Satan and the New Testament

[radhead]

Even when I was a believer, I found it strange to read statements in the gospels such as "This occurred to fulfill this prophecy regarding...." to the point of being ridiculous. Due to the strange nature of the events, which didn't seem follow the same spirit of the original scriptures.

Now I can see that the gospel stories were intended to insult and mock the scriptures in the Old Testament.

And it is even possible that some of the stories in the Old Testament were intended to mock things found in the prophetic writings.

 

[StTruth]

Suppose there was an openly atheist organization that helped the world as much as the church does. And suppose also that this organization was found to have been covering up the rape of thousands of children for decades. It would only be a matter of days before this organization was torn to the ground and all of its assets seized by the various governments of the world.

So at best, we can only attempt to discuss the "net good" that the church has done. Have their good deeds truly compensated for the thousands of raped children? Also we need to consider that the investigations of rape only went back several decades - anything beyond that and we are trying to interrogate dead priests and dead victims. It's not reasonable to speculate that the church was happily going on its way for nearly 2000 years and then suddenly there was a spontaneous outbreak of thousands of cases of rape all across the entire world.

Women have only been allowed to vote for 100 years in America, which was supposedly a democratic nation from the very start. For the entire age of the church, women have been oppressed. When women are oppressed, children are also because oppressed women are the keepers of children. So no child from 1000 years ago could accuse a priest of rape - that would have been considered lunacy, given the clout priests had.

So until evidence to the contrary arises, I'm going to assume that the church has been raping children for 2000 years at the same rate as was discovered in the recent scandals. I cannot conceive of how such an entity is good for humanity unless their propositions about eternal life are actually true. But of course, an organization that knows the truth does not need to destroy/fabricate/alter documents and execute dissenters.



Most Christians that I know of - even the ones who dismiss the entire Old Testament and accept the ideas of deep time and biological evolution by natural selection - insist that at least the core events of the gospel occurred in physical reality and were not intended as fictions. You cannot be a Christian if you don't believe that Jesus was killed and then rose from the dead. Attempting to place these events in physical reality and actual history is just not possible, and apologists at some point are compelled to dodge questions, abandon conversation, or simply lie - and that's what Dawkins et al have a problem with. Everything you've said here is basically untouchable by Dawkins or any atheist. We would be curious why you even bother to believe at all, given what you said, but beyond that there is little to be said.

Hi Nihilist Virus,

I agree with you about the RC scandal. However, I'm C of E and we are not RC. I'm an altar boy and we always tease a friend who is an RC altar boy. But I won't be clear what we say to him because the moderators may not like it. Basically, what I want to say is the rape of children has nothing to do with my church. My priests are happily married men AND WOMEN. OK, we have a handful of celibate priests but those are very few.

Your view of what makes a Christian Christian is too fundamentalist. There are many in my church who are more progressive than that. I am a Christian because of the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Confirmation and I recite the Creeds and submit to the Church. There is no requirement that you must cerebrally assent to a list of things. How much we assent to it is always debatable.

Cheers,

St Truth

 

[Subduction Zone]

Even when I was a believer, I found it strange to read statements in the gospels such as "This occurred to fulfill this prophecy regarding...." to the point of being ridiculous. Due to the strange nature of the events, which didn't seem follow the same spirit of the original scriptures.

Now I can see that the gospel stories were intended to insult and mock the scriptures in the Old Testament.

And it is even possible that some of the stories in the Old Testament were intended to mock things found in the prophetic writings.

I am not so sure if that is the case. But it is rather clear that the writers of the New Testament, who were also scholars of the Old Testament, wrote parts of the New Testament in ways to "fulfill prophecy". A clear example is the Nativity of Luke. The author of Luke had to get Jesus to Bethlehem to be born to fulfill an OT prophecy. So he came up with . . . the census. Now Rome never had one single over arching census. They did have censuses. And they were not generally well received since they were done so that local areas could be taxed. But censuses never required that people returned to their ancestral homes. In fact that would be counter productive. They took censuses based upon where people lived because you tax them where they are, not where they are not, if you want to get any money from them.

So he was wrong from the start. Second he got the date of the census wrong. That is what happens when you write the story over 70 years after the fact. The closest census to the birth of Jesus was the the Census of Quirinius. That was in the year 6 AD. Herod, who was supposed to be King when Jesus was born, died in the year 4 BC. That is a ten year time span. Now either Mary had a record long pregnancy or the writer of Luke messed up.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

I am not so sure if that is the case. But it is rather clear that the writers of the New Testament, who were also scholars of the Old Testament, wrote parts of the New Testament in ways to "fulfill prophecy". A clear example is the Nativity of Luke. The author of Luke had to get Jesus to Bethlehem to be born to fulfill an OT prophecy. So he came up with . . . the census. Now Rome never had one single over arching census. They did have censuses. And they were not generally well received since they were done so that local areas could be taxed. But censuses never required that people returned to their ancestral homes. In fact that would be counter productive. They took censuses based upon where people lived because you tax them where they are, not where they are not, if you want to get any money from them.

So he was wrong from the start. Second he got the date of the census wrong. That is what happens when you write the story over 70 years after the fact. The closest census to the birth of Jesus was the the Census of Quirinius. That was in the year 6 AD. Herod, who was supposed to be King when Jesus was born, died in the year 4 BC. That is a ten year time span. Now either Mary had a record long pregnancy or the writer of Luke messed up.

I looked no further than Matthew taking Isaiah 7:14 out of context.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Even when I was a believer, I found it strange to read statements in the gospels such as "This occurred to fulfill this prophecy regarding...." to the point of being ridiculous. Due to the strange nature of the events, which didn't seem follow the same spirit of the original scriptures.

Now I can see that the gospel stories were intended to insult and mock the scriptures in the Old Testament.

And it is even possible that some of the stories in the Old Testament were intended to mock things found in the prophetic writings.

You think the NT authors were intentionally insulting the OT?

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Hi Nihilist Virus,

I agree with you about the RC scandal. However, I'm C of E and we are not RC. I'm an altar boy and we always tease a friend who is an RC altar boy. But I won't be clear what we say to him because the moderators may not like it. Basically, what I want to say is the rape of children has nothing to do with my church. My priests are happily married men AND WOMEN. OK, we have a handful of celibate priests but those are very few.

Your view of what makes a Christian Christian is too fundamentalist. There are many in my church who are more progressive than that. I am a Christian because of the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Confirmation and I recite the Creeds and submit to the Church. There is no requirement that you must cerebrally assent to a list of things. How much we assent to it is always debatable.

Cheers,

St Truth

Do you think the RC church should be forcibly dissolved?

 

[StTruth]

Do you think the RC church should be forcibly dissolved?

I think in today's world, there are far greater threats to worry about from another religion that makes the RC scandal seem like child's play. Oops, I didn't mean to be witty there. Haha.

 

[StTruth]

I am not so sure if that is the case. But it is rather clear that the writers of the New Testament, who were also scholars of the Old Testament, wrote parts of the New Testament in ways to "fulfill prophecy". A clear example is the Nativity of Luke. The author of Luke had to get Jesus to Bethlehem to be born to fulfill an OT prophecy. So he came up with . . . the census. Now Rome never had one single over arching census. They did have censuses. And they were not generally well received since they were done so that local areas could be taxed. But censuses never required that people returned to their ancestral homes. In fact that would be counter productive. They took censuses based upon where people lived because you tax them where they are, not where they are not, if you want to get any money from them.

So he was wrong from the start. Second he got the date of the census wrong. That is what happens when you write the story over 70 years after the fact. The closest census to the birth of Jesus was the the Census of Quirinius. That was in the year 6 AD. Herod, who was supposed to be King when Jesus was born, died in the year 4 BC. That is a ten year time span. Now either Mary had a record long pregnancy or the writer of Luke messed up.

Bart Ehrman gives a very good reason why the Evangelists cooked up stories to fulfil the OT prophecies for Jesus and to re-use fulfilled prophecies even when the context clearly don't apply to Jesus but to a different person centuries before who had come and gone.

Apparently, they needed to justify the faith after Jesus' death. They needed to show that Christianity was just a follow-up from Judaism because people in those days did not take kindly to religions that were new and freshly concocted. The early church needed to give some semblance of antiquity to the new religion and they had to link it to Judaism so that Christianity was more like a follow on or continuation from Judaism.

Hence the overzealousness to show that Jesus was prophesied in the OT.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

I think in today's world, there are far greater threats to worry about from another religion that makes the RC scandal seem like child's play. Oops, I didn't mean to be witty there. Haha.

You don't let a child molester go free just because a murderer is on the loose.

 

[StTruth]

You don't let a child molester go free just because a murderer is on the loose.

You can't disband the whole RC church. They should make it easy to prosecute criminal priests and there should be a law that requires openness and if the RC church fails in that, yes, it should be banned.

 

[Ygrene Imref]

When I was a Christian, I was told that Joseph Smith, Muhammad (FBUH), and the like were in communication with the devil when they concocted their false religions. Alien abductees were actually victims of demonic encounters.

So Satan has the ability to create false religions, he has the desire to, and he has in fact succeeded in doing so.

Now, imagine that you're Satan in 1000 BC. You see that God has established a covenant with man and has set up specific rules for living, atonement of sins, and etc. You want to deceive these people. How do you do it?

Would you perhaps find a way to convince them that they don't need to perform animal sacrifices? Would you find a way to convince them that the temple is no longer a holy place? What if you could accomplish this by substituting for God someone else that they could worship? Would that be a worthwhile aim, again, pretending that you're Satan?

If you're Satan in 1000 BC, what parts of the New Testament would not seem like a good idea to you? In short, I'd like to know what parts of the New Testament could not have been authored or inspired by Satan. What parts of the New Testament contradict Satan's goals to the point that he would not advocate such ideas even to advance a false god for people to worship?

If you refuse to answer this, then you surrender your right to fling accusations of other religions or experiences being Satanic. And worse, if you refuse to answer, you have absolutely no way of knowing whether or not your beliefs are an extreme insult to YHWH.

The resurrection of Christ is a very large issue that is against Satan. Mages, witches and occultologists have spent thousand of years trying to master resurrection/eternal life. All have failed, and have at best only replicated simulated resurrection - necromancy. Resurrection proves God-like characteristics in man (since Christ is a man,) and therefore would also show the satans to be a liar from the garden.

"Eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil" would not cause Adam and Eve to be like gods; they were already gods. Duality - confusion, not unity is what devolved the human race from sons of God to sons of carnal man.

Another is the genealogy of Christ, and therefore the genealogy of Cain, and thus the apparent splitting of bloodlines - one of son of Man, and one of enmity with the seed of the serpent.

A third would be the twisting of words of Christ by asserting Christ only wants us to follow law of love - without acknowledging that that means following the word of God - including His laws. Over and over again in the NT, we are told to follow the word of God, to be obedient as this is pleasing to Him. We are also told faith without works is dead.

The enemy (satans) do not need to decimate the truth; they have been around humanity since the beginning, so they understand Truth cannot be destroyed. It is sufficient to build dialectics, and paradigms based on twisting of words. This was the same tactic used in the garden, and it still works. Why fix something that isn't broken?

Another is to squelch the idea that there are, in fact, interdimensional beings that not only polluted the genetics of the human race, but they also continue to have contact with humanity.

There are a plethora of things that have been canonized, which are twisted cultural and religious alignments to strange doctrine and false teaching. It only takes a little bit of "leaven" to pollute something.

One of the major disadvantages the West has is that they do not believe in the spiritual world much, if at all. (This is especially ironic considering Western Christians do believe that Christ resurrected, and that He cast out demons, and raised the dead.) That severely handicaps those Christians who don't realize there is spiritual warfare. Everything else is consequentially in favor of the enemy from that lack of understanding. Most people East of Jeruselum know and understand there exists a spiritual world, and have no problem believing/accepting that it is real - especially through experience. The West has set up a cultural and psychological paradigm so that even if Eastern religions have something to offer, they will likely be rejected due to "9/11," the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, and so on.

And, a culture of scoffing, anger, disillusion with religion and charlatans, and so on also greatly keep people from their God-given glory and status.


The point of the principalities, angels, powers, and archons is to get all of us to want to reject God, His legal covenant agreement between us, and the fact that HE exists. It isn't that convoluted. These entities have the added bonus of working with egotistical creatures that can confuse even the smallest changes in detail.

We have a mathematically chaotic psychology that we believe is normal, and natural. It makes us easy spiritual game.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

You can't disband the whole RC church. They should make it easy to prosecute criminal priests and there should be a law that requires openness and if the RC church fails in that, yes, it should be banned.

Most of the time, using the term "global conspiracy" is a good way to not be taken seriously. But in this case it is legitimate to say that there was a global conspiracy to cover up the rape of thousands of children. No one is questioning the fact that the rapists need to be punished. I'm taking it further and saying that the organization that cloaked their crimes for decades must be dissolved.

 

[StTruth]

Most of the time, using the term "global conspiracy" is a good way to not be taken seriously. But in this case it is legitimate to say that there was a global conspiracy to cover up the rape of thousands of children. No one is questioning the fact that the rapists need to be punished. I'm taking it further and saying that the organization that cloaked their crimes for decades must be dissolved.

You have a good point there. The crime and the cover-up are too serious and irredeemable. I wouldn't say I'd be sorry if the RC church was disbanded.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

The resurrection of Christ is a very large issue that is against Satan. Mages, witches and occultologists have spent thousand of years trying to master resurrection/eternal life. All have failed, and have at best only replicated simulated resurrection - necromancy. Resurrection proves God-like characteristics in man (since Christ is a man,) and therefore would also show the satans to be a liar from the garden.

You misunderstand the OP. The resurrection is a fiction if Satan invented it, so it doesn't matter if he's incapable of producing an actual resurrection.

"Eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil" would not cause Adam and Eve to be like gods; they were already gods. Duality - confusion, not unity is what devolved the human race from sons of God to sons of carnal man.

Relevance?

Another is the genealogy of Christ, and therefore the genealogy of Cain, and thus the apparent splitting of bloodlines - one of son of Man, and one of enmity with the seed of the serpent.

A third would be the twisting of words of Christ by asserting Christ only wants us to follow law of love - without acknowledging that that means following the word of God - including His laws. Over and over again in the NT, we are told to follow the word of God, to be obedient as this is pleasing to Him. We are also told faith without works is dead.

Again, until you dispute the notion in the OP Christ was not even real. Did you read the OP? For now I'll assume the rest of your post is also off topic.

 

[Ygrene Imref]

Yes let me reread the op. Depending on the context,of DEFINITELY wouldn't have posted on this thread.

 

[Ygrene Imref]

When I was a Christian, I was told that Joseph Smith, Muhammad (FBUH), and the like were in communication with the devil when they concocted their false religions. Alien abductees were actually victims of demonic encounters.

So Satan has the ability to create false religions, he has the desire to, and he has in fact succeeded in doing so.

Now, imagine that you're Satan in 1000 BC. You see that God has established a covenant with man and has set up specific rules for living, atonement of sins, and etc. You want to deceive these people. How do you do it?

Would you perhaps find a way to convince them that they don't need to perform animal sacrifices? Would you find a way to convince them that the temple is no longer a holy place? What if you could accomplish this by substituting for God someone else that they could worship? Would that be a worthwhile aim, again, pretending that you're Satan?

If you're Satan in 1000 BC, what parts of the New Testament would not seem like a good idea to you? In short, I'd like to know what parts of the New Testament could not have been authored or inspired by Satan. What parts of the New Testament contradict Satan's goals to the point that he would not advocate such ideas even to advance a false god for people to worship?

If you refuse to answer this, then you surrender your right to fling accusations of other religions or experiences being Satanic. And worse, if you refuse to answer, you have absolutely no way of knowing whether or not your beliefs are an extreme insult to YHWH.

You misunderstand the OP. The resurrection is a fiction if Satan invented it, so it doesn't matter if he's incapable of producing an actual resurrection.

You were right, I didn't read the OP correctly.

You are asking us to entertain a thought experiment as if we were The Satan (I am assuming what you mean, as in Hebrew and the NT there are different satans for different types of entities.)

I should have listened to my first mind, and did said what this person said.

Why should we answer satan ?

If I had read the question correctly the first time, I would have saved us both from wasting our time.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

You were right, I didn't read the OP correctly.

You are asking us to entertain a thought experiment as if we were The Satan (I am assuming what you mean, as in Hebrew and the NT there are different satans for different types of entities.)

I should have listened to my first mind, and did said what this person said.



If I had read the question correctly the first time, I would have saved us both from wasting our time.

 

[Ygrene Imref]

I agree 100%.

But, I already entertained that thought from several dozen different perspectives - of which the most influential and significant was my actual life.

That "proverb" is for persons who are, by nature, incredulous of everything, or most things. It does not philosophically apply to persons who already exercise their mental and philosophical dexterity by entertaining hypothetical arguments as second nature.

It also doesn't apply to a situation when a person has a philosophical alignment so rigid that it must be entertained in order to be nurtured - even if the entertainment is unhealthy, or aggressive.

In all cases, we are to use our logos, ethos and pathos to determine how we execute decisions. If it wasn't for you giving me clarity about the OP, I may have entertained the line of questioning you would have presented. But, having understood the OP correctly it was a mistake for me to post.

It is a hackneyed thought experiment I have been asked to entertain by friends, family, associates and people that despise me. The nuance has worn off, which is why I wont be engaging in this thread.


Now, that was an honest answer to a post I assumed was honest in response. If, instead, you happened to be trying to goad me into conversing with you by appealing to my ego, that has also been done to exhaustion. This will be my last post either way.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

I agree 100%.

But, I already entertained that thought from several dozen different perspectives - of which the most influential and significant was my actual life.

That "proverb" is for persons who are, by nature, incredulous of everything, or most things. It does not philosophically apply to persons who already exercise their mental and philosophical dexterity by entertaining hypothetical arguments as second nature.

It also doesn't apply to a situation when a person has a philosophical alignment so rigid that it must be entertained in order to be nurtured - even if the entertainment is unhealthy, or aggressive.

In all cases, we are to use our logos, ethos and pathos to determine how we execute decisions. If it wasn't for you giving me clarity about the OP, I may have entertained the line of questioning you would have presented. But, having understood the OP correctly it was a mistake for me to post.

It is a hackneyed thought experiment I have been asked to entertain by friends, family, associates and people that despise me. The nuance has worn off, which is why I wont be engaging in this thread.


Now, that was an honest answer to a post I assumed was honest in response. If, instead, you happened to be trying to goad me into conversing with you by appealing to my ego, that has also been done to exhaustion. This will be my last post either way.

So... you are saying that you have been asked this question many times, and yet you misunderstood the OP when you read it the first time? Well you won't answer, as you say... so whatever.