Why the delay in Christ's return?

[2Dbunk]

As a former Christian it has been my understanding that Jesus Christ is an all-loving, compassionate personal God (or Son of God). And above all the good things attributed to him there is one supreme caveat that hangs like the sword of Damocles over our heads: that Heaven is only achievable to those who believe in him – indeed, those who don’t will be condemned to everlasting fire and brimstone.

Also, the New Testament tells us that Christ’s departure from Earth 2,000 years ago will be short-lived and his return is imminent . . . to take up to Heaven all those who follow Him – that “few will be chosen.�

My question for debate is: Knowing “few will be chosen,� why is there such a delay in his return? As the years go by and the world’s population at about 7 billion people, it is obvious that proportionately more and more will not "be chosen.� How can an all-loving, understanding god consign more and more of his created children to hell each passing day, especially in these times of exponentially increasing knowledge and more doubt of what supernatural things to believe.

Can anyone posit a reason why the delay in the Second Coming?

[Zzyzx]

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[Replying to post 59 by JLB32168]

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[2Dbunk]

[Replying to post 59 by JLB32168]

I remind you of my post #40 answering questions of my numbers. I again add that info now, as I had in post #49:

Replying to JLB32168]

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you but I had to reply to your "not believing my numbers." I don't make these things up. I do hope the following (which is also in a new thread entitled Does everything happen for a reason?) is edifying, supporting my point of view:
Quote:


. . . And, we cannot exactly predict the birthrate or conversion rate of those born in Muslim countries (that’s why I cited Pew Research Council’s population predictions).

Without being anymore obvious, my target is to effect a reaction from those (1213, tam and JLB 68132) in the “Why the delay in Christ’s Coming?� thread, specifically� 1213’s NT quote:

For I don't desire, brothers, to have you ignorant of this mystery, so that you won't be wise in your own conceits, that a partial hardening has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in,
Romans 11:25

This quote deals with the unborn, un-indoctrinated Gentiles up to Judgment Day.

In that passage, one gets the idea that the population cornucopia’s issuing of Gentiles is petering out and the day is coming when the last Gentile will, as an adult, attest to the Word of Christ. Never mind that most all population predictions have the Earth increasing in population (10.2 Billion by 2100 -UN Average) and Christians increasing slower – significantly slower than Muslims. If the word “Gentile� can be equated to the word “people� (the definition is: “non-Jewish people.� Unless I miss my guess, Gentile is extended to include Christians also, as 1213 seems to infer) then there seems to be a huge disparity as to the numbers issuing forth at / near Judgment day. And with China ending its one-child policy, those numbers will probably escalate.


Best regards

Do you care to discuss these numbers any farther? Will Judgment Day be beyond 2100? And if so, do you agree that there'll probably be closer or in excess of a 11 billion gentiles issuing forth from that Cornucopia? ("Lots more people are going to be burning in hell!" you might say)

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[JLB32168]

And if so, do you agree that there'll probably be closer or in excess of a 11 billion gentiles issuing forth from that Cornucopia? ("Lots more people are going to be burning in hell!" you might say)

I agree. I just don’t see the import of the point since in Eastern Orthodox theology those who are invincibly ignorant, that is, they are ignorant of the Christian message because they have not yet had an opportunity to hear it, will not be judged according to it. Instead, they will be judged according to the amount of truth they did actually possess and all religions that I know of teach that man should care for his neighbor. In Christian teaching that is covered by the fact that all men, w/o exception, are created in God’s Image and Likeness and possess moral agency and certain things are commonly received as wrong by everyone (abusing children, killing innocents, dishonest business practices, etc.), and all people possess common ideas on what is good - taking care of one's aged parents,
showing empathy with the suffering such as destitute widows and orphans, being kind to animals, etc.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches the same thing regarding this invincible ignorance.

[Ancient of Years]

And once again, Mark did not write in the “early/mid stages of the war�. He utilizes a real event, the utter destruction of the Temple itself, as a key element in his story. This was not either prophesied or expected. In fact it happens to contradict Daniel from which Mark takes his imagery. I have already documented all this. The destruction of the Temple had already happened when Mark wrote.

An important point which I haven't addressed yet. Let me know if there's anything else important that I'm overlooking. It's hard to cover every point in detail, but it's been a great discussion so far

You're assuming here that Mark was writing after the Revolt of course, but none of this applies if he wrote beforehand. The reader would understand that he was referring to prophecies from Daniel and the other prophets. In fact the passage makes a lot more sense if he was merely rehashing older prophecies: You're right that the temple's destruction would be foolish 'sign' to flee to the hills, but equally you're correct that there was no plausible abomination in the temple before that! Caligula's plans had occurred some 30 years earlier - an equally foolish 'sign' to flee, and obviously one which historically the Jerusalem church had not heeded. It simply makes no sense if Mark was writing after the fact.

We saw above that Mark refers to events that happened in 67 CE. The destruction of the Temple is explicitly described by Mark (knocked down completely) was an accident of war and not something predictable. The references to Daniel include the destruction of the city in a war but not the destruction of the Temple. It is clear that in Daniel the Temple remains standing and also that the ‘abomination’ is not set up until well after the destruction of the city. The sanctuary within the Temple is destroyed (some translations say ‘profaned’) but not the Temple itself. These are references to events in the time of Antiochus IV, couched as prophecies made centuries earlier.

First of all, you haven't really addressed the point I made above: If it's true that an 'abomination' of some kind at the climax of the Jewish war would in hindsight be a foolish and far too late sign to flee Jerusalem (which it is), it's equally obvious that an abomination from thirty years earlier which never even occurred is an even more nonsensical warning to flee and obviously not historically heeded by the Jerusalem church!

Those verses do not make any sense in any way, if they were written in hindsight - so the more plausible conclusion is that they weren't.

Secondly, you're creating a distinction between the temple and the sanctuary in Daniel 9, and between the fates of the city and the sanctuary, where none exists in the text. Daniel writes only that "the people of the coming monarch will destroy the city and the Sanctuary, and his end will come about by inundation, and until the end of the war, it will be cut off into desolation." This doesn't suggest that that the city would be destroyed but the sanctuary only 'profaned,' or that the city also would be merely be profaned; it suggests the desolation of the city, and the same fate for the sanctuary - and certainly not that the 'temple' would somehow be spared!

Of course many modern scholars and some, perhaps many 1st century Jews understood it in reference to the events under Antiochus. But that's not the point; the question is how might 1st century Christians like Mark understand it? And that's not difficult to guess: "And after the sixty-two weeks, the anointed one will be cut off, and he will be no more, and the people of the coming monarch will destroy the city and the Sanctuary..."

I don't know whether Mark was writing blind, before the war even began, or whether the early or even middle stages of the war led him to conclude all this stuff was about to happen. But in light of Daniel, either option is obviously plausible: Moreso than an absurd 'sign' to flee Jerusalem after it's already been beseiged and captured, and certainly much more plausible than a 'sign' from thirty years earlier which never even happened!

Mark put ‘prophecies’ in the mouth of Jesus supposed to have been spoken around 30 CE. These ‘prophecies’ were links to events that had already happened when Marl wrote. The Jerusalem church would not have fled Judaea before the war because Mark invented this warning ex post facto after 70 CE. The ‘abomination’ would have been something that happened before the war, something that Mark needed to nudge the reader into recognizing. (“Let the reader understand�)

The ‘abomination’ that Mark refers to would be the attempt by Caligula to have his statue placed in the Temple. His statue had already been placed in various synagogues in Alexandria. [See note at end for reference] This led to rioting. Reference A pagan altar had already been erected in Jamnia for the purpose of causing unrest. Being told about this is what prompted Caligula to order his statue erected. Reference This brought Rome and the Jews to the brink of war in a complex scenario ultimately resolved by the death of Caligula. Reference (In one of the ironies of history, the letter informing Petronius, Governor of Syria, that Caligula was dead arrived before the letter from Caligula ordering Petronius to commit suicide for failing to get the statue erected.)

We can see strong parallels between this and the events described in Daniel.

Antiochus invaded Egypt twice, in 169 BCE with success, but on the second incursion, in late 168, he was forced to withdraw by the Romans.[24] Jason, hearing a rumour that Antiochus was dead, attacked Menelaus to take back the High Priesthood.[24] Antiochus drove Jason out of Jerusalem, plundered the Temple, and introduced measures to pacify his Egyptian border by imposing complete Hellenisation: the Jewish Book of the Law was prohibited, as was circumcision, and on 15 December 167 an "abomination of desolation", probably a Greek altar, was introduced into the Temple.[25] With the Jewish religion now clearly under threat a resistance movement sprang up, led by the Maccabee brothers, and over the next three years it won sufficient victories over Antiochus to take back and purify the Temple.[24]

The crisis which the author of Daniel addresses is the destruction of the altar in Jerusalem in 167 BCE (first introduced in chapter 8:11): the daily offering which used to take place twice a day, at morning and evening, stopped, and the phrase "evenings and mornings" recurs through the following chapters as a reminder of the missed sacrifices.[26]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_D ... background

While Antiochus was busy in Egypt, a rumor spread that he had been killed. The deposed High Priest Jason gathered a force of 1,000 soldiers and made a surprise attack on the city of Jerusalem. Menelaus was the High Priest appointed by Antiochus, but he was forced to flee Jerusalem during a riot. The King returned from Egypt in 167 BCE, enraged by his defeat, and he attacked Jerusalem and restored Menelaus, then executed many Jews.[6]

• When these happenings were reported to the king, he thought that Judea was in revolt. Raging like a wild animal, he set out from Egypt and took Jerusalem by storm. He ordered his soldiers to cut down without mercy those whom they met and to slay those who took refuge in their houses. There was a massacre of young and old, a killing of women and children, a slaughter of virgins and infants. In the space of three days, eighty thousand were lost, forty thousand meeting a violent death, and the same number being sold into slavery.
  
  — 2 Maccabees 5:11–14

Antiochus decided to side with the Hellenized Jews in order to consolidate his empire and strengthen his hold over the region. He outlawed Jewish religious rites and traditions kept by observant Jews and ordered the worship of Zeus as the supreme god (2 Maccabees 6:1–12). This was anathema to the Jews and they refused, so Antiochus sent an army to enforce his decree. The city was destroyed because of the resistance, many were slaughtered, and a military Greek citadel was established called the Acra.[7]

• Not long after this the king sent an Athenian senator to force the Jews to abandon the customs of their ancestors and live no longer by the laws of God; also [b\to profane the temple in Jerusalem and dedicate it to Olympian Zeus[/b], and that on Mount Gerizim to Zeus the Hospitable, as the inhabitants of the place requested...They also brought into the temple things that were forbidden, so that the altar was covered with abominable offerings prohibited by the laws. A man could not keep the sabbath or celebrate the traditional feasts, nor even admit that he was a Jew. At the suggestion of the citizens of Ptolemais, a decree was issued ordering the neighboring Greek cities to act in the same way against the Jews: oblige them to partake of the sacrifices, and put to death those who would not consent to adopt the customs of the Greeks. It was obvious, therefore, that disaster impended. Thus, two women who were arrested for having circumcised their children were publicly paraded about the city with their babies hanging at their breasts and then thrown down from the top of the city wall. Others, who had assembled in nearby caves to observe the sabbath in secret, were betrayed to Philip and all burned to death.
  
  — 2 Maccabees 6:1–11

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiochus ... on_of_Jews

Mark’s explicit reference to the Temple being totally destroyed is not found in Daniel. The events in the time of Antiochus IV include destroying Jerusalem, profaning the sanctuary and killing a lot of people. They do not include destroying the Temple as can be seen by the above references. The Temple was not destroyed in 167 BCE. The sanctuary was profaned but not destroyed. Yet the Temple being destroyed is exactly what happened in 70 CE.

This is not rehashing old prophecies. This is a reference to things that had already happened. Mark wrote after the destruction of the Temple and explicitly refers to it.

Mark 13
1 As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!�

2 “Do you see all these great buildings?� replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.�

Here is a depiction of what the Temple looked like at that time.



Afterward only the Western Wall remained.



The phrase that Mark uses, ‘the abomination of the desolation’, is a direct quote from Daniel. Matthew even identifies Mark’s reference as coming from Daniel. Mark references the Jewish Scriptures numerous times. He certainly expected 1st century Christians to get those. Why would they not get references to Daniel?

Mark wrote after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.


Caligula reference:
penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Caligula*.html#2

phpbb will not reproduce it correctly as a url, so copy/paste it into a browser

[2Dbunk]

[Replying to JLB32168]

Understanding the numbers are so important. Population growth will not trickle to zero, but instead increase to ever more people -- that much more people who will perish in the "lake of fire" at the hands of a "most compassionate, loving God."

John 3:16-18

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (17) For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (18)Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

Believe . . . or else . . . that is a very damning indictment! I think it a bit unfair to someone (any one of us) that never asked to be born. And as a student of philosophy, I look on those verses as a veiled threat, even a form of blackmail. Maybe this kind of vernacular was acceptable to the simpleminded of that era, but it is an insult to many who have intelligence today.

My birth (a wonderful realization that life's experiences have been for me), I view as a solemn contract to get life right. Religion may have been a start to that process in my beginning but its shackles of contradiction, obfuscation and inconsistency sloughed off as I climbed the mountain. Knowledge to me is the exact opposite of what some shaman preaches (usually loathing and condemning knowledge as a wicked deterrent to the path of righteousness).

I now understand that my sins have really been mistakes which I've long since paid for . . .

With all respect . . .