We were all privileged to see the recent hype about the end of the world coming n May 21st 2011. The time came and passed without a rapture, without an earthquake, without a storm… What were those people thinking and feeling? This prediction made so many question Christianity and question God in general. Now there were some good aspects of this prediction. It got people thinking and talking about salvation and their eternal destiny… and, well, that is all I can think of.
Now lets look at what the non-Christian’s saw: a man, claiming to know the answer, claiming that he was right, who had a following, a way to spread his message and an amazing amount of money which usually makes you right in America. If you were a non-Christian and you saw this guy talking and then May 21st came and went, you would either think that Christianity was a crock, or that everything that the Bible says is a lie because his equation came from the Bible. I had one of my non-Christian friends inform me that you can get whatever you want to out of the Bible. They are also looking and seeing that back in Bible times, there was a man then that claimed to know the answer, claimed that He was right, had a following, had people going to spread his message… his name was Jesus. The difference between Him and this Cooke predicting the end of the world is that Jesus died and HISTORICAL EVIDENCE shows that his tomb was EMPTY!!!! There is proof that the death clothes were there. Jesus rose from the dead and was seen multiple times by multiple people and it is documented.
So back to the reason for this- these predictions, they made people look at Christianity as a crazy religion.
It says in Jeremiah 28:9: “But the prophet who prophesies peace will be recognized as one truly sent by the Lord only if his prediction come true.”
2 Peter 2:1-2, “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who brought them – bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.”
So it ends up being a good news, bad news kind of situation – good: the Bible tells us that this is going to happen, so we can prepare ourselves - bad: many are going to follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute….
Therefore, when my non-Christian friends tell me that people are just going to get what they want out of the Bible and that it is all a crock. I can show them that hey – guess what- it is not a crock specifically for the reason that the Bible says that that will happen. As long as I am following the way of the Bible – they way of truth and righteousness (see post on righteousness) then I am good to go!
What "HISTORICAL EVIDENCE" are you referring to? As far as Jesus' return see Matthew 10:23, Matthew 16:28, Matthew 24:34
ReplyDeleteHey ex_boxer.
ReplyDeleteThis was from http://toptenproofs.com/article_resurrection.php the "body was encased in a tomb with a 24 hour watch by Roman guards trained to kill. The punishment for breaking a Roman grave seal, or attempting to steal a body or overpowering a Roman soldier was death, so how did timid, cowardly disciples muster up the courage to try this? And as stated before, for what motive? That’s a big risk for absolutely no payoff. Some will say “maybe the guard was asleep”. First, dereliction of duty brought death to a Roman soldier, so I doubt they would “fall asleep” and secondly, the stone covering the tomb weighed 2 tons and was rolled into a stone groove which would have been flush against the stone opening of the grave. Think about how loud a 2 ton stone craping against stone would be as several disciples tried to move it."
This was another site that really convinced me http://www.creatingfutures.net/resurrection.html not so much the writings of his resurection, but the lack of anything written disproving it or anything of the sort.
I will admit that i was pretty exhausted this morning when i was writing this and didn't get everything that i wanted to say in teh blog - such as
Even though they were predicting a specific day - the bible says that we will not know the time and day of the coming of the KING. Also - the fact that it IS going to happen - there will be a rapture and a revelation, it just didn't happen on May 21st
The whole last part of Matthew 24 (verses 36-51) talks about The Day and the Hour are Unknown. "No one knows about the day or hour, not even the angels n heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father..."
Thanks for your comment though - may i ask how you found the blog?