Interpreting the Bible
If you never thought there was something seriously wrong with the Holy Bible, maybe you should see what devout Bible teachers have to say about it and its foretelling of prophecy:
The way to identify the beast is by counting. In ancient times, letters of the alphabet served as numbers. The first nine letters stood for the numbers one through nine, and the next nine for the numbers ten through ninety, and so on. In Greek, the current alphabet did not have enough letters, so certain obsolete letters and signs supplemented the system. Every name yielded a number.
However, the identity of the person represented by the number 666 should not be a subject of speculation until that person arrives on the earthly scene. The person to whom 666 applies must have been future to apostle John’s time, because John clearly meant the number to be recognizable to someone. If it was not discernible to his generation, the generation to whom it will be discernible must have lain in the future. If 666 is the number of a future individual, attempts to identify past entities through the number are futile.
This is just sad. There is an entire Bible Prophecy class if you are so inclined. How about judging the Bible in its historical context versus establishing basic human rights for all:
Often Bible verses that seem unfair or discriminatory to us need to be viewed within their historical or cultural context. For instance the Bible does not condemn slavery and in fact the Bible actually codifies the rules for keeping slaves. Today we find slavery abhorrent and for some of us the idea that the Bible codifies how slaves are to be treated is very upsetting. But in its historic and cultural context that codification of how slaves are to be treated was in fact a hard thing for people of that time to live up to. In other words, that codification made the life for the slave in Israel better than the slaves life would be someplace else.
Jesus H. Christ in a hand basket… slavery has always been abhorrent. You think that GOD – the creator of the universe, good, evil, etc. would have clued humanity in a couple of millenia ago if it slavery was bad, right? This alone should invalidate the Bible for any right-minded person. And then there is Gordon Atkinson who successfully made it out of the muck, but then slid back:
I looked in the restroom mirror and said, “I do not believe in God.” I knew this was the truth and felt the need to say it out loud. I was on the other side now. I was an unbeliever. It was like waking up in Tokyo and noticing to your great surprise that you’ve become Japanese. You weren’t raised in Japan, and you have no idea how to use chopsticks. What the hell are you gonna do with yourself? [Huh?]
It wasn’t the experience with Jenny [a woman that died of breast cancer that could not be saved with prayer] that caused my break with God. It was the kids in Mexico, my difficulty in believing parts of the bible, the phony Christians I met along the way, and the hundreds of prayers that seemed unanswered. Jenny was just the last ping of a hammer that had been working on my foundation for a long time.
It breaks my heart. Here is a man that “works his ass off” [his words] helping people and doing good works, and then he gives the credit to God. What the hell?! Dude… there are plenty of people doing good in the world that are not beholden to mythology. I wish you would reconvert to your birth state (non-believer, pre-brainwashing) and join us without the distraction of God looking over your shoulder. I think meditation (aka prayer) is wonderful, but don’t pretend someone is listening.
And the people replied…