 Friends   |  Ztalk: If something IS true, then logic dictates that it will LOOK true, upon a thorough and lengthy examination. This is the case for the Bible. To start, the way the Bible was written, and assembled as disjointed writings, accross 1000's of years, then consistently and accurately preserved as-written, especially through the turbulent and violent times that it is 'from', then assembled into a cohesive book that nearly totally affirms itself from the beginning to the end***, which many prominent literary scholars call "a literary masterpiece" (they are not saying it tells the truth, if you are slow) or words to that effect, this is unnatural. There is not another known analogy to the Bible, in literature. It is unnatural. Like very-obviously unnatural. The probability of the Bible existing by familiar and natural mechanisms, is near zero. ***I said "nearly" because it's a complex collection of books, and people can find statements that contradict, or are isolated, at first glance, when they are missing information. It takes some searching to find those incongruences. To address physical evidence: What shows up, to support the Bible, which has been happening since Jesus died and critics boomed in a natural threat-response to Christianity (they want it to be gone), it is sometimes 'lucky' and often just unnatural and improbable that such evidence should surface, and yet it does. The Bible claims over and over again that it tells the truth. When competent people test claims in the Bible, and see if they find in the world, what should be there if the Bible happened to be true, then the answer is yes, again and again, accross all the scientific disciplines. You kind of have to be stupid, badly educated or not-at-all, or ridiculously stubborn, to be able to just dismiss the authority that the Bible wields. It's crazy and irrational to do that. It goes against reasoning. So like the opposite of what you thought the situation was. It's like nowadays people think that one chooses what to believe and then one manifests their own reality. Crazy shit. Tell that to the laws of physics. The truth is independent of what you like and want. Ztalk: The Bible is a historically and scientifically reliable book. When people try to show that it is not, if they are good at doing their job, and being honest, they just find that it is. Mostly it is the general-uneducated-public that has an easy time mocking the claims in the Bible (doing what they are told to do) because you need to be unaware of the weight the Bible has in physical evidence, to feel free to mock it.   Ztalk: Isaiah 6 (NIV) He said, “Go and tell this people: Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” Then I said, “For how long, Lord?” And he answered: "Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged." Ztalk: Mark 4 (NIV translation) When [Jesus] was alone, the [disciples] and the others around him asked him [why he did not give straightforward answers — he spoke in an encoded way]. [Jesus] told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables [veiled], so that, ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’ *Jesus quoted Isaiah 6: 9 to 10 Ztalk: This is Simon Peter writing, so this is what he understood from spending 3 years with Jesus. 2 Peter 3 (NIV translation) By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.  Ztalk: Tell me if you think that sounds like 1) A prophet 2) A lunatic man Please someone answer *option 2*. I'm waiting for you. That doesn't sound like a prophet. Ztalk: John 14 (NIV Translation) If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever — the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. ... Then Judas (not Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?” Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. Ztalk: God also has a covenant with the creature called "The Enemy/Rebel" * also "The Prince of The Air", and various other names I don't know, I expect. That covenant includes permission to seduce you, depending on your free will, into rebellion against natural law. *Is that Lucifer (The most beautiful in God's kingdom)? Some smart people think so. That covenant is approaching its expiry date. Obviously its going to get hectic when time is running out. Ztalk: If anyone wonders how Israel was re-established at the end of WWII, against odds, and has survived unnaturally, surrounded by much superior enemies since then: --- On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi[e] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates — the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.” --- If you look into this and find any conditions for this covenant, let me know. I know you won't find any conditions, because it is an unconditional* covenant. God has to keep his own law. The evil commited by the powers in Israel cannot break this covenant. Killing God who became a man (the Logos) did not break that covenant. *There were conditions required of Abram to get to this point, but once at this point, the covenant has no conditions. It simply will be what it states (at that point in time), and at this point in time, we know the covenant has been upheld for thousands of years. This time that Israel is established, they will stay until the end (another prediction). That's how reliable God is. When a prediction seems impossible, you just need to get over the failure of your imagination. Maybe one day you will get wise enough to see a consistent pattern of the validation of predictions made in the Bible. Ztalk: But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God -- having a form of godliness but denying its power. |
Playlist | 4-part
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCq1GmD04Y59kdTrnBCTcIBjtSRwl0bHg