Update XVIII: 15 Miles From Lunch

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

At the end of the 1,000 years, Satan will be loosed to wreak havoc for a season

Why?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

At the end of the 1,000 years, Satan will be loosed to wreak havoc for a season

Why?

Read the book of Revelation.

I have, multiple times. Don't insult my intelligence.

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If it doesn't tell you why in the Book of Revelation, then the answer to his question "Why?" is not in the Book of Revelation...

But, he was asking me why and it's a question I cannot answer.  The best answer you're going to get is in the book of Revelation.

God doesn't tell us the why a lot of times, He just says "trust me".  He's never failed anyone, yet, so there's no reason not to trust Him, but he doesn't tell us why very often.

Even if I believed in the Rapture or premillennialism, believe it or not, sometimes when a question isn't directly answered in the Bible, it's an invitation to further theological speculation, not throwing up your hands and giving up.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

not throwing up your hands and giving up.

Why would you expect him to treat the Bible differently than does anything else?

...true.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Bushie, you seem to have fallen for a common misconception. Revelation is the final book of the Christian New Testament, heavily steeped in obscure imagery. It was written by an unknown author during the first century CE.

You seem to be referring to events described in the best-selling apocalyptic thriller Left Behind, co-written by the American evangelical Chistian minister Tim LaHaye in the mid-90s and loosely inspired by imagery described in Revelation. It was made into a direct-to-video movie starring Kirk Cameron in 2000.

Revelation was written by the Apostle John, the same John that was a disciple of Jesus.

I have never read nor seen Left Behind, so this is all personal belief and study from what I read in Revelation.  Although, I do look at www.endtime.com and get a lot of guidance from them.  They are a Pentecostal organization based in Plano, Texas that is all about the end time.  I do not take them as knowing exactly what will happen, but a general guideline of what to expect.  They are the best interpretation of Revelation that I have seen in a long time.

Isn't the i-word dirty?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Bushie, do you conceptually separate Advent from Christmas in any way?

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Yes. I seriously doubt Bushie has a special disease that makes the parameters of his headaches different than anyone else. He may not even have his mother's gene. He may have his fathers. It's hard to tell because he eats a diet that would give anybody a headache.

Until he starts drinking near a gallon water a day, eating spinach, mushrooms, avocados with every meal, and still has a headache, then he has a special disease. Otherwise, he's just being unhealthy.

Most health and scientific experts would probably agree not everybody reacts to the same things the exact same way.  It's part of what makes us unique individuals.  Caffeine may be a stimulant for some and a depressant for others.  Caffeine may cause headaches for some, and cure headaches for others.  God did not create everybody the exact same.  He created everybody different.  Nobody is exactly alike, not even identical, biological twins.  That's why the medical and pharmaceutical industries have created so many different medications to treat the same condition.  Not everybody responds to the exact same stimuli the exact same way.  I'm not saying I'm a special case, I'm just saying I am a unique individual.

...so you're saying you're a special case.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Bushie's Marian theology is terrible and disturbing.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Bushie's Marian theology is terrible and disturbing.

How can anyone's theology be "disturbing" as long as it's not violent or anything? There is literally nothing wrong with any opinion over whether or not someone who lived 2000 years ago "sinned" or not.

It's disturbing not because it's wrong on the Immaculate Conception, although it is, but because it reduces Mary to a passive vessel with no real role or significance of her own. The Mother of God is not one of the axlotl tanks from Dune.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Bushie's Marian theology is terrible and disturbing.

How can anyone's theology be "disturbing" as long as it's not violent or anything? There is literally nothing wrong with any opinion over whether or not someone who lived 2000 years ago "sinned" or not.

It's disturbing not because it's wrong on the Immaculate Conception, although it is, but because it reduces Mary to a passive vessel with no real role or significance of her own. The Mother of God is not one of the axlotl tanks from Dune.

But what exactly would make that "disturbing"?  I guess you can consider it potentially misogynistic?

Which I find disturbing.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Bushie's Marian theology is terrible and disturbing.

How can anyone's theology be "disturbing" as long as it's not violent or anything? There is literally nothing wrong with any opinion over whether or not someone who lived 2000 years ago "sinned" or not.

It's disturbing not because it's wrong on the Immaculate Conception, although it is, but because it reduces Mary to a passive vessel with no real role or significance of her own. The Mother of God is not one of the axlotl tanks from Dune.

But what exactly would make that "disturbing"?  I guess you can consider it potentially misogynistic?

Which I find disturbing.

Do you think if your lord and savior was instead shoved up a teenage boy's bum bum and then became an immaculate butt baby that Bushie would view this person, let's call him Mark, with more reverance?  

That's, uh, too counterfactual for me to really be able to cogently answer yes, but the fact that I can't give in all honesty a firm no either troubles me.

What about religion isn't misogynistic? The whole ball of wax is about a small number of men (specifically) controlling a population.

In my church women are total equals in all things including being pastors and leadership. And I would never join a church where this was not the case.

What about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost? Can they be women also?

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I'm home from a productive day at work.  Tonight, instead of watching sports, I am going to watch a couple Christmas movies - The Muppet Christmas Carol and Rudolph.

At least when you were watching porn, that was age appropriate. I think it's the only adult thing you've done in all these years of Update.

To be honest, I'd rather approach most everything about Christmas as a child.  All except for the presents.  Approaching Christmas as a child secures the joy and excitement as December 25 approaches.  I love approaching the celebration of the birth of my Savior Jesus Christ as a child.  In fact, Jesus commands us in the Gospels that we cannot enter the kingdom of God except with the heart and mind of a little child.  The reason is children are generally more trusting and less tainted by the world than adults.  That's why I embrace the child-like comparisons of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.

Hmmm, so Jesus wants us with the critical reasoning and blind-adherence of a child? That makes the whole thing make so much more sense.

There are certainly some things, indeed most things that we are to be adults about.  The Apostle Paul says that in 1 Corinthians 13:11 - "When I was a child, I spake like a child, I understood like a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things."  This is for everything except our faith in Jesus Christ.  We are to approach faith in Jesus as a child approaches his daddy.  It is sometimes a delicate balance.  I treat Christmas as part of my faith, so that's why I approach it as a child.

You treat Christmas as part of your consumption, Bushie, which you mistake for genuine faith. You consume religion as a product.

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In absolute fairness to Bushie, this sort of quibbling about the probable date of birth of the 'Historical Jesus' as an attempt to discredit the observance of the Feast of the Nativity, which much like the Hana-matsuri is fixed when it is by tradition and symbolic import, is absolutely ridiculous and petty hair-splitting properly of no real relevance whatsoever to the life of the Church.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

In absolute fairness to Bushie, this sort of quibbling about the probable date of birth of the 'Historical Jesus' as an attempt to discredit the observance of the Feast of the Nativity, which much like the Hana-matsuri is fixed when it is by tradition and symbolic import, is absolutely ridiculous and petty hair-splitting properly of no real relevance whatsoever to the life of the Church.

The more important of the two points - as I thought was emphasized - is Bushie's own admission that he engages in pagan worship for half of the year to indulge his sense of child-like wonderment, which is merely a small glimpse into his greater belief that he is justified to define and do anything he likes or agrees with as being "good" or "appropriate". He reconciles his hedonism and idolatry with his faith, morbidly twists the two former together with the latter based on his own individual perspective, and tries to sell that to others as if it's some sort of universal truth.

No real argument there. (I don't think the traditional observation of Christmas is necessarily pagan but that's because I'm Anglo-Catholic; in the context of a theology as snake-belly Low as Bushie's it's obviously much less excusable.) See my first post on this page. The quibbling over the date of Christmas thing is just a pet peeve of mine.

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Adam and Polnut. are you seriously attacking my love of Christmas and my faith at Christmastime?

I'm trying to reconcile how you can be very firm about the "historical" truth of Mary, which is mentioned nowhere in the Bible (though is probably closer to the truth than the traditional depictions of her), yet you reject other proven or likely histories, ie: "Christmas" is born of a pagan celebration, Christmas imagery is totally pagan and Jesus, according to historians who study the available evidence, was probably born in the summer or early fall.

Simple. He adheres to a theology that's more comfortable with having claymation reindeer near the Godhead than women.

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We have plenty good reason. Your 'faith' is a vapid husk and it's making your life even worse.

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Don't do that to my posts, memphis.

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Nathan is attacking my Southern Baptist beliefs which are nothing different than what I believe.

I'm not sure what you're saying, unless this is meant to be a tautology.

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Popularity does not equal soundness.

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They're not outside the mainstream, certainly, and I never claimed they were.

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Which is a good start, but not really the end of the matter.

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You have to rely on God to strengthen and fortify you, not to do everything for you while you spin your wheels in the hopes that it will somehow turn out all right.

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That's some pretty damn expedient-ass means he's got there if so.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm planning to watch John Huston's excellent and intensely personal film adaptation of The Dead at some point during the Christmas season, by the way.