[Closed] The second coming

Humans are gullible because they want to be.

Already been done

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(TV_serial)

[i]how would we know? [/i]

Isn't the point that you can't [i]know[/i], you have to [i]believe[/i].

You not have enough fun on the last thread ??

Cue lots of Monty python "he's not the messiah.... blah blah blah"

something my wife would like to see I'm sure.

We've not had the 1st coming yet, load of mumbo jumbo.

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4 hours of David icke anyone? 😯

how would we know?

Whoppit's head would explode

Serious question, and one I've never really found a decent answer for.

A large number of people are happy to believe that he walked the Earth two thousand years ago, but if he showed up today and went "look, I'm right here!" I doubt many people would really believe him. Which I don't really understand.

I was wondering if anyone here would, or what sort of proof people would require first. How would he substantiate such a claim?

Whoppit's head would explode

It's not all bad, then.

why bring this up here, ask a Mormon (or latter day saint as they now liked to be called - I think :?:) or some other spoon.

I don't know any mormons. I don't think, anyway.

You missed it - He was here for a bit then he flounced.

Mitt says yeah!

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not unusual to have both jesus and the devil in a psych ward at the same time.

meds usually make the voice of god/the saints go away

No chance - the Catholic church would have him killed or denounced as a nutter to avoid him saying exactly what he thinks about they've become...

It's moot as it's all a fabrication anyway. But hypothetically would miracles prove it?

Matt Johnson of The The Armageddon Days are Here Again from about 1988?

They're 5 miles high as the crow flies
leavin' vapour trails against a blood red sky
Movin' in from the East toward the West
with Balaclava helmets over their heads, yes!

But if you think that Jesus Christ is coming
Honey you've got another thing coming
If he ever finds out who's hi-jacked his name
He'll cut out his heart and turn in his grave

Islam is rising
The Christians mobilising
The world is on its elbows and knees
It's forgotten the message and worships the creeds

It's war, she cried, It's war, she cried, this is war
Drop your possessions, all you simple folk
You will fight them on the beaches in your underclothes
You will thank the good lord for raising the union jack
You'll watch the ships out of harbour
and the bodies come floating back

If the real Jesus Christ were to stand up today
He'd be gunned down cold by the C.I.A.
Oh, the lights that now burn brightest behind stained glass
Will cast the darkest shadows upon the human heart
But God didn't build himself that throne
God doesn't live in Israel or Rome
God belong to the yankee dollar
God doesn't plant the bombs for Hezbollah
God doesn't even go to church
And God won't send us down to Allah to burn
No, God will remind us what we already know
That the human race is about to reap what it's sown

The world is on its elbows and knees
It's forgotten the message and worships the creeds
Armageddon days are here again

Couger... how about a question for you?

Would you like to go to church.. ?

As a clear thinking, intellegent, open minded adult... who seems genuinely interested... why not give it a go? For a decent length of time though, say 6 months?

What have you got to lose?

The whole idea to me is a bit of a paradox, the bible says beware of false prophets, so i you're gullible and follow someone professing to be the new messiah and hes not you will go to hell. If your cynical and you refuse to follow someone professing to be the messiah and he is you will go to hell. Doesn't sound to me to be the plan of a loving god, just another method of making people live in fear.

Sounds like an STW call to arms!

On my way home tonight I'll walk down the high street telling everyone I'm the messiah and making a note of the various forms of proof requested. If everybody does the same then we should be able to work out exactly what Jesus will do and say when he arrives, and we'll know it's really him.

Who's in?

Couger... how about a question for you?

Would you like to go to church.. ?

As a clear thinking, intellegent, open minded adult... who seems genuinely interested... why not give it a go? For a decent length of time though, say 6 months?

What have you got to lose?

i love this 😀 do it and report back to us every sunday on twitter please!

not unusual to have both jesus and the devil in a psych ward at the same time

Maybe change the shift rota if they don't get on, no point making a scene in front of the patients

What have you got to lose?

About six months, by the sounds of it. What have I got to gain?

toys19 - The irony is that God actually played guitar on that very track.

I'm going to shove that album on my ipod tonight. Its genius, and I've not listened to it for a while. Cheers!

ask a Mormon (or latter day saint as they now liked to be called - I think :?:) or some other spoon.

It was god like, who was it?

[img] [/img]

The unmistakable sound of Mr Johnny Marr

not unusual to have both jesus and the devil in [s]a psych ward[/s] the vatican at the same time.

FTFY

binners. Awesome. and he was the harmonica on that album.

Ask them to prove it by doing a miracle or something... ❓

[i]by doing a miracle[/i]

The only miracle I will ever believe is the spontaneous regrowing of a missing human limb.

wwaswas, careful now, someone will develop the technology to spontaneously regrow limbs and convince you they are jesus.

"About six months, by the sounds of it".

Hey you aren't locked in the church the whole time, you'll be let out for good behaviour.

Once a week for an hour or so...If you miss a week or two, here and there no worries... but you have to commit to the 6 months

"What have I got to gain?"... It could be more than you ever thought possible....

Hey with **** like that, maybe I'm the second coming 🙂

Go for it... I dare you

i reckon he will be riding 650b

Once a week for an hour or so...If you miss a week or two, here and there no worries... but you have to commit to the 6 months

I don't think I'd want to give that level of commitment to something I enjoyed doing, let alone sitting in a church getting preached at.

I've been in plenty of churches over the years. I've yet to see anything that would make me want to go into one voluntarily, other than some spectacular architecture and some pretty windows.

It could be more than you ever thought possible....

To be fair, that's not a particularly high bar to be aiming for, given that what I think is possible in a church is 'nothing at all' beyond being bored out of my gourd for an hour.

I thought (thinking back to my youth) the first sign of the second coming was the rapture?

Our school had a fair contingent of born againers, and one of the notorious facts pedalled around was that PanAm (showing my age here) had a policy of not allowing 2 christian pilots to fly together in case one of them was raptured. Course, we didn't have the internet back then, or [url= http://www.snopes.com/religion/pilot.asp ]Snopes.[/url], so couldn't disprove this fine fact.

To be fair, that's not a particularly high bar to be aiming for, given that what I think is possible in a church is 'nothing at all' beyond being bored out of my gourd for an hour.

Why not give it ago then, as from what you have been posting about religion and churches is nothing like the reality.... in my experience at least; and you are only talking about 1 hour a week.

Cougar - if you do go to church remember to video the boiling font and spinning crucifix. (oh and remember what happened to Dr Who in the Omen - go on a sunny day)

Shame... oh well... no skin off my nose.

But what's with all the theological discussion/questions... if it bores you that much like?

I find discussion interesting. I find being preached at tedious. I find Christian hymns soul destroying. It should be more difficult than it is to sing 'hallelujah' in a manner that sounds like your dog's just died.

If Jesus reincarnated and walked amongst us, how would we know?

I reckon he'll tweet it. Or maybe a group text.

[b]"LOL itz jeez here jus got bak an shit iz mad pmsl!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/b]

I don't think He'd come back shouting about being the messiah after what happened last time. He'd just go about it in his own way, performing miracles for a few thousand faithful to start with and letting His message grow from there. Outwardly, I suspect He'd take on the persona of an ordinary man, but with extraordinary talents.

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From my understanding of History (Classics Degree), people didn't believe Jesus (if he even existed) was the first coming. That was all made up and written down many years later. Or so the documentary evidence shows. But I imagine that folk that buy the whole Big White Man in the Sky have no truck with actual verifiable facts so it doesn't really matter.

So my thinking is, if you want to get a Messiah some credibility, is to pin it on somebody who is already dead and already famous, and thus can't be there to either prove or disprove anything.

How about Princess Diana ?? It's about time we had a female messiah. Jesus was a jew, Mohammed was black, I don't know for sure but I am going to punt that Khrishna is Indian. How about we give the ladies a bit of a shot ??

We already ticked that demographic box with god.

(-:

Are you saying God is a woman ?? How do you explain the beard then ??

How do you explain the beard then ??

Maybe she didn't shave? Probably wanted to ride a singlespeed and blend in on STW.

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If god isn't a woman, how do you explain the placement of testicles ?

I don't know any mormons.

I know quite a few morons

From my understanding of History (Classics Degree), people didn't believe Jesus (if he even existed) was the first coming. That was all made up and written down many years later. Or so the documentary evidence shows. But I imagine that folk that buy the whole Big White Man in the Sky have no truck with actual verifiable facts so it doesn't really matter.

Can you give some references to the documentary evidence? I had been taught differently, from a secular historian, that Jesus was identified by the apostles and many of the people he met as the Messiah (the first coming).

There was a time lag in the writing of the gospels because the apostles were starting to die out and they wanted to record their experience of Jesus to share with future generations; before this they could quite simply meet people and tell them face to face. So the timelag between the content of the gospels and their composition does not necessarily suggest a period of conspiracy, in the interim of which it was retrospectively decided that Jesus was the Messiah.

Miracles aren't hard to come by; I've seen David Blaine walk on water and essentially 'rise from the dead', and Derren Brown did a whole series on it ("Messiah").

Aren't you confusing miracles with 'magic'/illusion/trickery ... ?

I rather suspect that that was exactly his point...

From my understanding of History (Classics Degree), people didn't believe Jesus (if he even existed) was the first coming.

I think you'll find that there is masses of evidence to verify that Jesus did exist (and not just Christian writings) ... whether or not you believe he was the Son of God is an entirely different matter.

There's a book written by a trained lawyer who was also (formerly) an atheist, who set out to disprove Jesus & his claims using his legal training ... by the end of it, in the face of all the evidence, he'd convinced himself the complete opposite beyond any doubt.

If I can find/remember the details I'll post them.

I don't think going to Church would help Cougar since he's already sceptical. You have to want to believe it and make the "[i][u][b]leap of faith[/b][/u][/i]"

This leap of faith means that normal logic is replaced by the smug fact that you are right and to explain it just demeans everyone.

Aren't you confusing miracles with 'magic'/illusion/trickery ... ?

How do we tell the difference?

He's already here and works at Lindt...how else do you explain the cold chocolate inside those little balls?

The only problem with this concept is that somethng will not arrive for a second time that has not been here at least once before.

jesus is a myth.

Hey Wopptit .... stop peaching.... 🙄

How do we tell the difference?

I think it was arthur c clarke (correct em if I'm wrong) who said " any significantly advanced technolgy is indistinguishable from magic"

edit found it [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws ] there are some great quotes on that wiki link..

It may be an echo of a statement in a 1942 story by Leigh Brackett: "Witchcraft to the ignorant, .... Simple science to the learned".[2] Even earlier examples of this sentiment may be found in Wild Talents by author Charles Fort where he makes the statement: "...a performance that may some day be considered understandable, but that, in these primitive times, so transcends what is said to be the known that it is what I mean by magic."

I followed an inspiring woman to our leaders HQ but still our leaders decided to 'tax' our young through the nose.

I camped on the steps of the church but I didn't witness the moneylenders kicked out.

I helped occupy academic halls but even the enlightened academics failed to stand up against the system when threatened with discluding their students from the students loans system.

We shut down businesses over and over that refused to play by our financial rules, and we're still waiting for our leaders to do something about it even though there is evidence that shows they breached even the most minimal rules put in place to tick boxes.

My friends are racially profiled on the streets by public servants who curse and beat them, smash up their property and bear false witness.

Tried to spread the word of the vulnerable having their care withdrawn, and money, and left to die faster, but the public spat curses at us in misunderstanding and selfishness.

I'm an atheist, but In a dark and dusty corner of my mind I sometimes wonder if the world needs a messiah to come in and sacrifice himself to make changes because there's so much wrong in society today and that apathetic society is letting the school bullies take their lunch money every day without resistance.

Ro5ey - Member
Would you like to go to church.. ?

As a clear thinking, intellegent, open minded adult... who seems genuinely interested... why not give it a go? For a decent length of time though, say 6 months?

What have you got to lose?

The Methodist church, with which my family are involved, with was very well-meaning, egalitarian, charitable and mainly very pleasant (albeit with an oddball obsessive sub-cult of the congregation who, I think, eventually all left for a Pentecostal group). The problem for me is that it is all based on nothing more substantial than 'faith'.

In comparison,(in my limited experience) the RC church seems very peculiar to me with its patriarchal, hierarchical system.

Having only occasionally been to Church in the past few years(family occasions), the whole 'worship' thing now seems very alien to me.

Hello Ro5ey.

Interesting comment. If you dislike "preaching" so much, I find it odd that you want to subject Cougar to five months of it...

jesus is not a real historical character. It's just a story. That's not preaching, it's just a bit of information for you to process.

Mr Destructo, I see your point but can't agree entirely. Modern society (in the UK at least) is pretty good, we have many public services and live safe, healthy reasonably free lives. There are issues, but they are really only "the school bullies taking our lunch money" and most of this is down to apathy as we are mostly satisfied. We have the tools to kick Camerons and the rest of thems backsides but most of us can't be arsed.

@Aristotle I know Methodists round here who like to put their "hands on" for prayer sessions to heal people. My family are Roman Catholic and frankly I think they'd class that as witchcraft.

When they were enthusiastic about an asbestos sufferer who suddenly got better after their "involvement" I discussed it with my boss, practically the best asbestos solicitor in the whole of Yorkshire and he said that frequently you get better, for a while, a year or so, then it comes back with a vengeance and ravages and kills you. A basic knowledge of the path of this industrial disease would have been in order here.

My family are Roman Catholic and frankly I think they'd class that as witchcraft.

The irony is so thick you could put it in a sandwich.

mrdestructo - Member

@Aristotle I know Methodists round here who like to put their "hands on" for prayer sessions to heal people. My family are Roman Catholic and frankly I think they'd class that as witchcraft.

The vast majority of the Methodist people were quiet, respectable, charitable Middle-England folk not into that kind of thing, but it does strikes me that people can do whatever they like "in the name of <their> god".

I was just pointing out the differences I'd noticed. I'm not intending to provoke sectarianism.

I don't believe in any of it....

Yeah ... just re-read that particular post... you may well be right.

My response was clouded by previous post of yours and I was being ironic.

jesus is not a real historical character. It's just a story

Ummm, I don't think that's true and there is documentary evidence to prove he existed during the time of the bible stories.

That doesn't necessarily mean he was the son of god, however he was definitely a real historical character. Unless people are now disputing the Roman texts, as they haven't seen/read them or personally deciphered the language?

Oh O.K.

I suppose I'll do this again, then...

http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

Ummm, I don't think that's true and there is documentary evidence to prove he existed during the time of the bible stories

actually I think the documentary evidence was all written some time after jesus died and is probably defined as hearsay rather than first hand accounts. I'm not saying he did not exist as a human person, as a militant atheist I am happy to believe he was a real person (as it has no bearing on his supernatural status) but the evidence is pretty poor actually. [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus ]have a read of this , all the way through and follow the links, then decide if you are convinced he did exist..[/url]

My wife's family are all Catholics...I sometimes have to go along on a Sunday morning on special occasions, none of it's rubbed off on me though.

It seems to me that you get different types of people at church...loosely based on a scale of enthusiasm;

1. The priest
2. People who do readings
3. People in the choir
4. People who have their own book and sit right at the front
5. Irish Travellers
6. People who arrive on time and leave once it's all finished
7. People who make their kids be altar servers
8. People who arrive 10 minutes late, take mass, and leave half way through
9. People who let their kids run riot, chat to their friends while it's all going on, and leave halfway through without bothering with mass

I haven't witnessed any witchcraft, but perhaps they save that for when I'm not there.

McHamish - Member

I haven't witnessed any witchcraft, but perhaps they save that for when I'm not there.

You are either a "9)" or you must have nodded-off for the bit when the priest turned the bread and wine into the [i]actual[/i] flesh and blood of Jesus 😉

I knock around in a community that is mixed, but has plenty of pagans, have been present (and perhaps part of) their ceremonies. Not just handfastings, but ceremonies in the moonlight. There was once that nekkid dough rolling ceremony in the heart of the Dales after the ovens were dug into the side of a hill, but since the girl was about 19 and I felt more uncomfortable than riding up on some doggers I wandered off. I do know someone who identifies as a Pendle Witch.

I also know some 'plastic' pagans who were inspired into the religion by Buffy and like to burn things, point ickle knives and lay their crystals at stone circles. I had to point out the modern stone circle in the park they'd been using was a modern art feature and the only power lines around there were the ones running overhead 🙂 God, the things I put up with to get laid!

Actually, I've changed my mind.

I think the priest might be 2nd on the list with people who do readings, have their own book and say grace before meals as number one.

1. People who do readings, have their own book and say grace before meals
2. The priest
3. People who do readings
4. People in the choir
5. People who have their own book and sit right at the front
6. Irish Travellers
7. People who arrive on time and leave once it's all finished
8. People who make their kids be altar servers
9. People who arrive 10 minutes late, take mass, and leave half way through
10. People who let their kids run riot, chat to their friends while it's all going on, and leave halfway through without bothering with mass

I went to a family meal once and the priest was also there...I was sat next to him and when someone in the family (who wasn't Catholic - one of the really enthusiastic churches) started saying grace, me and the priest looked at each other, each with a mouthful of food, and both quietly put our knife and fork down.

You are either a "9)" or you must have nodded-off for the bit when the priest turned the bread and wine into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus

As far as I undersstadn it, Catholics don't actually believe that it's the actual flesh and blood of jebus, they believe it 'represents' his flesh and blood.

You might want to do some research around Sai Baba. Quite interesting.

Machamish, it was our Priest, Father Reilly, who helped me to atheism when I started asking all these questions as an altar boy. I'm convinced he didn't believe in god either...

One of the problem with the internet is everyone gets an opinion, for example this person believes he did exist.

And his research seems to be fairly comprehensive.

http://thedevineevidence.com/jesus_history.html

Personally, I don't believe much of what's on Wikipedia, so that's not really a source worth considering