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Exploring Christianity
Discussing the end of times
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<blockquote data-quote="ViaCrucis" data-source="post: 77246902" data-attributes="member: 293637"><p>"End times scenarios" is really only the imaginitive playground of some Christians. For most Christians, while we do believe that there will be a conclusion to history, there will be an End--in technical theological jargon, called the Eschaton meaning "Last Thing(s)"--the details about it are relatively small.</p><p></p><p>The historic and orthodox Christian view boils down to a fairly brief summary: Jesus will come again some day, but when is unknown to everyone except God. When Jesus returns He comes as judge, the dead will be resurrected: the righteous to eternal life and the wicked to judgment. Then God will make all things new, the renewal of all creation.</p><p></p><p>With that brief summary one may ask things like, what about the Antichrist, what about Armageddon, or various doomsday scenarios. Well, simply put, those aren't important.</p><p></p><p>Let's just take one of those, the idea of "The Antichrist". There just isn't anything resembling a consensus about the Antichrist within Christianity, there have been, and are, lots of opinions and speculations, but outside of a handful of fringe theologies "The Antichrist" is a rather open idea. IN fact, there isn't even a consensus that "The Antichrist" is a singular individual. The only time the Bible itself uses this word is found in the letters of 1 and 2 John. In John's letters he writes, "You have heard that antichrist is coming" but then says, "even now many antichrists have come". John then goes on to say what "antichrists" are, he uses the word to describe certain heretics that were around during his time, they are heretics who denied that Jesus was human, in other words they were Docetists. Docetism was an early heresy that said that Jesus only seemed to be human, but wasn't actually human. In fact, it is precisely here because of John's condemnation of Docetism as antichrist that legends grew about John's antagonistic relationship with the heretic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerinthus" target="_blank">Cerinthus</a>.</p><p></p><p>Among a number of the early fathers of the Church, a synthesis view arose taking a variety of disparate biblical texts to try and create a portrait of Antichrist, where Antichrist came to be viewed as (at least) a single individual; so for example "The Beast" and/or "The False Prophet" mentioned in the book of the Revelation, the "man of lawlessness" mentioned by Paul in his 2nd letter to the Thessalonians, came to be viewed as possible descriptions of this Antichrist figure. Some went further, trying to find all sorts of details through--fairly imaginitive--interpretations of the Bible. St. Hippolytus of Rome, writing around the early 3rd century, crafted a portrait of Antichrist where he would be a Jewish individual born from the Tribe of Dan, the way he did this was by looking at a passage in Genesis where the Patriarch Jacob told his son Dan that he would be a lion's whelp. As Christ was a Jew from the Tribe of Judah (called a lion), thus Antichrist would be a Jew from the Tribe of Dan (called a lion's whelp). It's rather far-fetched, but this is the kind of imaginative work some were doing.</p><p></p><p>In the 16th century, some of the early Protestant Reformers saw in the institution of the Roman Papacy the fulfillment of "The Antichrist". While this view was a fairly nuanced one, not really stating that any specific Pope was the Antichrist but rather the power of the Pope is antichrist because of its temporal grasp over worldly power and the perception by the Reformers that the Papacy was actively against reforming the Church through the Gospel. Some later Protestants would take this idea and go wild with it, creating elaborate end times theories and anti-Catholic conspiracy theories, especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These have continued to feed into modern End Times conspiracy theories and scenarios.</p><p></p><p>But the simple fact of the matter is that "Antichrist" is never mentioned anywhere in the Bible as a single individual who will act as a kind of "end times" antagonist, let alone provide any biographical details that one could try and look at. And yet, accusing this or that person, or creating elaborate scenarios about the Antichrist have been a very popular endeavor for a number of Christians over the centuries. In the last hundred years alone you can pretty much take any famous person, any politician, any wealthy individual, just about anyone at all and find someone who has been convinced that they're the Antichrist.</p><p></p><p>When we look at the historic confessions of Christian faith, however, we simply don't find any of these scenarios, or any conspiracy theories, or any elaborate graphic details. It's all pretty simple: Jesus will return to judge, the dead will rise, and there will be life everlasting in the future World.</p><p></p><p>Personally, I just don't give credence to those people who claim to have all this knowledge about "the end times". There is a lucrative market for "end times" books, and I think it all amounts to little more than grifting. Those who claim to be "prophecy experts" are a dime a dozen, they all contradict one another, and I don't take them seriously because I don't think they take the Bible seriously. They claim the Bible says X, but when you ask them to show you where the Bible says X, they simply throw out all critical thinking, or bothering with context, and just stitch together bits and pieces, a few words from a verse here, a few words from a verse there, and then claim they've solved some long lost biblical riddle. They are, from my perspective, simply those whom the Scriptures call "wise in their own eyes".</p><p></p><p>-CryptoLutheran</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="ViaCrucis, post: 77246902, member: 293637"] "End times scenarios" is really only the imaginitive playground of some Christians. For most Christians, while we do believe that there will be a conclusion to history, there will be an End--in technical theological jargon, called the Eschaton meaning "Last Thing(s)"--the details about it are relatively small. The historic and orthodox Christian view boils down to a fairly brief summary: Jesus will come again some day, but when is unknown to everyone except God. When Jesus returns He comes as judge, the dead will be resurrected: the righteous to eternal life and the wicked to judgment. Then God will make all things new, the renewal of all creation. With that brief summary one may ask things like, what about the Antichrist, what about Armageddon, or various doomsday scenarios. Well, simply put, those aren't important. Let's just take one of those, the idea of "The Antichrist". There just isn't anything resembling a consensus about the Antichrist within Christianity, there have been, and are, lots of opinions and speculations, but outside of a handful of fringe theologies "The Antichrist" is a rather open idea. IN fact, there isn't even a consensus that "The Antichrist" is a singular individual. The only time the Bible itself uses this word is found in the letters of 1 and 2 John. In John's letters he writes, "You have heard that antichrist is coming" but then says, "even now many antichrists have come". John then goes on to say what "antichrists" are, he uses the word to describe certain heretics that were around during his time, they are heretics who denied that Jesus was human, in other words they were Docetists. Docetism was an early heresy that said that Jesus only seemed to be human, but wasn't actually human. In fact, it is precisely here because of John's condemnation of Docetism as antichrist that legends grew about John's antagonistic relationship with the heretic [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerinthus']Cerinthus[/URL]. Among a number of the early fathers of the Church, a synthesis view arose taking a variety of disparate biblical texts to try and create a portrait of Antichrist, where Antichrist came to be viewed as (at least) a single individual; so for example "The Beast" and/or "The False Prophet" mentioned in the book of the Revelation, the "man of lawlessness" mentioned by Paul in his 2nd letter to the Thessalonians, came to be viewed as possible descriptions of this Antichrist figure. Some went further, trying to find all sorts of details through--fairly imaginitive--interpretations of the Bible. St. Hippolytus of Rome, writing around the early 3rd century, crafted a portrait of Antichrist where he would be a Jewish individual born from the Tribe of Dan, the way he did this was by looking at a passage in Genesis where the Patriarch Jacob told his son Dan that he would be a lion's whelp. As Christ was a Jew from the Tribe of Judah (called a lion), thus Antichrist would be a Jew from the Tribe of Dan (called a lion's whelp). It's rather far-fetched, but this is the kind of imaginative work some were doing. In the 16th century, some of the early Protestant Reformers saw in the institution of the Roman Papacy the fulfillment of "The Antichrist". While this view was a fairly nuanced one, not really stating that any specific Pope was the Antichrist but rather the power of the Pope is antichrist because of its temporal grasp over worldly power and the perception by the Reformers that the Papacy was actively against reforming the Church through the Gospel. Some later Protestants would take this idea and go wild with it, creating elaborate end times theories and anti-Catholic conspiracy theories, especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These have continued to feed into modern End Times conspiracy theories and scenarios. But the simple fact of the matter is that "Antichrist" is never mentioned anywhere in the Bible as a single individual who will act as a kind of "end times" antagonist, let alone provide any biographical details that one could try and look at. And yet, accusing this or that person, or creating elaborate scenarios about the Antichrist have been a very popular endeavor for a number of Christians over the centuries. In the last hundred years alone you can pretty much take any famous person, any politician, any wealthy individual, just about anyone at all and find someone who has been convinced that they're the Antichrist. When we look at the historic confessions of Christian faith, however, we simply don't find any of these scenarios, or any conspiracy theories, or any elaborate graphic details. It's all pretty simple: Jesus will return to judge, the dead will rise, and there will be life everlasting in the future World. Personally, I just don't give credence to those people who claim to have all this knowledge about "the end times". There is a lucrative market for "end times" books, and I think it all amounts to little more than grifting. Those who claim to be "prophecy experts" are a dime a dozen, they all contradict one another, and I don't take them seriously because I don't think they take the Bible seriously. They claim the Bible says X, but when you ask them to show you where the Bible says X, they simply throw out all critical thinking, or bothering with context, and just stitch together bits and pieces, a few words from a verse here, a few words from a verse there, and then claim they've solved some long lost biblical riddle. They are, from my perspective, simply those whom the Scriptures call "wise in their own eyes". -CryptoLutheran [/QUOTE]
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