False Prophecies In the Bible: Did the Apostle Paul Make Vague Prophecies?
Every now and then, like a few hours ago, I wonder about this prophecy, wondering how you could know if it came true, since it I thought it was vague and there was no way to accurately measure it against the usual past behavior of mankind:
I found others had thought the same thing here: http://answers.yahoo.com/my/profile;_ylt=As.c.hqLWgQ.d0i5DR3BmOHd7BR.;_ylv=3?show=jsM8F4bLaa
But those few hours ago I started thinking about how such seeming mistakes in the Bible were often shown not to be mistakes if the context was studied carefully. But without going to read the passage again I thought what might be some possible solutions, and one of them was that Paul was talking about what would be going on in the Christian group as a whole, Christian as in those who practiced obeying Christ in some way, or what they and some others believed to be obeying Christ, like washing the feet of others to express reverence for Christ and abstaining from drinking alcohol while acknowledging in some way or saying in some way that they are Christians every now and then, as opposed to those who simply called themselves Christians but clearly had no interest in obeying the Bible and didn't do so intentionally.
Well it turned out I was in part right (notice the second half of the second-to-last sentence:
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God-having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. - 2 Timothy 3:1-5
If Paul were merely speaking of the world in general, and Paul didn't display any regular stupidity as a Christian, then it would have made no sense for him to have mentioned "lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God" since everyone knows that the world (non-Christians in other words) do not love God. And for those who are Catholics who believe the world is mostly or at least half Christian because of them, well one: If Catholics are half or most of the world then they can't be true Christians since they don't fit the Bible's qualifications of what the size of the church would be, and two, the "world" knows that Catholics are hypocrites and have a problem with child-molestation in their church, and those are not indications of people who obey "Love one another" / Christ or as some would say, an indication of a "holy" group.
The argument that Paul was being vague when he spoke about disobedient children can also be shot down in that a child in the Bible, doesn't necessarily mean a kid, as in a kid younger than seven, who are known for being rebellious till they become more physically self-controlled (like gaining the ability to refrain from throwing fits whenever they are angry or sad). A strong obedience to parents has been the normal behavior of children/young adults/teens to their parents.
But another seeming problem or argument that could made is that the Bible already mentions that the church at that time was having problems, and Revelation mentions problem congregations as further evidence, yet, two thousand years about have past since then, so that would mean the last days have been for the past 2000 years, which of course seems absurd. An argument against this is that the problem churches and members of the church that the Bible mentions are few. There are about four if I remember right, specific false Christian people mentioned after Acts, and Paul mentioned that Christian women in Corinth were doing wrong by praying without their hair being covered, and a few false Christs were around, James mentioned the Jewish congregation he was speaking to had mistreated poor people among them, and a group of heretics known as Gnostics was mentioned by John, and then there was the corruption in seven churches that Christ mentioned in Revelation. That doesn't sound like an epidemic of false Christians.
Revelation further gives clues as to when the evil behavior of false Christians would be very visible in it's statements against what is clearly the Catholic Church (Revelation 17:9). The Catholic denomination seems to have begun within a year or two of 50 A.D. and Revelation seems to have been finished before 70 A.D. Being that it doesn't point out any Catholic person in particular and speaks about them mostly or entirely in the future tense, it was probably still a small denomination at that time, and so it couldn't be said that Paul's 2 Timothy 3:1-5 had been fulfilled yet.
Next there is a shocking appalling gap in which true Christians seemed to have entirely disappeared after John, who wrote Revelation, died, and in which the Catholic denomination nearly covered Europe (stopping about after October 31, 1517), which is when the Reformation / rebellion against Catholicism began. I've never heard of any "disobedient to parents" problem during the Catholic Domination (when true Christians were no where to be found). There are no historical records I could find in which Catholics mentioned having a mass problem with children being disobedient to their human parents, and can't find any either in reference to any ancient group of people (which is evidence that Paul's prophecy wasn't vague and speaking behavior that was typical of children during his time or in the past).
A way in which we could discover when any noteworthy mass rebelling against parents occurring is to look for a change in the usual behavior of older children towards their parents in records throughout time. If it occurred, naturally a word or phrase would be made to point out this new behavior to make it more convenient to talk about rather than "the epidemic of disobedience of older children towards their parents". One word used to speak of older children made in modern times is the word "teen". It is first known to have been used in 1673. This is what the historical records show concerning the history of Christians which would have had a major effect on the behavior of false Christians, including that of young adults, also called "teens", and later, pagans, and to a lesser degree, true Christians.
This rest of this topic became very long, so I've decided to continue this in a book. If you want to help me out with that buy some books, games, or rare palm seeds through my store links to the right of my journal entries.
And yesterday night, on Auguust 11 (I don't know why this journal entry is dated August 10th, it seems like it should say 11), George Noory once again revealed the stupid logic of pagans like himself, as did his boring guest who sounded like a so called "random caller":
Guest "Ghost hunter" John Kachuba said, "The third thing [possibility] is, is that they [ghosts] are real." George Noory replied, "And you have to make that assumption." John replied, "Right." Wrong: You don't have to make guesses based on no facts, no evidence and in deliberate ignorance of the evidence. Unless someone is tormenting you to make a baseless guess, you can't say, "you have to" or "I'm forced" and even then, ultimately, your will is under your own control.
I found others had thought the same thing here: http://answers.yahoo.com/my/profile;_ylt=As.c.hqLWgQ.d0i5DR3BmOHd7BR.;_ylv=3?show=jsM8F4bLaa
But those few hours ago I started thinking about how such seeming mistakes in the Bible were often shown not to be mistakes if the context was studied carefully. But without going to read the passage again I thought what might be some possible solutions, and one of them was that Paul was talking about what would be going on in the Christian group as a whole, Christian as in those who practiced obeying Christ in some way, or what they and some others believed to be obeying Christ, like washing the feet of others to express reverence for Christ and abstaining from drinking alcohol while acknowledging in some way or saying in some way that they are Christians every now and then, as opposed to those who simply called themselves Christians but clearly had no interest in obeying the Bible and didn't do so intentionally.
Well it turned out I was in part right (notice the second half of the second-to-last sentence:
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God-having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. - 2 Timothy 3:1-5
If Paul were merely speaking of the world in general, and Paul didn't display any regular stupidity as a Christian, then it would have made no sense for him to have mentioned "lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God" since everyone knows that the world (non-Christians in other words) do not love God. And for those who are Catholics who believe the world is mostly or at least half Christian because of them, well one: If Catholics are half or most of the world then they can't be true Christians since they don't fit the Bible's qualifications of what the size of the church would be, and two, the "world" knows that Catholics are hypocrites and have a problem with child-molestation in their church, and those are not indications of people who obey "Love one another" / Christ or as some would say, an indication of a "holy" group.
The argument that Paul was being vague when he spoke about disobedient children can also be shot down in that a child in the Bible, doesn't necessarily mean a kid, as in a kid younger than seven, who are known for being rebellious till they become more physically self-controlled (like gaining the ability to refrain from throwing fits whenever they are angry or sad). A strong obedience to parents has been the normal behavior of children/young adults/teens to their parents.
But another seeming problem or argument that could made is that the Bible already mentions that the church at that time was having problems, and Revelation mentions problem congregations as further evidence, yet, two thousand years about have past since then, so that would mean the last days have been for the past 2000 years, which of course seems absurd. An argument against this is that the problem churches and members of the church that the Bible mentions are few. There are about four if I remember right, specific false Christian people mentioned after Acts, and Paul mentioned that Christian women in Corinth were doing wrong by praying without their hair being covered, and a few false Christs were around, James mentioned the Jewish congregation he was speaking to had mistreated poor people among them, and a group of heretics known as Gnostics was mentioned by John, and then there was the corruption in seven churches that Christ mentioned in Revelation. That doesn't sound like an epidemic of false Christians.
Revelation further gives clues as to when the evil behavior of false Christians would be very visible in it's statements against what is clearly the Catholic Church (Revelation 17:9). The Catholic denomination seems to have begun within a year or two of 50 A.D. and Revelation seems to have been finished before 70 A.D. Being that it doesn't point out any Catholic person in particular and speaks about them mostly or entirely in the future tense, it was probably still a small denomination at that time, and so it couldn't be said that Paul's 2 Timothy 3:1-5 had been fulfilled yet.
Next there is a shocking appalling gap in which true Christians seemed to have entirely disappeared after John, who wrote Revelation, died, and in which the Catholic denomination nearly covered Europe (stopping about after October 31, 1517), which is when the Reformation / rebellion against Catholicism began. I've never heard of any "disobedient to parents" problem during the Catholic Domination (when true Christians were no where to be found). There are no historical records I could find in which Catholics mentioned having a mass problem with children being disobedient to their human parents, and can't find any either in reference to any ancient group of people (which is evidence that Paul's prophecy wasn't vague and speaking behavior that was typical of children during his time or in the past).
A way in which we could discover when any noteworthy mass rebelling against parents occurring is to look for a change in the usual behavior of older children towards their parents in records throughout time. If it occurred, naturally a word or phrase would be made to point out this new behavior to make it more convenient to talk about rather than "the epidemic of disobedience of older children towards their parents". One word used to speak of older children made in modern times is the word "teen". It is first known to have been used in 1673. This is what the historical records show concerning the history of Christians which would have had a major effect on the behavior of false Christians, including that of young adults, also called "teens", and later, pagans, and to a lesser degree, true Christians.
This rest of this topic became very long, so I've decided to continue this in a book. If you want to help me out with that buy some books, games, or rare palm seeds through my store links to the right of my journal entries.
And yesterday night, on Auguust 11 (I don't know why this journal entry is dated August 10th, it seems like it should say 11), George Noory once again revealed the stupid logic of pagans like himself, as did his boring guest who sounded like a so called "random caller":
Guest "Ghost hunter" John Kachuba said, "The third thing [possibility] is, is that they [ghosts] are real." George Noory replied, "And you have to make that assumption." John replied, "Right." Wrong: You don't have to make guesses based on no facts, no evidence and in deliberate ignorance of the evidence. Unless someone is tormenting you to make a baseless guess, you can't say, "you have to" or "I'm forced" and even then, ultimately, your will is under your own control.