Biblical prophecies are almost always man's interpretations not literal passages from the Bible. Fortune tellers and such are explicitly ruled out for the people of God. Jesus also tells us that “even the Angels” do not know the coming of the end.
Kant did not limit reason as regards things of the world but as it applied to metaphysical things. Reason works perfectly well when applied to the material world and its manipulation.
You distort my meaning when trying to apply reason to matters of the heart. Although it certainly is a recent phenomenon that it is less relevant. Marriages were arranged in the past and reason was the primary aspect of the process.
Allah has no resemblance to the Moon God but is described as a universal and omnipotent God not one limited to the Moon. There is nothing to the argument that because of similar names the named is the same any more than it would be to claim that Jesus is the same as Zeus because of the names’ similarity.
Jesus did not have a religion started in his name because of prophecy so the “2 billion in his name” argument is also bogus.
You must be joking to claim prophecy is a literal reading of the Bible. There is little literalism in it and only makes any sense at all by interpreting obscure or symbolic language and passages.
Nor is there any truth to the claim that the elements of prophecy are universally acknowledged even by those who believe it is real. Any statement would be met with many variations of meaning and many more claims that it had no validity at all.
You then elide into a implication that not believing in modern prophecy is the same as not believing the Bible. I would guess that there are many Bible believers who follow Jesus when he says forget about it and live as though tomorrow will be the last day.
Modern day tyrants did not kill more than Islam btw. It expanded almost entirely by war destroying the almost entirely Christian Middle East as its first step. War was its system of proselytization for a thousand years.
I get the idea that you have a “win by sheer attrition” style, and that is how you will ultimately “win” this argument: I am not willing to waste my time with you until doomsday writing a 1000 comments, because you would write 1001, even though I believe that “doomsday” is actually fairly close at hand.
I won’t waste my time arguing with you about Allah and the moon god. I provided a link showing a relationship. I could have provided a thousand more. Muslims try to dismiss the link, the same way they try to dismiss the Jews’ history in the land of Israel. But the etymology is clearly there. My pastor has his doctorate, and grew up as the son of missionaries in Muslim countries. He is a fluent speaker of Arabic, and his own studies have confirmed the association between Allah and the moon god. I trust his expertise over your casual dismissal.
Kant CLEARY argued that there are clear limits to human reason because we are trapped by our limited cognitive faculties and senses. There are many things that we cannot know beyond a limited and distorted degree. I provided the article to demonstrate that. You provided a trivial dismissive sentence.
And the reason we depend on divine revelation is because we CANNOT know everything. We couldn’t know God at all, unless He revealed Himself to us by revelation. We could neither seem him with our senses, nor comprehend His ways with our minds. Throw out revelation, and you throw out the knowledge of God, pure and simple.
You couldn’t be more wrong in claiming that Christianity - as well as the Messiah Jesus who founded it - was not based in prophecy. The coming of Jesus Himself was based in prophecy. The so-called “protoevangelium” (first gospel) of Genesis 3:15 prophesying a deliverer who would ultimately crush satan begins a series of prophecies that become more and more specific until we get to prophecies such as the virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14-9:7). Fully 40% of the Bible was prophetic at the time it was written - and many of those prophecies have come true exactly as God said. Many of those prophecies concerned the coming of Messiah. When Herod asks his “Bible experts,” they tell him that Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Matthew 2 citing Micah 5:2). When John the baptist sent his disciples to Jesus to ask Him if He was the promised Messiah, Jesus quoted Scripture to show how He was fulfilling prophecy. He also gave us plenty of last days prophecy. You might try reading Matthew 24, for instance. Jesus also prophesied that He would be raised from the dead, and literally the whole Christian religion stands or falls on believing in that prophecy and its fulfillment.
I have a book by Joel Rosenberg titled “Epicenter.” If you AREN’T an “arrogant s.o.b.” and you are actually willing to have your opinion changed, you should read it.
Rosenberg came to fame by writing a couple of novels that predicted things that actually happened. US News & World Report called him a “modern Nostradamus” as a result (to tie in with your Nostradamus stuff). Rosenberg predicted that terrorists would fly a plane into the World Trade Center before they did it. He predicted the US would attack Iraq before 9/11.
The interesting thing about Rosenberg’s books wasn’t as much what he predicted by why he predicted it: and the answer is Bible prophecy. He took the same Bible prophecy that you trivalize as total symbolism of which any interpretation is as invalid as anyone else’s, and took it literally.
Specifically, he read Ezekiel 38 and 39, concerning the alliance of countries that would attack Israel in the last days. And he noticed something interesting: that neither Egypt nor Iraq (Babylon) were on the list of countries that would attack along with Russia.
Egypt was startling enough. Understand something: prior to the time Ezekiel wrote, Egypt was centuries-long enemy of Israel. They were involved in wars against Israel again and again. Yet they weren’t in the coalition.
But precisely because of Ezekiel, Bible scholars weren’t shocked when Egypt signed the first peace accord with Israel, representing the first (and officially still the only) Muslim country to recognize Israel.
But Rosenberg’s problem was Iraq, which went by Babylon in Ezekiel’s time. How on earth would Iraq under Saddam NOT participate in an attack against Israel? There’s no way the guy who styled himself as a “modern-day Nebuchadnezzar WOULDN’T pass up such an opportunity! So Rosenberg recognized that Saddam would have to go for the prophecy to be fulfilled. Hence the terrorist attack, and hence the US invasion of Iraq to take him out.
And today, with the United States an ally of Iraq, we very much can understand why two historic enemies of Israel would NOT participate in an attack on Israel. That’s what happens when you take the prophecies in a literal grammatical manner: they come to pass.
That, btw, would constitute another reference to Islam. Russia (Magog) and Iran (Persia) attacking Israel, with an alliance that today lists all the Muslim countries that would in fact be most likely to attack Israel today!
http://www.theomegareport.com/articles/joel_rosenberg_0801.shtml
I can go back at least 150 years and quote John Nelson Darby, and show you that Christians - on the basis of Bible prophecy alone - were confidently saying that Israel would become a nation when there was NO evidence that that would happen OTHER than Bible prophecy. But prophecies in Ezekiel (e.g. 37) and Revelation made it crystal clear that Israel would have to become a nation. And after two thousand years, it did.
How did John know that there would be an army of 200 million that would flow out of the east? At the time he wrote, there weren’t 200 million people living in the whole world! And he had no way of knowing that the east would be the global population center.
There’s ALL KINDS of stuff like that in the Bible. All you have to do is read it as though the person who was writing the prophecy was describing a literal space-time event, and it comes to pass!!!
My favorite one of all is Daniel 9:24-27. The prophecy of the 70 weeks. The seventy “sevens” or “weeks” (shebua) refer consistently to the 7-year sabbath cycles for the land described in Leviticus 25:1-8. 2 Chronicles 36(esp v. 21) points out that the Jews hadn’t kept the sabbath once for 490 years. And God was going to give the land its full sabbath rest by removing the Jews from it, just as He said He would (Lev 26:33-35). And so God removes them from the land for 70 years (Jeremiah 25:12).
So Daniel 9 begins with Daniel realizing that the 70 years are almost over, and that God - again because he took the prophecy LITERALLY - is about to be completed (Daniel 9:2). And he begins to pray. And then an angel appears and provides the prophecy of the seventy sevens.
The issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem (Dan 9:25) refers to Nehemiah 2:1-9 and the reign of Artexerxes 1. This event occurred during the 20th year of Artexerxes’ reign, which is reliably dated to 445 BC. And according to the “clock” the angel gives Daniel, there would be 69 sabbath cycles, and then Messiah the Prince would come and be cut off and killed (Dan 9:25-26).
What happens when we start counting 69 sabbath cycles? Well, a Jewish scholar named Ben Zion Wacholder, using information that would have been common to the Jews of Jesus’ day, DID count them - all the way back to antiquity (in an article in Hebrew Union College Annual). Based on his work, we know this: the decree of Artexerxes fell during the sabbath cycle 449-442. And the 69th sabbath cycle falls from AD 28-35 - exactly the period of Jesus’ public ministry and execution.
So there was an expectation. And men like Simeon (Luke 2:25-27) were expecting to literally SEE the Messiah whose coming prophecy had described.
That’s what happens when you take the prophecies literally. Yes, there is figurative language. But we use figurative language all the time. Every single day, my newspaper tells me the time to the minute of “sunrise.” Well, the sun doesn’t “rise,” and everyone knows it. But just because language is figurative doesn’t mean that no one can know what it means. It is nothing more than a matter of learning and understanding. And it’s a matter of realizing that the symbolism refers to something literal/specific. And a great deal of the Bible’s symbolism is the same way.
You can refuse to do so, and you can trivialize those who take their Bible seriously. But you do so at your own risk. When Jesus said He’d come again (again, a PROPHECY!) He said his coming would be like a thief’s. He told His own to watch the signs, and be ready for Him. But the rest of the world WON’T be watching, and they won’t be ready. Don’t be one of them.