supernatural sense. Regarding The Book of Revelation however, President Jefferson summed it up best:
“”It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it (i.e. the Book of Revelations), and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherence of our own nightly dreams.”
Source: Letter of Thomas Jefferson to General Alexander Smyth, Jan. 17, 1825.
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June 28, 2017 at 7:25 pm
Joh 10:30-39 I and my Father are one. 31 Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. 32 Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? 33 The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. 34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? 35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; 36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? 37 If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. 38 But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him. 39 Therefore they sought again to take him: but he escaped out of their hand,
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June 28, 2017 at 9:53 pm
Donald W. Eames:
That is correct and that is exactly what Jesus meant when he told the Pharisees the reality of his and theirs and yours and mine; that is, the essence of our humanity……….. in Luke 17:20,21 And Jesus was the first to recognize that and the first to message to others their true humanity.
And just to add a little bit more to that:
“It behooving him in all points to be like unto his brethren, he assumed our flesh and blood; he was born a human being. And he came to be the truth. Not just to preach the truth, not just to proclaim or explain the truth; he said, “I am the truth”, I preach.
Remember that, John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life”. In other words, I’m the truth about the way, the truth how to become a Christian. Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself, the hallmarks of my savior. Says the Lord Jesus, if you’re lost, if you’re groping in the dark; if you’re still trying to find your way home, if you feel dirty, if you want to be clean, if you know you’re lost and a sinful person and you want to be saved, you want to be redeemed, if you want to know forgiveness, said the Lord Jesus, “Come to me, I am the way” how to become a Christian but I’m not only the way to become a Christian, I am the Life. If having become a Christian and you want to know how to live the Christian life, well, said the Lord Jesus, very simple: “Come to me; I am the life”. I’m the truth not only as to how to become a Christian, I’m the truth how to be the Christian you have become. Because having given myself for you to be the way on the grounds of redemption whereby you can be reconciled to a holy God, be accepted in the beloved and know that your sins are forgiven, acquitted. Having given myself for you in redemption, I rose again from the dead to give myself to you in spiritual regeneration to re-invade your humanity in the person of my other self, the other Comforter, the Holy Ghost to credit you with my divine presence so that by virtue of who I am, God, living where I do, in your heart as a redeemed sinner I can impart to you all divine dynamic of my indwelling and give you what it takes.
Now that’s the gospel, not the gospel plus, not the Lookist Edition. The fact that the Lord Jesus rose again from the dead, ascended to be with his father, glorified at his right hand, to invade the humanity of every forgiven sinner, and share his life with them on earth and communicate that life through them to their fellow man, this isn’t for the fanatical, this is normality, this is a man being restored to his true humanity. Because you see, it takes the life of the Lord Jesus in you, to be in the process of time what the CRUCIFIXION of the Lord Jesus for you, gives you the right to become. All that’s comprehended in the remedial measures introduced in the person of Jesus to get us back as men to where we belong. The life of the Lord Jesus in you imperative to the process of time in being the Christian that you became on the basis of what he did for you. He’s the truth, about the way, how to become a Christian, the truth about the life, how to be the Christian that you have become. And you discover that you need not only what he did because of what you’ve done, you need who he is, living within you to take the place of what you are.
But he wasn’t only the truth about the way and the truth about the life, he was the truth about God, and the truth about man. You see anything you and I can know about God we see magnificently magnified in the person of his incarnate son. As we have already reminded ourselves, said the Lord Jesus, he that has seen me has seen the father.
“Show us the father said Philip, it sufficeth us”.
Said the Lord Jesus, “have I been so long time with you hast thou been so long time with me and not known me Philip? He that has seen me has seen my father”.
We remind ourselves that for the very first time since Adam fell into sin God in heaven could look at his son and see in him a man, a real man, could see himself, perfectly reflected. The word was made flesh, said John, and we beheld his glory. The reflected glory of his father, indwelling his humanity, manifesting himself, as God, through Jesus Christ as man. John 12:45: He that has seen me has seen him that sent me. So he was the truth about God. He interpreted deity. In the physical, visible body of his humanity he gave not only a physical, visible expression of his own invisible self but an invisible self intimately identified with his invisible father who indwelt his humanity in the person of the holy spirit and whom he allowed from within his human spirit gain total access to his human soul so that the father through the holy spirit could teach his mind, so control his emotions that the father in the son would direct his will and govern his behavior. So the Lord Jesus constantly testified: John 5: 19; John 5:30; “Without my father I can do nothing”.
Don’t you believe Philip that I am in my father and my father is in me? And the words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself; the father who lives in me; he does the work; everything I do, he does; everything I say, he says; everything I am, he is. That’s why when you look at me you see him. Because you see, the Lord Jesus was not only the truth about God.
Now if ever there was a man who walked this earth who knew the truth about a man’s humanity and that relationship that must govern that man’s humanity, with God and God with him, that man was Jesus Christ. He just happened to be God who engineered man and who deliberately, though never himself never less than God stepped out of eternity into time and insisted of his own free volition, something he need never ever have done, being never ever less than God came into this world to behave as though he were never ever more than man. As opposed of course to man, who being never ever more than man, struts across this planet and behaves as though he were never ever less than God. That’s the essential difference. Jesus Christ never ever less than God behaved as though he were never ever more than man; man never ever more than man behaves as though he was never ever less than God.
The truth about God and the truth about man; in other words, the Lord Jesus, as our creator and the one who assumed the office of the man he made knew exactly what that relationship would be that would govern his humanity on
earth and his father, as God in heaven (the Kingdom within you) and deliberately submitted himself to those criteria of our humanity to the limitations that make man, man.
So here are two very simple points to establish: Jesus Christ in whom was seen the total glory of the father was the truth about God. But being the creator who made man, assuming his office, to fulfill his role was the truth about man. Now what is equally obvious is that the Lord Jesus was the truth about God because he was the truth about man because the truth about man is that man was created to be the truth about God. In case I said that too fast, let me say it again. You see, all I’m doing is making the obvious, obvious; the tragedy is that obvious by and large is so obvious it ceases to be obvious. It’s the simplicity that is in Jesus. You see we are past masters at complicating the issue and turning our Christian faith into a complicated procedure when in point of fact, it derives from a person; it’s of him, through him, to him, all things to whom alone be glory. He’s the beginning and the end; he’s the author and the finisher of our faith; he’s the source and the sustenance; he’s the root and the fatness; Christ himself. And he came into this world to be the truth about God and the truth about man and he was the truth about God because he was the truth about man, because the truth about man is that man was created to be the truth about God.
Remember? “Let us make man in our image and in our likeness and in the likeness of God made he him”. And when God who made man in his own absolute image to be his own perfect reflection, in whom all creation if it could, looking at man would know what God was like; when he looked at that man whom he made he said Good, Very Good. And looking at that man, saw himself. And for the first time in all human history since Adam believed the devil’s lie that a man could be man without God embarked upon the mad experiment of human self sufficiency, forfeited the divine presence. In the absence of the holy spirit when the life went out and the light went out, and man was plunged into the abysmal darkness and death of spiritual destitution to become a nasty caricature, a big lie about God. For the first time in all history since then God’s incarnate son walked on earth and fulfilled totally, the office of man; made himself available, body, soul, spirit, mind, emotion and will in such a way to his father by the indwelling holy spirit that being the truth about man, allowing his father to teach his mind, control his emotions and so direct his will and govern his behavior, that being the truth about man, he could not help but be the truth about God. And the father God could look at him and say: good, very good. My beloved son in whom I’m well pleased; I’ve got a man again a real man.”
And I imagine that in so many words said the Lord Jesus, Nicodemus, you’re absolutely right. I am exceptional; as a matter of fact, I am the exception. And you’re absolutely right Nicodemus, there’s only one possible explanation for my life, the things I do and what I say and the quality of life I live, God. Don’t misunderstand me Nicodemus; not because I am God, though God I am,(by reflection) Nicodemus.
But there’s no explanation Nicodemus for what I do and say and am, not because I am God but because I’m man. Man Nicodemus, as I as God created man to be because you see Nicodemus for the first time in all history my father can look at me and see a man whose prepared to let him be God. You’re right Nicodemus and I’ll tell you something; you’ll know absolutely nothing about the divine sovereignty operative within human personality until there takes place in your experience that which puts God back into a man. It’s called being born again Nicodemus. You see Nicodemus except you be born again you will not see the kingdom of God that is all ready here and waiting for you, it’s already there within you…….
In other words, the Lord Jesus, presented his humanity to the Father, as God, through the holy spirit and the Father, as God, presented himself in deity to the son, as man, through the holy spirit. So the holy spirit is the third co-equal member of the triune Godhead through whom a man makes himself available to God and through whom God shares his deity with a man. Fantastic. Let me put it in a nutshell this way, “All there is of God is available to the man who is available to all there is of God.” For he that cometh to God must first believe that God IS and that being who he IS, he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. All there is of God is available to the man who is available to all there is of God. How available was the Lord Jesus, as man, to his Father, as God? Totally. How available was the Father, as God, to his son, as man? Totally. So there was total, mutual, inter-availability and if you want a definition of being filled with the holy spirit, that is it!
Cheers…..
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June 29, 2017 at 7:05 am
Leo: Well explained – I think our respective views are closer than I originally thought!
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June 29, 2017 at 7:45 am
Donald W. Eames
Thank you.
There are of course caveats within that I did not necessarily put in so many words…One main one is being “raised from the dead” this is rather better understood as being “raised from the place of the dead”. We need to get over the fact that there are certain attributes that limit our humanity and on elf then is nobody is raised from the dead. Graves do not open and dead men’s bones rise up with their fleshly covering and become normal human beings again with muscle and flesh and blood coursing through them as Jesus said look at me, I am not a ghost, feel me, a ghost does not have flesh and muscle and then he asked for food and ate with them.. so the raising from the dead is only metaphorical for raised from the place of the dead as was Jonah when he was drowning in the stormy sea….that was the place of the dead but Jonah survived the place of the dead and rose from the place as did Jesus…and that goes also for Lazarus.
So one has to consider metaphorical, similes and other descriptors in writing and sayings that say one thing but actually mean another. Strong as a horse, fast as lightening, big as an ox, drops of sweat like blood and so on, the nakedness of the father(his wife, your mother), Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived, fit as a fiddle, a Mercedes does not a driver make, a chip on your shoulder, a Dime a Dozen, a Piece of Cake saying one thing textually is not always the mean or intent of literal text. And these saying and idioms and expression have always been around since language itself.
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June 29, 2017 at 11:21 am
Leo:
I notice you point out that the the phrase “raised from the dead” is simply a metaphor which is better translated as being raised from “the place of the dead.” Your reason apparently being that you don’t believe Jesus actually died. But If He did indeed survive that would make Him a false prophet – for He said the following in Mark 8:31 KJV:
“Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
Don
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June 29, 2017 at 11:58 am
Donald:
I wonder what you think a prophet is? Let’s separate the two words you used….False and Prophet.
Tell me how you believe they are connected in Jesus case?
Either Jesus was false or Jesus was no a prophet.
I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt Jesus was not False and Jesus was a Prophet.
A prophet was as I understand the term, is a person regarded as an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God. That’s what Jesus did. You say that Jesus was not a person regarded as an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God.
Unless you think prophet means something else…hpw can you connect the two words to Jesus?
If you think a prophet is a psychic who has the ability to pick the next winning lottery numbers…well have you ever read the headline Psychic wins the Lottery again…..and again…and again? Psychic do not and never have existed.
Trend guessing, they’re a dime a dozen aren’t they?
Psychic readers and fortune Tellers and future clairvoyants, every major city in the world have numerous on many street corners…for a price of course for believers. I am not a believer in such ridiculous ideas, are you?
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June 29, 2017 at 12:33 pm
Leo: I’m sorry I phrased my last comment the way I did. But the point I was trying to make is that Jesus Himself said the following in Mar 9:31: For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day.
Here He gives His disciples the bad news and the good news; namely, His impending death followed three days later by His resurrection.
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June 29, 2017 at 12:44 pm
Jesus was not stupid. He knew when he would be derived, who would betray him, his arrest and the crucifixion. How Donald did he know that?
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June 29, 2017 at 12:56 pm
Donald:
Last post (14) should read. Jesus knew when he would be delivered, who would betray him, the arrest, the scourging and the crucifixion. How Donald, did Jesus know exactly when and how and by whom these events would take place? And who planned these events? That’s part one question .
There is a part two: who knew the method of how and when and by whom the resurrection from the place of the dead planned, enabled, take place how long the healing would take, the travel plan and the so called ascension be implemented?
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June 29, 2017 at 2:06 pm
What is your answer to those questions?
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June 30, 2017 at 11:30 am
DONALD:
I know the answers to the questions and want to share them with you but I need to ask you to share your answers first to make sure whether you know you “know” or whether you “believe”.
When people know, the answers are the same; when people believe the answers are mostly all different…that’s the nature of belief and the nature of knowledge, they are not compatible except some beliefs are correct by coincidence.
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June 30, 2017 at 4:48 pm
Leo’s question: How Donald, did Jesus know exactly when and how and by whom these events would take place? And who planned these events? That’s part one question.
Don’s answer: When Jesus spoke the words recorded in Mark 9:31, the words were actually the words of His father who also had ordained all that happened before the foundation of the world. See John 14:10 and 1 Pet 1:20)
Leo adds: There is a part two: who knew the method of how and when and by whom the resurrection from the place of the dead planned, enabled, take place how long the healing would take, the travel plan and the so-called ascension be implemented?
Don says: The Greek word Nekros means Dead, not “place of the dead”. As to the rest of the question concerning what you referred to as the planning, enabling, and healing:
1 Pet 1:21 Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead (not the place of the dead), and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. Peter also speaks of ascension in Act 2:33: Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear.
Leo, undoubtedly you are far more intelligent than I, but after being an Atheist until age 43 and having experienced the most unforgettable encounter of my life in 1975, I set out to learn all I could about this magnificent being called God. I look forward to your answers,
Don
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June 30, 2017 at 5:43 pm
Donald W. Eames:
With all due respect Donald, your answer to Part one is a complete cop-outIt uses the typical all sweeping belief about the supernatural God that does not exist except in the mindsets of ancient man who succeeded in drilling useless religious dogma into the minds of uneducated masses, passing the useless information onto future generations by regurgitates of ludicrous claims without an ounce of reason, logic and common sense.
Now to be fair to you and give you another chance, let me rephrase the Part one question:
1. How did Jesus know exactly when the arrest would take place and that the arrest would take place in the Garden of Gethsemane?
2. How did Jesus know what the method of greeting would be that would identify Jesus to the arresting soldiers who would know which of the men in the Garden was Jesus?
3. And who planned this and how did Jesus know that the betrayer was Judas?
There are actual answers to these questions from the Gospels without resorting to the useless dogma of the supernatural God who knows everything from the foundation of the world and that this supernatural entity spoke through Jesus because Jesus was indeed the conduit of the father which is so out of context with the questions I asked as to prove that you cannot answer the questions by your own common sense understanding of the bible messages from Jesus himself.
And part two..of course Jesus knew it but
1. from whom did Jesus learn of the “intel” in order to know who the Betrayer was, which is the same question as Part one.
How and when and by whom was the resurrection from the place of the dead planned by, enabled, take place, how long the healing would take and for the travel plan of the so-called ascension?
Not knowing the answers to these questions shows that you do not understand the scriptures and only are able to repeat the dogma of thousand of years of obfuscation which Jesus railed against during his campaign to revolutionize the mindset of mankind and liberate the mind from the tyranny of religious nonsense.
Donald, you have not been liberated if you do not know the answers and so it is my intention to give you knowledge, knowledge that has been hidden since the foundation of the world and from Jesus’s time when he tried to change mindsets indoctrinated by the religious scholars and of whom Jesus spoke these words:
Luke 11:52
“Woe to you experts in the law; you’re hopeless, you religion scholars! You took the key of knowledge and hid it, but instead of unlocking doors, you locked them. You won’t go in yourself, and won’t let anyone else in either.”
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June 30, 2017 at 6:23 pm
OK, Leo, You seem to be very presumptuous, but I’m willing to hear what your version of reality sounds like. Proceed!
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July 2, 2017 at 5:16 am
You guys are debating the nuanced meanings of specific pieces of scripture and missing the overall issue. The stories in the Gospels weren’t committed to writing until 25-60 years after Jesus’ death. For the individual depictions of the resurrection in each Gospel to be correct one has to first assume that the oral tradition of eyewitness accounts is accurate. If one then collates the accounts into a single montage, one has to minimize their specific differences by claiming they result from different eyewitnesses seeing and remembering different things.
The issue as I see it is the assumed inerrancy of oral tradition, not just about the resurrection but also about the claims of Jesus’ divinity, not to mention his miraculous works. The bloggers are fond of making such claims of inerrancy with logical sounding arguments, but scant scholarly evidence of support, as it is an essential prerequisite for the validity of their assumptions. In his book Jesus Before the Gospels, Bart Ehrman presents the evidence refuting the assumption of memory and oral tradition accuracy. I appreciate that reading books that disagree with one’s point of view isn’t fun, so I don’t really expect you t to go to the library and check out a copy of the book. Instead, I have attached a couple of opposing reviews of Ehrman’s book for your reading pleasure. The comments sections are an especially enjoyable read, much like the back and forth discussions in this blog.
https://www.ncronline.org/books/2016/05/did-distorted-memories-form-gospels
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/book-reviews-jesus-before-the-gospels
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July 2, 2017 at 4:46 pm
Thanks, Bob
I enjoyed reading the two articles.
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July 13, 2017 at 5:03 pm
And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6)
THE UNIQUENESS OF JESUS – The John 10:10 Project
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLZxAPD_tMg |
Published on May 9, 2017
Jesus’ claim to be God, and His resurrection from the dead, set Him apart from any other religious leader in history. Featuring Craig Hazen, Greg Koukl, Ben Witherington, N.T. Wright, Lee Strobel and J.P. Moreland.
This video is an excerpt from the feature-length documentary THE CASE FOR FAITH.
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July 13, 2017 at 6:29 pm
That video title for “Jesus’ claim to be God, and His resurrection from the dead, set Him apart from any other religious leader in history.”
Should be entitled “THE CASE FOR INSANITY” , made by religion
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