End times concerns

[2022grad]

I’ve been de converting from Christianity lately and everything is kind of worrying me because I see people everywhere are screaming that we’re living through revelations and all that and it’s kind of worrying me

[midniterider]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

 

This may or may not be helpful. 

[TABA]

Hi @2022grad and welcome to Ex-Christian!

 

Well, 2020 has not been the most fun year so far but it’s nothing remarkable when you look back even a little bit.  Times like 1968, World War 2, World War 1, the American Civil War, the Black Death etc etc all must have seemed like the End Times.  Christians have been predicting an imminent end of the world for as long as there have been Christians.  Jesus himself seemed to think he would return very soon after his death to set up God’s kingdom.  It didn’t happen so later writings gradually changed the story to put it off in the never-never.  Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about it. 
 

Looking forward to hearing more about you and your deconversion experience!

 

TABA

[Hierophant]

Welcome to Ex-C, glad to see you here. I know I was glad to stumble upon this site after becoming absolutely frustrated with Christianity and I wanted to hear something other than superficial, dogmatic apologetics.

 

As @TABA stated, every generation of Christians has been claiming the end of the world since the movement started. And I would not worry about the Book of Revelation, I am not going to go off the deep end on it, but nobody actually knows who wrote it. It barely made it into the canon and significant church fathers in history did not think much of it. Martin Luther thought it should be thrown in the river and made it an appendix (essentially it was edifying, but not divinely inspired or something along those lines) in his own canon.

 

Look at how many people thought we would experience the end times in just recent history, David Koresh, Harold Camping, the great disappointment in 1844. This same rhetoric has been stated so many times before it has become the boy crying wolf, though I never suspect a real wolf will eventually show up.

[MOHO]

Not only have xitans, and other religions/superstitions been predicting end-times and the like for centuries but the xtians in my life actually glow when they say we're there. This is because it reaffirms there superstitions.

 

There may be just a skosh of confirmation bias going on there.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

They were doing the same thing when I was your age; and the only thing that happened was a meteor killed my pet dinosaur. 

[Steviejay]

5 hours ago, 2022grad said:

I’ve been de converting from Christianity lately and everything is kind of worrying me because I see people everywhere are screaming that we’re living through revelations and all that and it’s kind of worrying me

 

Spanish flu 50-100 million dead,  WW1, WW2.  Covid 19 has got a long way to go yet.

 

Try reading the book of Daniel and Revelation, you can interpret them any way you want to fit the times. That's what xtians do, they fit what it says in these books to a present day scenario, then every so often they have to change their view on the anti christ and his kingdom....it used to be Europe, bet it doesn't fit anymore. Wars, rumours of wars, kingdom against kingdom, famine, earthquakes, droughts.....not prediction rocket science when they've happened throughout history........and what about this...there will be many christs....well that hasn't happened.

 

In the last day people will move to and fro and knowledge will greatly increase....My Auntie flo could predict that if she was asked to guess what the world would be like in 5000 years time. 

[LogicalFallacy]

5 hours ago, 2022grad said:

I’ve been de converting from Christianity lately and everything is kind of worrying me because I see people everywhere are screaming that we’re living through revelations and all that and it’s kind of worrying me

 

Hi 2022grad

 

Welcome to Ex-C

 

The short answer is people have been predicting the end of the world since the ancients. Humanity seems to have this hang up with things ending. Not satisfied with the idea that we die after a few decades of living they also want to state that the world will be destroyed and be remade and we will live happily ever after. It's simply a religious fairy tale.

 

In my Christian life I personally went through God coming around 1996, then again at 2000, then again with the various blood moon events (Because in the Bible Joel says the moon will turn to blood before the coming of the lord.) Apparently they didn't know about atmospheric refraction back then.  And Churches have been screaming on about revelations for... well since it was written really. 

 

So yeah, people say all sorts of things. Occasionally someone manages to predict something fairly accurate - but when millions of people are making predictions we expect some to stick don't we? Statistically this should be the case.

 

I really wouldn't worry about religious claptrap. Focus on things that actually can affect you.

 

[Derek]

Hi and welcome, 2022grad...the book of Revelations was reportedly written by a guy in exile on a desert island with very little food...so he fasted and concentrated on "god stuff"...eventually his brain became so malnourished that he started having weird hallucinations...I've had similar experiences after eating some questionable mushrooms

[◊ Weezer ◊]

WELCOME,  DITTO all of the above!

[Wertbag]

I think my favourite end of the world was Y2K, now that was an end of the world to be proud of....  At least that one had fireworks.

[Derek]

14 hours ago, Weezer said:

WELCOME,  DITTO all of the above!

Even the mushrooms??!

[◊ Weezer ◊]

4 hours ago, Derek said:

Even the mushrooms??!

Maybe not that part of the above

[ChelseaGuy]

I get concerned about it too, what makes it suck especially is I'm in the prime age of my life and I want to enjoy the rest of my life and not have it taken away before I'm old enough. It also makes me nervous because of the political chaos and social division happening right now. People are becoming more cold every other conditions are close to like the Bible says in Revelation. I'm not saying that it will end, but with the way things are I wouldn't necessarily be surprised to see that Christians happened to be right. So I do get anxiety from the "end times" and by extension all the current chaos and division.

[florduh]

https://historycollection.com/countdown-worst-years-to-be-alive-in-history/

 

[Joshpantera]

On 6/4/2020 at 11:15 AM, 2022grad said:

I’ve been de converting from Christianity lately and everything is kind of worrying me because I see people everywhere are screaming that we’re living through revelations and all that and it’s kind of worrying me

 

As you can see, ex christians are very used to this sort of thing.

 

The great disappointment of 1844, yeah, William Miller was a blood relative of my through the paternal side. Predicted the end of the world in 1843 and 1844, before it was finally given up on and is now known as the "Great Disappointment." My Millerite relatives splintered into the SDA church. From then to today, the end times are always right around the corner like a carrot-on-a-stick. Except that it never is the "end times." And they've been wrong every time. 

 

What you have to understand is that Revelation was never referring to the distant future. It was referring to contemporary people about contemporary times. What it was about was thinking that the end was near back then, as if the world was on the brink of collapse in the writers time.

 

Take this in if you will:

 

 

 

This is compelling evidence. And fits with everything else we know about the book of Revelation.

 

What we're looking at is a situation where the bible, all of it, and especially Revelation, is referring to things contemporary to the now remote PAST. This isn't obvious when you're sitting in a church pew. And it may not be obvious even after you break away. But the deeper you investigate these things, the more obvious it will become if you pay attention to the trail of evidence. 

 

Pandemics have come and gone. We happen to have another one in a long line of others taking place now. What they all have in common is that none of them were (1) what was mentioned in Revelation or (2) ushering in the end times as described in the book of Revelation. Politics? That goes without saying. That's even more of a stretch. You have to be careful listening to christians because they will twist and manipulate any information they can get a hold of to try and use as confirmation bias. Yes, there is a political uprising with youth professing social marxism. But christians are trying to use this as confirmation bias when it really isn't anything of the sort. There's nothing in Revelation about Carl Marx, btw, or these social marxists now. And trying to claim that there is, is a huge stretch by anyone trying to do it. 

 

I see the videos going around, many of which are dead wrong in demonstrable ways. Post whatever it is that bothers you and I pretty much guarantee it will be debunked. 

[◊ Weezer ◊]

Even as a Christian I began to think the cannonizers made a mistake by putting the book of Revelations in the Bible.  It seemed like it was written by someone taking drugs.  It, like the Old Testament, was seldom referenced by the Church of Christ. 

[DanForsman]

This stuff is all such bullshit to me. The words that were put into Jesus's mouth regarding his second coming clearly state that some from his generation would still be alive when he returned to earth. Nothing in the bible makes a similarly clear reference to Jesus returning thousands of years in the future. It's a testament to human's ability to use cognitive dissonance to keep moving that time frame forward to whatever the present time is. In fact I think it is critical to making christianity work that the time frame always be at hand even though nothing in the bible makes a compelling case for this.  

[DanForsman]

Interesting times with this coronavirus. Someone posts a 35 word question and receives many hundreds of words in responses.

[Steviejay]

9 hours ago, ChelseaGuy said:

I get concerned about it too, what makes it suck especially is I'm in the prime age of my life and I want to enjoy the rest of my life and not have it taken away before I'm old enough. It also makes me nervous because of the political chaos and social division happening right now. People are becoming more cold every other conditions are close to like the Bible says in Revelation. I'm not saying that it will end, but with the way things are I wouldn't necessarily be surprised to see that Christians happened to be right. So I do get anxiety from the "end times" and by extension all the current chaos and division.

 

It may seem that way because xtians try to potray the last times for their own agenda. The world may seem worse than ever before but that is simply not true. the world suffers less poverty, famine, wars, murders, pandemics then ever before.....Millions used to die from starvation before they invented the plough, now we have the least amount of starvation on the planet. Not many are killed in wars like they used to be. Look at the 2 World Wars compared to Iraq. We are now more tolerant of others compared to a hundred years ago, slavery has been abolished, workers rights, pensions, Medical advances in science..... We have had the most horendous past history from awful leaders and dictators. We still have awful leaders and dictators but not like we used to have.... Believe it or not the world is actually better than ever before but we've still got mountains to climb before we are "good"

 

Don't be fooled by xtian doctrine. If you are honest with yourself the interpretations you get from Daniel and Revelation are interpretations from Mankind of the present day and not from reading the text and you can interpret them any way you want....making their "evidence" fit the modern day so that they can fool themselves that it's the end times...It's all bullshit

[◊ Weezer ◊]

8 hours ago, DanForsman said:

Interesting times with this coronavirus. Someone posts a 35 word question and receives many hundreds of words in responses.

The virus is definitely contributing to our internet addiction.  

[DanForsman]

And to think that someone would come back to life after being killed in a public execution and then show themselves for inspection to either a handful of people or hundreds but no one bothers to write about this astounding feat for at least 30 years! Not even one historian other than the anonymous bible writers mentions Jesus coming back to life other than the highly suspect single probable three or four word forgery added to a Josephus historical record. So really nothing outside the bible which was not begun until decades after this astonishing event supposedly occurred.

[MOHO]

On 7/4/2020 at 8:05 AM, DanForsman said:

And to think that someone would come back to life after being killed in a public execution and then show themselves for inspection to either a handful of people or hundreds but no one bothers to write about this astounding feat for at least 30 years! Not even one historian other than the anonymous bible writers mentions Jesus coming back to life other than the highly suspect single probable three or four word forgery added to a Josephus historical record. So really nothing outside the bible which was not begun until decades after this astonishing event supposedly occurred.

 

Indeed, sir.

and the standard excuse is that people did not know how to write in those days. We have accurate accounts of the eruption of mt. Vesuvius in 79AD which would have been 40 or so years later, however. Amazing how much those folks learned about journalism in such a short period of time, eh?

[DanForsman]

3 hours ago, MOHO said:

the standard excuse is that people did not know how to write in those days.

"The Old Testament is the original Hebrew Bible, the sacred scriptures of the Jewish faith, written at different times between about 1200 and 165 BC."   So even christians can be confident that those with an ability to write and an interest in recording noteworthy events were on hand when the resurrection took place.

Quote is from:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/texts/bible.shtml

   Interestingly the same source says the new testament was written between 50 and 100 AD which would put a gap between Jesus's astonishing resurrection from the dead and the first extant recording of the event at at least 50 years. Shows us once again how much god has it out for those who only want to believe reasonable things.

[MOHO]

10 minutes ago, DanForsman said:

"The Old Testament is the original Hebrew Bible, the sacred scriptures of the Jewish faith, written at different times between about 1200 and 165 BC."   So even christians can be confident that those with an ability to write and an interest in recording noteworthy events were on hand when the resurrection took place.

Quote is from:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/texts/bible.shtml

   Interestingly the same source says the new testament was written between 50 and 100 AD which would put a gap between Jesus's astonishing resurrection from the dead and the first extant recording of the event at at least 50 years. Shows us once again how much god has it out for those who only want to believe reasonable things.

In addition, and according to Mr. Hawkins (he's the one that learned Greek so he could read the "Dead Sea Scrolls", yes?)  sections of the Bible were redacted for hundreds of years.

 

Try as I may to get xtians to listen to the actual origins of the book and the fact that large sections were changed years after the original authoring they will NOT listen. Don't want to know, they.