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eclipsenow said in post 178:
The fact that he also believes there are seven Holy Spirits and that the image of the antichrist will be an android also doesn't help his credibility.
Regarding "seven Holy Spirits", what has been said is that just as the one God is at the same time three Persons (Mt. 28:19), so the one Holy Spirit of God could at the same time be seven Spirits of God (Rev. 1:4, Rev. 3:1, Rev. 4:5, Rev. 5:6), which could be the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of wisdom, the Spirit of understanding, the Spirit of counsel, the Spirit of might, the Spirit of knowledge, and the Spirit of the fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:2).
eclipsenow said in post 178:
The fact that he also believes there are seven Holy Spirits and that the image of the antichrist will be an android also doesn't help his credibility.
Regarding "the image of the antichrist", what has been said is that the "image of the beast" (Rev. 13:15) could be an android image of the Antichrist (the individual-man aspect of the beast) which the Antichrist's False Prophet (Rev. 13:11-16, 19:20) could cause to be made after the Antichrist receives a terrible head wound (Rev. 13:3,14b). For this injury could leave the Antichrist's facial & bodily appearance permanently marred, & could render him unable to speak clearly (like someone after a bad stroke), so that the Antichrist himself won't want to appear or speak in public again.
Did you ever see that movie "Dave"? It had a President who was in a coma, so his handlers found a regular guy who looked exactly like the President, & had him be a public stand-in for the President. He was able to speak just like the President did. It could be like that with the Antichrist's image. It could be the Antichrist's "Dave", his double, that appears & speaks (Rev. 13:15) before the world instead of his wounded self. But instead of letting people think the Antichrist's android image is the Antichrist himself, the False Prophet could tell people from the beginning the image isn't the Antichrist himself, but still fully represents him.
In Rev. 13:15, the original Greek word translated as "life" or "breath" (pneuma, G4151) can mean "spirit" in the sense of consciousness (1 Cor. 2:11a, Lk. 1:47), so that the android could appear to have a spirit, to have consciousness. The way this could be achieved would be through the android having wireless connections to huge banks of supercomputers running advanced artificial intelligence software. The False Prophet could claim the Antichrist's consciousness dwells within the android by means of neural networks imprinted with the Antichrist's brain patterns. But this could be a lie, in that the android won't actually have the Antichrist's consciousness, or any true consciousness, but will only appear to have consciousness, by its being able to pass even the most stringent Turing Test. This is a test whereby one speaks with a computer & can't tell whether it has consciousness or not, because all its answers are the same as if it had consciousness.
But the android's "consciousness" could appear far more advanced than any human's, for it could have access to huge databases containing every fact known to man, so that the android will appear to be omniscient. In this way, it could convince the world that it's not just a machine, but a material incarnation, a machine avatar, of the true God, a literal "deus ex machina", a literal "God from a machine". And this machine "God" could boast not only of his mental powers, but also of his physical powers: he could be extremely strong. And he could boast of the "immortality" of his machine body, which could be made of titanium, covered with some practically-everlasting flesh-like silicone. People could just be completely awestruck by his (what they could call) "omniscient wisdom, his strength, his indestructibility". They could consider him more than worthy of worship by (in their words) "mere humanity, which is so mentally and physically limited, made out of mere flesh and blood, which is so weak and so mortal". The world will actually worship the Antichrist's image (Rev. 13:15), just as it will actually worship Lucifer (the dragon, Satan) and the Antichrist (Rev. 13:4,8, 12:9).
The Antichrist's image could be placed standing in the holy place of a 3rd Jewish temple in Jerusalem, so that the image will become the abomination of desolation (Mt. 24:15, Dan. 11:31). And in order to make it easy for everyone in the world to be able to see the image & worship it (Rev. 13:15), it could appear on every cell phone, television, computer, GPS navigation system, & electronic billboard at set times each day. And to make it possible for everyone to interact with it personally, it could appear as a computer generated image on each individual's cell phone, speaking in & understanding each individual's language, conversing with each individual with personalized messages & responses devised by supercomputers running artificial intelligence & language software.
And it could discuss with them even the most intimate details of their lives, for it could have access to huge databases compiled by the Antichrist's worldwide intelligence, law enforcement, economic, & health agencies, databases containing all the facts about everyone: who their family & friends are, where they live & work, who their neighbors & coworkers are, how much they make, what cars & properties they own & use, where they go, where they shop, what they buy, where they eat out, what shows & videos they watch, what they read, what they say, what they write on the internet, what their health problems are, etc., so that the Antichrist's image could seem to know everything about everyone.
eclipsenow said in post 178:
The disciples drew Jesus attention to all those buildings, and Jesus said they would be destroyed in that generation.
Regarding "all those buildings", in Matthew 24:1, the original Greek word (oikodome, G3619) translated as "buildings" includes "structures" in general (Strong's Greek Dictionary), which would including a retaining wall, and not just structures which we English speakers would consider to be "buildings".
eclipsenow said in post 178:
The disciples drew Jesus attention to all those buildings, and Jesus said they would be destroyed in that generation.
Regarding "Jesus said they would be destroyed in that generation", Matthew 24:34 refers to the fulfillment of "all these things", all the events of the tribulation and Jesus' second coming and gathering together (rapture) of the church immediately after the tribulation (Mt. 24:29-31; cf. 2 Thes. 2:1-8, 1 Thes. 4:15-17), which events Jesus had just finished describing in Matthew 24:2-31, and which he would later show in great detail in Revelation chapters 6 to 19. Matthew 24:34 didn't mean that the tribulation, second coming, and rapture would be fulfilled during the temporal generation alive at the time of Jesus' first coming, for none of those things was fulfilled during that temporal generation.
Instead, Matthew 24:34 could mean that the temporal generation which would see the 1948 AD re-establishment of Israel, which could be symbolized by the rebudding of the fig tree (Mt. 24:32-34, Hos. 9:10, Joel 1:6-7, Lk. 13:6-9, Mt. 21:19,43), won't pass, that is, won't die off completely, until the future tribulation and second coming of Matthew 24/Revelation chapters 6 to 19 are fulfilled. A temporal generation may not pass until seventy or eighty years (Ps. 90:10), or a hundred and twenty years (Gen. 6:3).
This doesn't require that the second coming will occur right before, like one year, before that generation will pass: that is, sixty-nine, or seventy-nine, or a hundred and nineteen years after 1948: in 2017, 2027, or 2067. And if the tribulation which will immediately precede the second coming and rapture (Mt. 24:29-31, 2 Thes. 2:1-8, Rev. 19:7-20:6) will last seven years (Dan. 9:27), the tribulation's first year didn't have to be in 2011, and won't have to be in 2021, or 2061, but could be in a future year (for example, 2020) earlier than 2021.
Matthew 24:34 could also include the meaning that the figurative, all-times generation of the elect (Mt. 24:22, Lk. 16:8b, Col. 3:12, 1 Thes. 1:4) won't pass away from the earth during the future tribulation of Matthew 24/Revelation chapters 6 to 18, but that some of the elect will survive (Mt. 24:22) until Jesus' second coming (1 Thes. 4:15-17; 1 Cor. 15:21-23,51-53) immediately after the tribulation of Matthew 24/Revelation chapters 6 to 18 (Mt. 24:29-31; 2 Thes. 2:1-8, Rev. 19:7 to 20:6).
eclipsenow said in post 178:
A normal reading of the text shows the disciples pointed out the temple buildings to Jesus which were beautifully decorated, not it's unremarkable retaining wall!
The retaining wall is remarkable, still today, for the immense size of its stones, each of which, at the time of Jesus' first coming, was no doubt polished to an amazing, gleaming perfection.
eclipsenow said in post 178:
He's looking back through time and 'disqualifying' this event and demanding that Matt 24 talk about some future, hypothetical, still to be built third temple.
It's not hypothetical, for the reasons given in the "hypothetical 3rd temple" part of post 112.
eclipsenow said in post 178:
If Jesus had been talking about a third temple, I'm pretty sure he would have just come out and SAID SO, and not deceived the disciples like this.
There was no deceit. He just didn't tell them everything at that time (see John 16:12-13), like he would later in, for example, the Holy Spirit-inspired scriptures written by the apostles Paul and John.
eclipsenow said in post 178:
Luke obviously thought the antichrist was so important that he forgot to even mention him, and just mentions Titus's armies instead! (See Luke 21).
Luke 21:24 makes no mention of Titus, nor was it fulfilled by Titus' armies, for it refers to the same future treading down of Jerusalem by the Gentiles as Revelation 11:2b, during the Antichrist's future, literal 42-month worldwide reign (Rev. 13:5-18).
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