Zeitgeist And The Mark Of The Beast Thing Again

[R. S. Martin]

Okay....my mother just invited me to go see Benny Hinn for her birthday. Fucking Benny Hinn. That white wearing, cult leader Benny Hinn. I really wish I didn't send out that email. I'm getting REALLY irritated right now. I'm on the verge of moving from atheist to antitheist. She is obviously trying to convert me. Maybe if I do go to the Benny Hinn cult thing maybe I get a free pass to try and deconvert my family

 

Great idea!

 

Allow the appropriate amount of time to pass. Then when the time and place are right, share with them your experience and how you realized that this old superstition does not apply to you today.

 

Perhaps something you see in Benny Hinn tonight will strengthen your conviction that you made the right decision.

 

Islington, you say you have not seen the videos that upset Taylor. There is really no excuse for that (unless it's a technical problem like it is for me) since he posted the troubling parts. I think it is decent not to kick a man when he's down.

[ShackledNoMore]

Good luck! I cannot stomach Benny Hinn. He's among the worst of the slimy sleezebag frauds.

[KT45]

I'm supposed to go see Benny Hinn on saturday. I think about it since I'm not sure if I am emotionally able to deal with it. Still scared of slipping back into the cult (even though my reasoning will just make me slip back out). Something bothers me about Benny Hinn. Unlike word of faith teachers like T.D. Jakes or Joyce Meyers he seems to rely on more cult like activities to get followers.

 

Anyway, I'm not sure if any of you watched the video but one part of it was talking about some new world order. I'm looking at this and it looks to be true....

 

America wants to resolve borders between Canada and Mexico. They are trying to do it by 2010 and the congress is not involved. A video about it from CNN can be seen here.

 

Notice that this seems to be common. Africa is also trying to "Unite"

http://www.africa-union.org/

 

And of course the European union

http://europa.eu/

 

Even Asia is trying to "Unite" (can't find a source except for something called a Darfur Force)

 

But is this case for worry? Especially the North American Union. I'm upset that I had to hear about it from a youtube video. Especially with all this talk about allowing illegal aliens to stay in america and become legal without ever going to the proper processes. I fear that want is being discussed today will lead to where the government will open border leading to the north american Union. I'm probably making a slippery slope but it really looks like it is heading down that road. So should there be any alarm?

[Vigile]

Continued globalization is certainly a posibility. Can you back up with scripture that this "new world order" was predicted 2000 years ago? Again, these guys are taking a handful of verses here and there and fitting them to modern day realities. This is only slight of hand stuff.

 

I would say do yourself a favor and read the book that Ruby offered up and avoid reading psuedo news downloaded from the internet for a while. If you can't distance yourself from this stuff emotionally, it is only doing you more harm than good.

[HuaiDan]

On can have a tatt of a barcode...

Was the omitted 'e' intentional? Sly beast.

 

I think that would be a cool one to get on your shaved head, and grow your hair over it. Freaky.

[mwc]

I think I made a post about this very long ago. But then my fear subsided about the whole mark of the beast thing. When I speak about the mark of the beast I mean the idea in the book of Revelations where it talks about not being able to buy or sell.

 

"And he causes all, both great and small, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark" (Rev.13:16-1

...and the Bible tells us that he who receives the "mark" will go to Hell (Rev.14:9-11).

The "mark" that goes something like this?

Exodus 13

9 And this will be for a sign to you on your hand and for a mark on your brow, so that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth: for with a strong hand the Lord took you out of Egypt.

...

16 And this will be for a sign on your hand and for a mark on your brow: for by the strength of his hand the Lord took us out of Egypt.

How very Jewish of the "beast" wouldn't you say? Considering this whole "mark" is in a Jewish text that was "borrowed" by some bad xian author(s) I would say so but in case you're not convinced was YHWH predicting that the people in the Exodus group were going to get tattoos or RFID implants or something? If the "beast" is using the same wording then we can assume a similar method of marking one out. Contextually the verses in Exodus are speaking of the Passover as well as paying the price of the first born (ie. the first born belongs to YHWH and if you don't pay the offering the first born is to be sacrificed to YHWH) so the "mark" would imply that it's not a physical marking out but simply implying that those who are marked belong to YHWH so those who are "marked" by the beast simply belong to him and would not carry a physical sign (your "heart" or "soul" would belong to the "beast" and so you are "marked" as his but read Exodus for yourself and compare).

 

The whole section you mention in chapter 14 is just a xian insertion into the Jewish text. Death and Hades (both personifications of gods) get tossed into the lake of fire with the beast and his prophet...but no xians are involved as promised in the rest of the NT. How could the final book be so wrong if it's just so right about the rest? When the new city plops down out of the sky AFTER judgement is long over there are still non-Jewish/xian governments with their own kings hanging around as well as sinners...they just don't get into the new city since that's reserved only for the Jews (the saints or the "special" people).

Revelation 22

14 A blessing on those whose robes are washed, so that they may have a right to the tree of life, and may go in by the doors into the town. 15 Outside are the dogs, and those who make use of evil powers, those who make themselves unclean, and the takers of life, and those who give worship to images, and everyone whose delight is in what is false.

The story is about the Romans making life crap for Jews and, one day, the roles will be reversed and the Jews will be the mightiest of all and the world will bow to them and their empire. It was supposed to happen a very long time ago, but obviously didn't and the "beast" became emperor and nothing bad happened to him at all. Vespasian and Titus did quite well for themselves considering what the author of Revelation predicted.

 

yes I was scared of this before but then I reached the conclusion that no one would do this and follow this idea, especially in a so called "christian nation".

Seems to me that a "christian nation" is about the only one worried about what is in the book of Revelation.

 

But it was the last part that scared me. Remember the people who made this video aren't christians. This is because they go out of their way to debunk it. But at the last part (Part III: The man behind the curtain) they start talking about a lot of stuff that seems very similar to the mark of the beast stuff in revelations. The whole chip in the hand that won't let you buy or sell. They show how this technology is already in passports. This stuff started to worry me. The last video also talked about other important stuff like an act Pres. Bush signed called the "North American Union Act" which is supposed to destroy the borders or something but the whole chip in hand thing kinda got to me.

 

Why would other atheist start taking this seriously? Did the bible predict correctly? The whole thing has me questioning my current beliefs. I'll investigate it more but I'm still worried.

The bible "predicted" the events that had already happened in the Jewish War with the Romans pretty well (like I said...those things had already happened)...it was the part that came after (where the Jews get their revenge) where it really sucked pretty badly. The xians did an even worse job since they couldn't even get their symbolism straight in the book. A silent 7 headed lamb, that rides a white horse while it conquers everyone, then marries a giant transparent gold city where it then becomes co-ruler? WTF? Whoever did the insertion also forgets to switch from singular to plural when writing so when they shove in "and the lamb" after "the LORD" the person usually leaves it "he" instead of "they" for whatever the LORD and the lamb are doing (but not always). It's stupid.

 

Don't buy into this altered mess of a text. Read it with a critical eye and you'll see right through it. The Jewish author was making a point about the real mess they were in 2000 years ago but the xian additions are just awful.

 

mwc

[Japedo]

"And he causes all, both great and small, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark" (Rev.13:16-1

...and the Bible tells us that he who receives the "mark" will go to Hell (Rev.14:9-11).

The "mark" that goes something like this?

Exodus 13

9 And this will be for a sign to you on your hand and for a mark on your brow, so that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth: for with a strong hand the Lord took you out of Egypt.

...

16 And this will be for a sign on your hand and for a mark on your brow: for by the strength of his hand the Lord took us out of Egypt.

How very Jewish of the "beast" wouldn't you say? Considering this whole "mark" is in a Jewish text that was "borrowed" by some bad xian author(s) I would say so but in case you're not convinced was YHWH predicting that the people in the Exodus group were going to get tattoos or RFID implants or something? If the "beast" is using the same wording then we can assume a similar method of marking one out. Contextually the verses in Exodus are speaking of the Passover as well as paying the price of the first born (ie. the first born belongs to YHWH and if you don't pay the offering the first born is to be sacrificed to YHWH) so the "mark" would imply that it's not a physical marking out but simply implying that those who are marked belong to YHWH so those who are "marked" by the beast simply belong to him and would not carry a physical sign (your "heart" or "soul" would belong to the "beast" and so you are "marked" as his but read Exodus for yourself and compare).

 

 

When I took Jewish class some years ago I was told about this exodous verse excatly. As a sign on your hand and a mark on your brow was talking about the tefillin. It can be read about here. A Sign Upon Your Hand and as Frontlets Between Your Eyes

[mwc]

When I took Jewish class some years ago I was told about this exodous verse excatly. As a sign on your hand and a mark on your brow was talking about the tefillin. It can be read about here. A Sign Upon Your Hand and as Frontlets Between Your Eyes

Thanks for the link. I was not aware that this was yet another thing in the NT that the group(s) over at Qumran took from the OT literally but was among those that thought it started later. I guess I'll get that literal, and very obvious mark, ready then.

 

Here's a pic of the one from the Dead Sea and another link to a modern how to wear them guide.

 

I can just imagine the whole world walking around with these things. Or is it just the "bad" guys and the "good" guys don't wear one to their master? If that's the case then why did the Wiki say that old Jesus might have wore one (in G.Matthew somewhere) and the Qumran guys bother unless they were EVIL?!? Maybe that's the real hidden message in Revelation?

 

mwc

[LosingMyReligion]

Taylork, you do need to pick up that book - and keep reminding yourself that many people are very skilled with wordcraft and can sell you shit wrapped in the prettiest paper imaginable.

 

It's good old fashioned bullshit-artistry, all this tripe about prophecy and such. None of them can explain the illogical and impossible nature of their god nor jsutify their cult one bit. All the problems that exist with Xianity are still there, no matter how convincing their "prophecies" sound.

 

 

ITA with Varokhar. It is all word manipulation. They are smart enough to intertwine every single biblical prophecy with current events. They did it a thousand years ago and they'll still be doing it one hundred years from now.

 

Yes, you definitely had a panic attack. And I'm pretty sure that e-mail gave credence to church and family members that prayer works. heh.

 

Lastly, just really step back and look at your reasons. The only reason you even thought about reconverting is because you're scared of damnation, not some overwhelming love for a God. That is pretty fucked up.

[R. S. Martin]

Can I ever identify with your revulsion of Benny Hinn!?!?!? I saw him ONCE on tv and I can't ever get the scene out of my head. If it's only an invitation can you decline?

 

About "new world order"....I'm going to run with that for a bit. The NT was written when? About two thousand years ago, give or take a few centuries.

 

Old World Order

 

Romans are in charge. Irrevokably. Texes. Military. Irresistable. All resistence is irrefutably deleted. (I love that word; it's not just revoked or defeated--its very existence ceases.) THERE IS NO GOING BACK.

 

Huh??? Seven centuries later. Where are the Romans? Where are their impenetrable fortresses? Their invincible legions? All that's left of them are a few old roads that will remain until the New World Order.

 

1850

 

Steam power has been invented. Mass production is on. Industrial revolution. Factories throughout the civilized--and uncivilized--world. Feeding the pockets of the wealthy few. Capitalism. In all its glory. In all its power. Irrevokable.

 

A continuation of the Roman Order? Maybe. Maybe not. The world is moving beyond horse power and steam power. Electricity is on the horizon. The Romans had nothing more sophisticated than horse power and water power.

 

1950

 

In the dead of the night, the world is made bright as high noon by a flick of a switch. The human voice can circle the earth in seconds. In another decade or so man will have walked on the moon. WHAT???

 

Where's god? How can god allow man to walk on the moon???

 

*Shrug* I dunno. Maybe god doesn't care? Maybe god doesn't exist?

 

So you get the drift. The Roman Empire crumbled. Europe reverted to the Dark Ages of superstition and bandit law. Down to the bare basics of the human condition. Gone were the legions. Gone were the Roman tyrants. The wisdom and wealth of China, Africa, and Asia were cut off. After a thousand years of civilization, that was in and of itself a new world order in the West.

 

Guess what. We have risen out of the ruins of medieval Europe. Empires rise and fall. So do civilizations. I think no civilization shows this more clearly than Chinese civilization. How many times has it risen and fallen in recorded human history? I dunno. It seems to be on the upswing right now I guess.

 

2050

 

Wait a bit! This is only 2007. If we look at the way the world has changed from 1850 to 1900, if we look at the vast technological changes from 1990 to the present day.......what is there to guide our thought on what things will be like by 2050?

 

The all-powerful, all-knowing credit card is not working. Credit cards get stolen, lost, over-drawn. Databases crash. George Orwell's world (predicted several decades ago) has not materialized, yet we have progressed far beyond the possibilities of his day.

 

Taylor, here is my conclusion, based on these observations. Human beings are good at heart. There are a few evil ones among them, perhaps, depending on how you define evil. Tragedies occur. Natural dissasters. Crime. Horrors of the worst kind. But the biggest evidence I have of common human feeling throughout our species is one simple little fact:

 

The destruction of the planet has been within the power of human beings for several decades and NO ONE HAS SET IT OFF.

 

I think the reason for this is that whoever sets it off commits suicide at the same time. Very few people want to die badly enough that they will take the rest of humanity with them. I don't think Hitler would have done it if he could have. Nor Stalin. Or any of the other Great Enemies of Humanity.

 

The fundy mindset is sinister to the extreme. That it has set off a panic attack is not surprising. That is what it's supposed to do. Josh McDowell was asked about the ethics of scaring people. He replied that better scare them into heaven than that they don't get in.

 

HUH????

 

God does not force anybody. So I guess McDowell et al had it wrong.

 

Jesus predicted the end of the world and it didn't happen. In 33 A.D. people had been predicting the end of the world for centuries. By now they have been doing it for millennia. Hasn't happened yet. Why do we think it ever will?

 

How's this for a clincher from wikipedia:

 

Ursula Southeil (c. 1488 - 1561) (possibly Ursula Sonthiel), better known as Mother Shipton, was an English soothsayer and prophetess who is said to have made dozens of unusually accurate predictions, including the Great Plague of London, the Spanish Armada, and the Great Fire of London.

 

The most famous example of Mother Shipton's prophecies apparently foretells many aspects common to modern civilization and predicts the end of the world in 1881; however, it is now known to be a 19th century forgery:

 

Carriages without horses shall go,

And accidents fill the world with woe.

Around the world thoughts shall fly

In the twinkling of an eye.

The world upside down shall be

And gold be found at the root of a tree.T

hrough hills man shall ride,

And no horse be at his side.

Under water men shall walk,

Shall ride, shall sleep, shall talk.

In the air men shall be seen,

In white, in black, in green;

Iron in the water shall float,

As easily as a wooden boat.

Gold shall be found and shown

In a land that's now not known.

Fire and water shall wonders do,

England shall at last admit a foe.

The world to an end shall come,

In eighteen hundred and eighty one.

 

It is a subject of debate that Mother Shipton was largely a myth, and that many of her prophecies were composed by others after her death, and after the events they 'predicted'. Her prophecies were apparently recorded in a series of diaries but the first published book of her work did not appear until 1641 and the most noted work, by Richard Head, came out in 1684. Head later admitted to inventing almost all Shipton's biographical details.

 

The details of her life as recorded by Head state that she was born in Knaresborough, Yorkshire, and was reputedly hideously ugly - supposedly because she was fathered by the Devil. She married Toby Shipton, a local carpenter, near York in 1512 and is said to have told fortunes and made predictions throughout her life.

 

**********************

That's the poem I talked about in an earlier post yesterday. Euthypho's Thorn from this forum found it for me.

So I will bring this rambling post to an end. I can't think past my migraine to evaluate how good quality it is.

[R. S. Martin]

I just came across this quote from Marlene Winell's Leaving the Fold and thought it might be appropriate:

 

Accompanying grief are fear and anxiety. When you have lost your place in what was once a safe cocoon, your status as a protected child of God and your part in the cosmic scheme, it is natural to feel adrift. At first, this feeling of total disconnectedness can be very frightening. The world can seem like an ominous place in which you have no defenses. Old fears of hell and Armageddon can resurface, even after you have rejected them intellectually. Your task in this area will be to build trust within yourself and the skills needed to deal with the world (page 21, emphasis added).

[Cracked]

Lots of the video made sense to me. I don't think the people that made the video were trying to use scripture to back their points.

 

I'm not sure how many of you actually watched the video but it does have many good points. I don't think it's about the end of the world or nothing like that, only about control which seems to be what the governments have been getting more of all the time.

 

I know most here are skeptics. If you have not watched the video then please do yourself a favor. Who knows, you may learn something.

 

 

"Zeitgeist - The Movie, 2007"

 

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

[Grandpa Harley]

Conspiracies are pretty much as lazy thinking being Religious. They're comforting insofar as at least someone has control...

[Cracked]

Conspiracies are pretty much as lazy thinking being Religious. They're comforting insofar as at least someone has control...

I find most have some truth. Without that they would be shot down pretty fast. But it can be like reading a good book, stimulating the mind. It's up to you to decide what is truth and what is B.S..

[Grandpa Harley]

Conspiracies are pretty much as lazy thinking being Religious. They're comforting insofar as at least someone has control...

I find most have some truth. Without that they would be shot down pretty fast. But it can be like reading a good book, stimulating the mind. It's up to you to decide what is truth and what is B.S..

You mean like religion has been shot down in flames and is but a distant memory?

[Cracked]

Conspiracies are pretty much as lazy thinking being Religious. They're comforting insofar as at least someone has control...

I find most have some truth. Without that they would be shot down pretty fast. But it can be like reading a good book, stimulating the mind. It's up to you to decide what is truth and what is B.S..

You mean like religion has been shot down in flames and is but a distant memory?

Yeah, something like that. But some people just keep choosing to live in their own little world. I guess some people have a harder time than others figuring out what the truth is.

 

I still found parts of the above video interesting

[Grandpa Harley]

I've spent too long reading and watching that stuff to be overly impressed with a new one... The ZOG, the Illuminati, the NWO, the Masons, the Church of Rome, the Skull and Bones Club, the 4-H club, the Reptiloids from Draco, the Utltraterrestrials, the denizen of Aghartha and the Alphabet Soup 'Intelligence' organisations. I've even encountered them in various unlikely juxtapositions. It's god to be original to even make me want to waste more than 10 minutes of my life on them any more...

[Cracked]

I've spent too long reading and watching that stuff to be overly impressed with a new one... The ZOG, the Illuminati, the NWO, the Masons, the Church of Rome, the Skull and Bones Club, the 4-H club, the Reptiloids from Draco, the Utltraterrestrials, the denizen of Aghartha and the Alphabet Soup 'Intelligence' organisations. I've even encountered them in various unlikely juxtapositions. It's god to be original to even make me want to waste more than 10 minutes of my life on them any more...

I need some mysteries in life, or life becomes drab and bland. If a person was to actually learn and know everything that can be known, what else can said person do? Almost like a gynecologist going home every night to be with his wife. It would just be another vagina

[R. S. Martin]

I need some mysteries in life, or life becomes drab and bland.

 

Thanks for explaining that because it has never made sense to me when people seem to get such satisfaction from thinking of God as mystery. In my mind, mysteries exist to be solved.

 

If a person was to actually learn and know everything that can be known, what else can said person do?

 

That is a really odd statement to make, though I've heard it many times over. It's just plain ridiculous. Why? No single human brain can ever learn all there is to know. This guarantees that there will always be something for us to learn no matter how much we know. Learning is one of life's greatest joys. I suspect that is what you like about mysteries--they allow you to learn. I have yet to find a person who truly loves the world to be clouded over with mysterious somethings that they don't understand. Mostly, that statement is made by people when I ask them questions about religion that they can't explain but believe all the same. It's like it's a way to save face. And it's just plain stupid. None of us knows it all. The quickest way to learn is to be open about the things we want to learn.

 

Almost like a gynecologist going home every night to be with his wife. It would just be another vagina

 

This, too, seems really odd. If you see your wife as nothing more than a few body parts I can see why you would say it, but there is something seriously wrong if you see her that way only. Do you know any gynecologist who has ever said this sort of thing? It's not just another vagina; this is a person with whom he is allowed to feel his own sexual arrousal; this is HIS woman. Not to mention friend and companion (hopefully).

[Cracked]

Edit- Have a nice day Ruby.