Something I read in the bible today
 

"Woe to you, O land, when your king is a child, and your princes feast in the morning." Eccl. 10.16

Pretty troubling, I must say.

Re: Something I read in the bible today
 

Huh? I'm not trying to pick a fight or be offensive, I'm Christian, but I think that's silly. Please explain further and change my mind.

dubya is the kid and the power playas are gett'n fat early. Then again, I saw Elvis in my green tea leaves today. It looked like he needed to take a ***** but then again it could have been gas.

Couldn't this apply to lots of different times through history? Couldn't it have applied to Kennedy even?

Why think we are special. Every generation thinks that theirs is the worst and things are coming to an end, and then we surprise our selves be getting better and worse at the same time.

Seems to me that if you're concerned with this type of thing that you're best bet is to worry about yourself and your loved ones to make sure that you are "prepared". Trying to predict or interpret the signs of the end of the world is a loosing battle.

Yep, things suck all around in some ways. Or you could choose to see the good, it's out there. Things have always seemed to suck if you go looking for the negative.

I always like it when people try to make useful exegetical analysis based on a single verse pulled out of context. If you read the whole chapter, it's a series of proverbs, not prophesy. Solomon wasn't referring prophetically to the Bush White House (though some may believe that he was referring to a similar one from Israel's history). Further, he goes on to say "Do not revile the king even in your thoughts..." (10:20).

Cheers,

Dan

This is why I am not christian.

A book written by men and revised hundreds of times over the centuries. Just another book of diluted past events that has turned into a good "story". Not magical, fortelling, or even factual. Just a book.

Just my small minded 2 cents. No offense intended.

I'm with you Terry. God hasn't said a word that I know of. Certainly not lately. If he speaks through mere mortal men, then it is second hand info and subject to interpretation. Most wars that I can recall are based on religious beliefs or disbeliefs and prejudices. If he truely exists, I'm sure he is pi$$ed about all the people that have died supposedly in his name and honor. There has yet to be a great ruler that has followed his "commandments". Let me know when any of you get a memo from Him. Until then my spirituality is within. I don't need a religious organization to belong to and manipulate my life. In my mind the guy who had the right idea was Budda. All life is sacred. Ok ..fire suit is on.

I went to a catholic college. We had manditory religion classes. One of those classes was called the history of the papacy. Here is the bottom line (summarizing 2000 years of history): The pope didn't originally have any secular power and didn't seek any. The situation sort happend because he stepped into a power vacum created by the roman leaders. Over time having secular power made the papacy corrupt, decadent and inmoral. It hit bottom around the time of Leo X who declared "as God has seen to give us the Papacy, let us enjoy it". When the pope was finally striped of secular power, we started viewing the Papacy with much more moral athority.

Religious people in politcs don't make politics better, they make religion worse.

Well said. How about that Spanish inquisition?

According to Mul, it was the Muslims that started it!

See there you go...mans prejudices. Not Gods.

Terry, I'm not trying to pick a fight or anything here. I respect your point of view on this because I held it once as well. How can such an old book, with countless un-annotated changes made down through the centuries, possibly still be true to the original texts? Doesn't every translator have the opportunity to put his own spin on it? You know, leave out the parts he doesn't like, and maybe add a few more? And how about those original texts - written thousands of years ago, in an obviously less advanced civilization with nowhere near the knowledge we possess today? Folks were pretty superstitious and impressionable back then, after all.

I used to think that way until I decided to do two things: Study the Bible itself, and just as importantly, how it got to us. Very interesting stuff, even putting aside any religious convictions you may or may not have. If it interests you in the least, and you ever have the time to do it, take a look at this. It might change your mind.

So who wrote the Bible? Some books, the various letters to congregations in the New Testement, are pretty easy. The older ones are anyone's guess. It really doesn't matter so much as what KIND of people wrote it. Unlike today, the "Three R's" or reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, were the sole province of the upper classes. In many early societies, the scholars, specifically. The best and the brightest the society had to offer were generally the only ones that were even exposed to, much less trained in, these skills. In other words, these were no impressionable dummies writing this stuff. They did, however, see and hear things that impressed them enough to write them down. Not that they knew at the time, or ever intended for their works to be assembled into a "Bible". They had no idea; that happened up to several thousand years after some of this stuff was written. These people had no way of knowing each other; most lived hundreds if not thousands of years appart. Many were unaware of preceding writings, yet recorded, completely independently, pretty much the same thing.

So how did it all get assembled into the Bible and passed down to us? This is another amazing story unto itself. Suffice to say here, and I know folks will chime in to refute this, it has been the most scrutinized text in the history of mankind. The books from which it has been compiled have been protected, even hidden, by believers down through the ages. Early copies were very much black market, under the official radar contriband. No evil governments, kings, or whatever changing it for political motives or anything like that. By the time the books were compiled into the Bible, they were widely enough disseminated among enough people that for any one person, or group, to try to change parts of it would have fallen under the scrutiny of everyone else. Modern scholars are continually amazed at the accuracy of description of geological sites contained in the Bible and found today, as well as its fidelity to some very old texts that are found today.

Anyway, I've rambled enough. It's worth looking into before dismissing it as some old book, written by unsophisticated men thousands of years ago and revised by unscrupulous men along the way. It's anything but. It actually stands as somewhat of a marvel that it has survived so intact for so long. Nothing much else has.

How about the Koran? The Torah?

Why is this even noteworthy? We're amazed that an ancient book accurately describes ancient geological sites?

Like a guy I know said once, the movie "Escape from New York" accurately describes locations and streets in New York City, but that doesn't mean that Snake Pliskin is our Saviour.

Mike

I think your drawing to many conclusions. I think the oldest bible in existence was created in 347 AD. But it spoke of happenings hundreds of years before that. So none of this info was changed thru story telling? You can't tell ten people something without it being misconstrude. Imagine what centuries will do.

How many different religions have been created since 347 AD? Lutheran, Prodestant, Morman, etc. These sects all have different books reloving around their own belief system.

What if you picked the wrong religion? Maybe only Mormons only go to heaven or better yet Muslims (By the way the oldest known religion).

I think God is the world most sucessful imaginary friend. Revered, blamed, cursed, thanked, hated and loved. If there was only 1 person in the world that said he believed in God we would lock him up in the nut house, but becasue there are millions God is defiently real. Not logical enough for me.

BTW: I'm not trying to belittle you or your beliefs. I just have a different point of view. Maybe right, maybe wrong.

As a side note, I had this conversation with my grandfather a presbiterian minister. He said that worst case scenerio is his belief in god would be a waste of time. But mine could mean I end up in hell.

I retorted, your worst case scenerio that your the most precious thing given to a life, time. Mine would be I used that time wisely.

With a puzzled look he ended the conversation with "touche."

what's the definition of "intact"?

Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it."

The Koran is much newer, and written all by one man. It draws heavily on Old Testement stories, but diverges at the Isaac/Ishmael junction. I don't know how old the Torah is, nor do I know much about it. I believe it also contains Old Testement stories, but I'm not sure.

Lutheranism is a form of Protestentism; they are not "seperate religions". They, along with Mormanism and others, fall under the broader umbrella of Christianity. Islam is a different religion; it does not recognize Christ. The distinctions between religions are very clear, as are the distinctions between denominations within those religions. Your comments point to a missunderstanding of the differences, which points to a greater missunderstanding of religion as a whole. It kind of looks from here like you have formed your opinions concerning "religion" somewhat in a vacuum, without understanding it in the least. Are you comfortable forming opinions about other matters prior to coming to an understanding of them? Most of us are not, and I would be surprised if you were in other areas.

Mike, you missed my point. People question the authenticity of books in the Bible. They claim some books were written long after they claim to have been; at times long after the places in which the stories allegedly took place are gone. As in ruins. They claim the places were made up, and the stories were made up. The fact that many of these "made up" places have been found, and found to match Biblical descriptions, is significant. Even the allegations that the author was describing a known, verified place from the distant past after the fact have come into question when the accuracy of the detailed descriptions is revealed. In other words, the description could not have been penned by some one that was not actually there.

They are also finding stories carved into ancient palace walls and the like, sort of like Egyptian hieroglyphics. Most ancient kings were very happy to record their exploits and victories on their palace walls. They have found many of these today and have accurately dated them. They have found many that were apparently recorded by kings mentioned in Old Testement stories. The time frame is correct, and most interesting of all, the stories match those in the Bible.

That's the point I was trying to make, Mike. Modern archeological evidence supports many of the stories in the Bible. Stories that were supposedly made up about places that were supposedly made up. I find that very interesting.