The great and awesome Day of the Lord

[Mithrae]

As y'all know despite being raised as one I'm no longer a Christian and haven't been for over a decade: I don't accept core Christian doctrines (eg. I'd only guess ~70-90% probability for the existence of some kind of 'God' and consider it significantly more probable than not that Jesus didn't rise from the dead), and more importantly I don't even adhere to the teachings of Jesus (to sell what you have and give to the poor, don't worry about tomorrow but trust in God's provision, stop working for money and start working for the kingdom of God).

But I try to keep an open mind, and over the past ten months or so I've been troubled by the topic of biblical prophecy. It actually began all the way back in 2011, when one prophecy enthusiast came to the forum with all kinds of fallacies and arbitrary conclusions, claiming that his pet theory had only 112 trillion to one odds of being false. So in response I did a more objective assessment, and came up with something like 100 to one instead; which is not mind-blowing or miraculous, but is still somewhat intriguing.

I've privately gnawed on that issue at times over the years, but never managed to falsify it to my own satisfaction and even found a couple of additional points worth considering too. So hopefully the rest of you can help prove me wrong.

As I see it, if a prediction has been made and parts of it had already come true, that's either coincidence or it's indicative of genuine foreknowledge. Hence the likelihood that the rest will come true is the inverse of the likelihood that the first part was coincidence. (Plus the likelihood that it would happen anyway, prophecy or no, but in the case of biblical prophecies that's basically zero and therefore irrelevant.) That is absolutely critical to my reasoning, but I can't find a fault with it: Either the fulfillment of the first part was coincidence or it was indeed foreknown, and if it was foreknown then the rest of it presumably is foreknown also; so the likelihood that the first part was not coincidence is roughly the same as the likelihood that the whole prophecy is genuine.

Thus we have -
Prediction: Prophecy and interpretation
Confirmation: Signs and complete fulfillment

The biggest problem I've found with many Christian prophecy enthusiasts is that they tend to include their interpretation as part of the 'sign,' like that fellow from 2011 (and with some particularly enthusiastic folk, simply make up what constitutes a sign from whole cloth!), and that's a key error I've tried to avoid in my reasoning. In each case I've tried to justify an interpretation of biblical prophecy as legitimate, not arbitrary, and only then begun to consider how likely it is that the 'sign' which came to pass is mere coincidence. I will try to be as brief as possible with the signs I've been interested in, but I'll still put them in another post because this is already getting on the long side for an OP. However I'll briefly comment on two of the most obvious objections first:

1 - Biblical prophecies are too vague
It's a fair point, but firstly, that is why I've tried to specifically quantify the likelihood of a fulfillment or 'sign' being mere coincidence, distinct from and after establishing a legitimate interpretation; and secondly, what would the alternative be? If a prophecy were very specific then anytime since 400 CE or so basically any 'fulfillment' would be subject to the criticism that it was engineered by Christians to match the existing prophecy. Some miraculous exceptions which could not possibly be engineered by humans might apply (though not for any of the ones below), but then there's the endless debate over whether there's good reasons why a deity would not openly and universally reveal himself in such a manner. Criticisms on those grounds are not particularly valid to my mind, since they simply assume certain things about what 'God' or prophecy should be like, rather than addressing the actual data available.

2 - Seemingly fulfilled prophecies, even remarkable ones, are still coincidental products of large numbers; many many prophecies and thousands of years of history
The charge that some biblical prophecies are obviously false prophecies (eg. those of Ezekiel or those that 'Matthew' put in Jesus' mouth about his return) falls more into this category than being a valid objection in its own right, I think; after all on its own, it amounts to nothing more than the absurd 'some prophecies are false therefore they all are.' However the more nuanced recognition of how large numbers interact with the notion of coincidence is important, and is potentially valid, if it can be shown that that the real probability of a 'fulfillment' is in fact other than what I have calculated. I have tried to be careful in considering other scenarios, other possible 'fulfillments' in my estimations of probability, so I don't consider it a valid objection to blithely state that it simply must have been more probable than I've concluded.



Questions for debate:
Is the reasoning above valid, particularly the section in blue?
And if so, are the assessments of probability for the prophecies/signs in post #2 correct (or at least reasonable)?

[PinSeeker]

A thousand years in God's sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night to us, as Psalm 90 says. Peter refers to this when he writes "But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day" (2 Peter 3:8). In other words, "soon" to Him may be a really, really long time to us. God's just not hemmed in by (and captive to) linear time as we are.

[Neatras]

[Replying to post 11 by PinSeeker]

So all time, with no delineation, is considered part of the "end times." So it's a meaningless term.

[Mithrae]

So far not a single person has really addressed the thread topic Amazingly, Divine Insight's vague preaching has actually come the closest; he's at least touching on the issue of quantification of confidence, despite studiously avoiding (by all appearances not even reading) the actual content I posted.




Some comments on the posts by Jehovah's Witness, PinSeeker etc:

They might say that the end times are 'imminent,' but the question is how imminent? There've been Christians saying that in literally every century since the 1st. There've been Christians setting dates, declaring certainty and being proven wrong again and again and again throughout history.

Some of the smarter ones now just make vague comments like those by JW and PS; vague assertions that are unquantifiable and unfalsifiable. But because of that, those claims are really quite meaningless for all practical purposes.

Quantification is essential for a claim to be meaningful, but it also has to be legitimate quantification. As I posted in the OP, the fellow from whom I first heard about one of those 'signs' simply tried to stack up absurd and entirely arbitrary confidence in his claims.
- 'Matthew' the evangelist (predicted ~73 CE)
- St. Hippolytus of Rome (predicted ~500 CE)
- Pope Sylvester II (midnight mass on December 31st, 999 CE)
- Joachim of Fiore (declared 1260CE as the 'age of the Holy Spirit')
- Johann Zimmerman, John Mason etc. (predicted 1693-1694)
- John Wesley (predicted 1836)
- William Miller (predicted 1844)
- Charles Taze Russell (predicted 1874, 1914)
- Hal Lindsay, Edgar C. Whisenant (predicted 1988, 2007, 2018 etc.)
- Jerry Falwell (said in 1999 that Christ would "probably" return within 10 years)
- Ronald Weinland (predicted 2011, 2012, 2013; sentenced to 42 months in prison for tax evasion, perhaps by a judge with a sense of humour)

Those are just a fraction of the Christian date-setters throughout history. But they were not just wrong; in virtually every case that I've looked at their rationale (eg. Hippolytus, Silvester, Miller, Lindsay) the basis for their conclusions have been not only shaky, but often quite laughably so. Matthew is the sole exception - though wrong, he had pretty good reasons for supposing the end must have come with the Jewish war and destruction of the temple - but between 140 and 1940 CE I really don't think there's been a single occasion when eschatological confidence could have legitimately exceeded 20% or so, and even since the establishment of Israel I don't think any of the specific dates claimed have much more merit: The September 23rd "Revelation 12 sign" being yet another very recent example, easily debunked for its terrible exegesis and arbitrary 'fulfillment.'

I'm asking folk to debunk what I've presented above, and so far no-one has done so.

But even Christians should be trying to, because the second and third 'signs' I've highlighted seem to imply a pretty clear time-frame that the final seven should end and Jesus should return by 2024-25. And if I'm right, that is by far the most likely time in the three thousand years since the 1st century that it should happen. The long wait and obvious, legitimate scepticism of the eighteen centuries after the temple's destruction has given way to a flurry of hype and excitement since the establishment of Israel, but if this period also passes without incident there'll really be no further recourse for any Christian with even a shred of intellectual integrity: If we get to 2026 and there's still no Jesus on the horizon, we will know for virtually certainty that he's not coming back. If I'm right.

So really, Christians really have just as much reason to prove me wrong as anyone else. But so far, no-one has done so.

[JehovahsWitness]

Some comments on the posts by Jehovah's Witness, PinSeeker etc:

They might say that the end times are 'imminent,' but the question is how imminent?

Jesus said it would not be possible to pinpoint the actual date but he did specify that the end of this present system would be within one "generation" of the time he (Jesus) began ruling. We can identify the start of his rule to 1914, so we are certainly living very close to this momentus event.

JEHOVAH'S WITNESS


RELATED POSTS

What are "the last days"?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 124#891124

Is it possible to pinpoint exactly when this present system will be destroyed?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 423#891423

If God's kingdom has been in power since 1914 why have there been no significant changes on earth?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 772#883772


FURTHER READING 1914​—A Significant Year in Bible Prophecy
https://www.jw.org/en/publications/book ... -prophecy/

[Mithrae]

I've noticed that a lot of old people seem eager to watch the world burn. They've had their fun romp around, they wanna experience a glorious rapture, and put those dirty heathens in their place.

Nevermind the absurd hubris that the world should stop spinning before they wind up in the grave. Nevermind that there's an entire generation of people just waiting to go out and see the world that end times predictors believe don't deserve or don't get to have their whole life ahead of them. But no, folks like Harold Camping were happy to declare the end was here in 2011. Posters on this forum were happy to declare the end was here in 2016. They want the world to end to satisfy their ego.

Seems like a massive empathy gap to me.

You're absolutely right about the perspective of many Christians, particularly those who believe in a 'pre-tribulation rapture.' I should note that as far as I can tell that idea is utterly unbiblical, invented in the 19th century by John Nelson Darby. It's popular because it's so comforting - not only the notion that Christians will get to sit in the clouds eating popcorn while their loving God inflicts horrors on us 'sinners,' but perhaps even more importantly the idea that it really could happen at any second.

The more biblical dispensationalist view is that if and when Jesus returns to gather his people, it will be preceded by the 'tribulation' period. Not only is uncomfortable to recognize that Christians would suffer through such a period along with everyone else - even moreso in fact, due to the persecution of the antichrist system - but it makes it impossible to imagine that Jesus will return next year: If he were returning so soon, the biblical literalist must suppose that we'd have seen all kinds of tremendous world-shaking events beforehand.

So if my interpretation is correct we really wouldn't need to wait 'til 2025 to dismiss the biblical prophecies entirely; even by 2022 or so it should be unequivocally clear what's going on.

[Neatras]

[Replying to post 15 by Mithrae]

So if my interpretation is correct we really wouldn't need to wait 'til 2025 to dismiss the biblical prophecies entirely; even by 2022 or so it should be unequivocally clear what's going on.

We don't need to wait til 2025 at all. Here's my claim (and deep down, you know I'm right about this one): The biblical prophecy of the end times can be dismissed straight up. Ain't happening today, tomorrow, next Tuesday. Wanna doubt me on that? I'll expect a sincere apology next Tuesday when armageddon winds up being a no-show.

Because for all the speculating and rhetorical numerology Christians find themselves concocting to fit their ragnarok fetishism, deep down they know that each day they've lived has been lived expecting the next day to come. They'll say otherwise, they'll say they're good, god-fearing christians who anticipate their god coming down from the heavens any day now. But their actions, their convictions show cracks.

See you tomorrow; and I guarantee you the world will still be spinning. If the Christian religion presupposes we can't even make that claim with confidence, then what good is it?

[Mithrae]

Jesus said it would not be possible to pinpoint the actual date but he did specify that the end of this present system would be within one "generation" of the time he (Jesus) began ruling.

No he didn't.

We can identify the start of his rule to 1914 . . . .


FURTHER READING 1914​—A Significant Year in Bible Prophecy
https://www.jw.org/en/publications/book ... -prophecy/

No we can't. I suppose another case study won't hurt, so: Daniel 4 is not ambiguous or vague in any kind of way open to eschatological interpretation. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of a tree which would be cut and chained for "seven times"... and then he supposedly became mad, lost his throne and ate grass for seven years. It's quite plain and obvious.

I've never actually looked at the 1914 'reasoning' before, but it seems that JWs have decided to take Nebuchadnezzar's seven years, turn it into 2520 days (seven years of 360 days), and then turn that into 2520 years. Um... what? They then apply those imaginary 2520 years in an even more absurd manner; skipping over to Luke's/Jesus' words in Luke 21 but brazenly contradicting the clear meaning that this "trampling" would begin after his ministry, at the destruction of the second temple, indirectly claiming that Jerusalem was somehow being "trampled by Gentiles" even during the period of the independent Jewish Hasmonean state... yet declaring that the "trampling" ended while gentile rulers and armies were still trampling all over the place throughout the early 20th century!

I would have to say that by any objective measure this 1914 date has absolutely zero percent confidence of being relevant - if not a negative value!


I don't intend to turn this thread into a discussion of your beliefs, of course: It's just another case study of how easy it often is to debunk these supposed signs and dates.

Perhaps you can return the favour, and debunk mine?


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[Replying to post 15 by Mithrae]

So if my interpretation is correct we really wouldn't need to wait 'til 2025 to dismiss the biblical prophecies entirely; even by 2022 or so it should be unequivocally clear what's going on.

We don't need to wait til 2025 at all. Here's my claim (and deep down, you know I'm right about this one): The biblical prophecy of the end times can be dismissed straight up.

Dismissing something out of hand is an approach of dogmatism, not scepticism.

If you had gone up to someone in 1543 say, after Martin Luther had piled onto centuries of persecution of Jews by the catholic church with his own publication of On the Jews and Their Lies, and told them that
- yes, there'd been over fourteen centuries of dispersion and oppression of Jews already and
- yes, that would continue for more than four more centuries longer and
- yes, some six million Jews would be killed in a Europe of the future...
- but within half a century of that a prosperous, secure Jewish state would be one of the world's formidable military powers, your claims would be dismissed straight up. But something along those lines was required by biblical prophecy... and it happened. Biblical prophecy required a Jewish state and temple before the end, and against all conceivable odds there is now a Jewish state, which controls the temple region, and even a lot of emerging scholarship suggesting that the temple's precise location may not have been on the Dome of the Rock after all.


I am not a dogmatist. I refuse to dismiss such 'coincidence' out of hand.

I am a sceptic, which is why I've made this thread asking to be proven wrong: I've approached the biblical predictions as objectively as I can, and assessed the likelihood that the apparent 'signs' of the end are mere coincidence as accurately as I can. I'm not a Christian; I'm not desperate to believe that Jesus is coming back; I've mulled over some of those issues for nigh on seven years without disproving them to my own satisfaction.

The raw, objective quantification suggests well over 99% certainty that the last seven years of the age are upon us. But I am reluctant to believe the raw, objective numbers.

Maybe you can debunk them, or maybe someone else can. But merely asserting that they must be wrong really doesn't count for anything at all.

[Neatras]

The raw, objective quantification suggests well over 99% certainty that the last seven years of the age are upon us. But I am reluctant to believe the raw, objective numbers.

In 2025, I expect you to walk back on that "99% certainty" nonsense.

[Mithrae]

The raw, objective quantification suggests well over 99% certainty that the last seven years of the age are upon us. But I am reluctant to believe the raw, objective numbers.

In 2025, I expect you to walk back on that "99% certainty" nonsense.

Okay, so you are unable to debunk or disprove what I've posted. You simply have faith that it must be wrong. That's okay; like I said, I've found it extremely hard to accept the raw numbers myself, because however objective and accurate they may or may not be, they're still merely abstract. In a similar vein I can accept the abstract data about the weirdness of the quantum realm and emptiness of space at atomic scales, for example, but I can't really comprehend them. In both cases, they're subjects so utterly removed from or even contrary to my personal experience of the world that it would be a misnomer to say that I 'believe' them, regardless of how rationally compelling the case may be.

So I can certainly sympathise with your faith that the reasoning and numbers presented in posts #1 and 2 simply must be wrong. More than sympathise; I all but share the same perspective myself! But until you're willing or able to actually disprove them, I think this will be the end of our conversation

[JehovahsWitness]

I've noticed that a lot of old people seem eager to watch the world burn.

.

Will the planet and all life be burnt up at ARMAGEDDON?

• Absolutely not!
  
  The bible Armageddon is NOT the destruction of the planet but only of the incorrigibly wicked. Yes, God will kill of the wicked but there will be a "great crowd" of survivors.

Who will be left on earth after the destruction of the system of things?

• PROVERBS 2: 21,22
  For only the upright will reside in the earth, And the blameless will remain in it. As for the wicked, they will be cut off from the earth, and the treacherous will be torn away from it.

  The bible teaches the exact opposite of what churches teach. While many religions teach that the righteous will be "raptured" off of the planet and the wicked will be left, the bible teaches that the "upright", the righteous, those God judges favorably will be LEFT on the earth and it is the wicked that will be removed (killed).

What will this earth be like AFTER the "end of the world" (Armageddon) ie after God destroys the incorrigibly wicked?

• This planet earth wiill be a wonderful place to live in for everyone. In fact, we can think of it as being "the end" of bad times and the BEGINNING of better times. Armageddon will mark the end for unrepentant child abusers and other people that deliberately cause suffering for the innocent.

Should believers look FORWARD to Armageddon?

• Christians should not rejoice in the death of anyone, even the wicked. The bible indicates God takes no pleasure in killing anyone, even the incorrigibly wicked, although as we have said he will do it. That said Armageddon will mark a beautiful new beginning for mankind, the beginning of full kingdom rule (God'd kingdom is the new world GOVERNMENT that will rule) and the vindication of JEHOVAH'S name, all things for which Christians have be fervently praying for since they first began praying "Let your kingdom come!" two thousand years ago, so yes, while we lament that everyone will not believe and be saved, all True Christian look forward with eager anticipation this new beginning on this our present planet earth. In short we don't look forward to God killing the wicked, but we do look forward to what that will mean for those that the wicked are oppressing and hurting and we certainly look forward to the paradise EARTH that will be realised after

CONCLUSION: "The End" is not the end of all life on earth, but rather the end of the incorrigibly wicked. Life will continue on this planet after this "end" but in under much improved conditions.



RELATED POSTS

Does 2 PETER 3v7 not say the earth will be burned up with fire ?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 158#927158

Armageddon [Q&A]
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 178#917178


FURTHER READING:

What is the battle of Harmageddon?
https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/q ... rmageddon/





The above represents the JEHOVAH'S WITNESS point of view.