Have You Looked At Your "Praise Reports" Lately

[Melvin01]

I started attending church just about exactly 73 years ago and continued until I was over 60 years old. I never heard of a "Praise Report"

When I was a youngster in the late 30's and 40's we used to go to prayer meetings on Wednesday evenings. Prayer lists were a foot and a half long. Every family either had a member or knew someone who was dying of cancer or heart disease. Guess What? The folks suffered and died anyway after church goers had prayed so hard and often that their knees were bloody. There was no treatment for heart disease and surgery was all they would try for cancer and half the time when they cut out a tumor the disease metastasized and spread all over their body. It was uncommon to attend the funeral of someone who had died of cancer and see an open casket. Usually what was left of them didn't even look like they had before the disease.

Now that medical science has advanced to the place where they have sophisticated electronic diagnostic equipment, better diets, less smoking. CAT scan, MRI, ultrasound, echo-cardiograms, chemo, radiation, stem cell transplants, heart catherization, stents, balloon procedure, non invasive surgery, organ donors etc....that has done the life saving. Patients with the same aliments now live on to their eighties and sometimes nineties. Now the ones who pray think their prayers are being answered. Check the actuarial tables the insurance companies use when they sell insurance and then compare them with those being used back in the 1940's. When I was born the average life expectancy of a white male was 61. What happened to the hundreds of billions of prayers from those days? Were they ignored?

I've never seen anything which couldn't be explained by the physical laws of nature and circumstances...period. Bottom line is that prayer does nothing except in the mind of the one doing the praying.

Anybody who believes 5000 men, not counting women and children who also ate were fed with two fish and five loaves then twelve baskets of leftovers were gathered is either very naive or very brainwashed. I'm not too high on snake handling, exorcism, drinking poison, speaking in tongues, raising from the dead, healing by touching or resurrection either.The bible is the only reference for the bible and of the six historians alive during Jesus' ministry not a one of them recorded a single miracle. It would be like the NY Times never mentioning Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris.

 

[Lonestar_logic]

I started attending church just about exactly 73 years ago and continued until I was over 60 years old. I never heard of a "Praise Report"

When I was a youngster in the late 30's and 40's we used to go to prayer meetings on Wednesday evenings. Prayer lists were a foot and a half long. Every family either had a member or knew someone who was dying of cancer or heart disease. Guess What? The folks suffered and died anyway after church goers had prayed so hard and often that their knees were bloody. There was no treatment for heart disease and surgery was all they would try for cancer and half the time when they cut out a tumor the disease metastasized and spread all over their body. It was uncommon to attend the funeral of someone who had died of cancer and see an open casket. Usually what was left of them didn't even look like they had before the disease.

Now that medical science has advanced to the place where they have sophisticated electronic diagnostic equipment, better diets, less smoking. CAT scan, MRI, ultrasound, echo-cardiograms, chemo, radiation, stem cell transplants, heart catherization, stents, balloon procedure, non invasive surgery, organ donors etc....that has done the life saving. Patients with the same aliments now live on to their eighties and sometimes nineties. Now the ones who pray think their prayers are being answered. Check the actuarial tables the insurance companies use when they sell insurance and then compare them with those being used back in the 1940's. When I was born the average life expectancy of a white male was 61. What happened to the hundreds of billions of prayers from those days? Were they ignored?

I've never seen anything which couldn't be explained by the physical laws of nature and circumstances...period. Bottom line is that prayer does nothing except in the mind of the one doing the praying.

Anybody who believes 5000 men, not counting women and children who also ate were fed with two fish and five loaves then twelve baskets of leftovers were gathered is either very naive or very brainwashed. I'm not too high on snake handling, exorcism, drinking poison, speaking in tongues, raising from the dead, healing by touching or resurrection either.The bible is the only reference for the bible and of the six historians alive during Jesus' ministry not a one of them recorded a single miracle. It would be like the NY Times never mentioning Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris.

Name these six historians.

 

[Melvin01]

I started attending church just about exactly 73 years ago and continued until I was over 60 years old. I never heard of a "Praise Report"

When I was a youngster in the late 30's and 40's we used to go to prayer meetings on Wednesday evenings. Prayer lists were a foot and a half long. Every family either had a member or knew someone who was dying of cancer or heart disease. Guess What? The folks suffered and died anyway after church goers had prayed so hard and often that their knees were bloody. There was no treatment for heart disease and surgery was all they would try for cancer and half the time when they cut out a tumor the disease metastasized and spread all over their body. It was uncommon to attend the funeral of someone who had died of cancer and see an open casket. Usually what was left of them didn't even look like they had before the disease.

Now that medical science has advanced to the place where they have sophisticated electronic diagnostic equipment, better diets, less smoking. CAT scan, MRI, ultrasound, echo-cardiograms, chemo, radiation, stem cell transplants, heart catherization, stents, balloon procedure, non invasive surgery, organ donors etc....that has done the life saving. Patients with the same aliments now live on to their eighties and sometimes nineties. Now the ones who pray think their prayers are being answered. Check the actuarial tables the insurance companies use when they sell insurance and then compare them with those being used back in the 1940's. When I was born the average life expectancy of a white male was 61. What happened to the hundreds of billions of prayers from those days? Were they ignored?

I've never seen anything which couldn't be explained by the physical laws of nature and circumstances...period. Bottom line is that prayer does nothing except in the mind of the one doing the praying.

Anybody who believes 5000 men, not counting women and children who also ate were fed with two fish and five loaves then twelve baskets of leftovers were gathered is either very naive or very brainwashed. I'm not too high on snake handling, exorcism, drinking poison, speaking in tongues, raising from the dead, healing by touching or resurrection either.The bible is the only reference for the bible and of the six historians alive during Jesus' ministry not a one of them recorded a single miracle. It would be like the NY Times never mentioning Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris.

Name these six historians.

I can't but the one in closest proximity was Josephus the Jewish historian and he mentioned Jesus' name one time.....nothing about a miracle.

The bible itself is the only way to reference the occurrance of a miracle.

 

[Lonestar_logic]

I started attending church just about exactly 73 years ago and continued until I was over 60 years old. I never heard of a "Praise Report"

When I was a youngster in the late 30's and 40's we used to go to prayer meetings on Wednesday evenings. Prayer lists were a foot and a half long. Every family either had a member or knew someone who was dying of cancer or heart disease. Guess What? The folks suffered and died anyway after church goers had prayed so hard and often that their knees were bloody. There was no treatment for heart disease and surgery was all they would try for cancer and half the time when they cut out a tumor the disease metastasized and spread all over their body. It was uncommon to attend the funeral of someone who had died of cancer and see an open casket. Usually what was left of them didn't even look like they had before the disease.

Now that medical science has advanced to the place where they have sophisticated electronic diagnostic equipment, better diets, less smoking. CAT scan, MRI, ultrasound, echo-cardiograms, chemo, radiation, stem cell transplants, heart catherization, stents, balloon procedure, non invasive surgery, organ donors etc....that has done the life saving. Patients with the same aliments now live on to their eighties and sometimes nineties. Now the ones who pray think their prayers are being answered. Check the actuarial tables the insurance companies use when they sell insurance and then compare them with those being used back in the 1940's. When I was born the average life expectancy of a white male was 61. What happened to the hundreds of billions of prayers from those days? Were they ignored?

I've never seen anything which couldn't be explained by the physical laws of nature and circumstances...period. Bottom line is that prayer does nothing except in the mind of the one doing the praying.

Anybody who believes 5000 men, not counting women and children who also ate were fed with two fish and five loaves then twelve baskets of leftovers were gathered is either very naive or very brainwashed. I'm not too high on snake handling, exorcism, drinking poison, speaking in tongues, raising from the dead, healing by touching or resurrection either.The bible is the only reference for the bible and of the six historians alive during Jesus' ministry not a one of them recorded a single miracle. It would be like the NY Times never mentioning Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris.

Name these six historians.

I can't but the one in closest proximity was Josephus the Jewish historian and he mentioned Jesus' name one time.....nothing about a miracle.

The bible itself is the only way to reference the occurrance of a miracle.

So why make a claim that you cannot support?


I assume you're talking about Flavius Josephus who penned this:

“Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works—a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”

He clearly speaks of Jesus' resurrection.

 

[Melvin01]

Name these six historians.

I can't but the one in closest proximity was Josephus the Jewish historian and he mentioned Jesus' name one time.....nothing about a miracle.

The bible itself is the only way to reference the occurrance of a miracle.

So why make a claim that you cannot support?


I assume you're talking about Flavius Josephus who penned this:

“Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works—a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”

He clearly speaks of Jesus' resurrection.

Yeah Right:

It is impossible that this passage is entirely genuine. It is highly unlikely that Josephus, a believing Jew working under Romans, would have written, "He was the Messiah." This would make him suspect of treason, but nowhere else is there an indication that he was a Christian. Indeed, in Wars of the Jews, Josephus declares that Vespasian fulfilled the messianic oracles. Furthermore, Origen, writing about a century before Eusebius, says twice that Josephus "did not believe in Jesus as the Christ."

Probably like the Republicans adding "Under God" to the pledge of allegianace in 1954, "In God We Trust" to the coins during the civil war and then to the currency during the McCarthy years. The original writings of Josephus mentioned him one time and referred to his status as a Jew...nothing more. One really needs to be careful when anything the church currently believes is at hand:

"The methods of the priest and the parson have been very curious, their history is very entertaining. In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. Long after some Christian peoples had freed their slaves the Church still held on to hers. If any could know, to absolute certainty, that all this was right, and according to God’s will and desire, surely it was she, since she was God’s specially appointed representative in the earth and sole authorized and infallible expounder of his Bible. There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; she was right, she was doing in this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery. Yet now at last, in our immediate day, we hear a Pope saying slave trading is wrong, and we see him sending an expedition to Africa to stop it. The texts remain: it is the practice that has changed. Why? Because the world has corrected the Bible. The Church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession - and take the credit of the correction. As she will presently do in this instance.

Christian England supported slavery and encouraged it for two hundred and fifty years, and her church’s consecrated ministers looked on, sometimes taking an active hand, the rest of the time indifferent. England’s interest in the business may be called a Christian interest, a Christian industry. She had her full share in its revival after a long period of inactivity, and his revival was a Christian monopoly; that is to say, it was in the hands of Christian countries exclusively. English parliaments aided the slave traffic and protected it; two English kings held stock in slave-catching companies. The first regular English slave hunter - John Hawkins, of still revered memory - made such successful havoc, on his second voyage, in the matter of surprising and burning villages, and maiming, slaughtering, capturing, and selling their unoffending inhabitants, that his delighted queen conferred the chivalric honor of knighthood on him - a rank which had acquired its chief esteem and distinction in other and earlier fields of Christian effort. The new knight, with characteristic English frankness and brusque simplicity, chose as his device the figure of a negro slave, kneeling and in chains. Sir John’s work was the invention of Christians, was to remain a bloody and awful monopoly in the hands of Christians for a quarter of a millennium, was to destroy homes, separate families, enslave friendless men and women, and break a myriad of human hearts, to the end that Christian nations might be prosperous and comfortable, Christian churches be built, and the gospel of the meek and merciful Redeemer be spread abroad in the earth; and so in the name of his ship, unsuspected but eloquent and clear, lay hidden prophecy. She was called The Jesus.

But at last in England, an illegitimate Christian rose against slavery. It is curious that when a Christian rises against a rooted wrong at all, he is usually an illegitimate Christian, member of some despised and bastard sect. There was a bitter struggle, but in the end the slave trade had to go - and went. The Biblical authorization remained, but the practice changed.
Then - the usual thing happened; the visiting English critic among us began straightway to hold up his pious hands in horror at our slavery. His distress was unappeasable, his words full of bitterness and contempt. It is true we had not so many as fifteen hundred thousand slaves for him to worry about, while his England still owned twelve millions, in her foreign possessions; but that fact did not modify his wail any, or stay his tears, or soften his censure. The fact that every time we had tried to get rid of our slavery in previous generations, but had always been obstructed, balked, and defeated by England, was a matter of no consequence to him; it was ancient history, and not worth the telling.

Our own conversion came at last. We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.

Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch - the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. At Salem, the parson clung pathetically to his witch text after the laity had abandoned it in remorse and tears for the crimes and cruelties it has persuaded them to do. The parson wanted more blood, more shame, more brutalities; it was the unconsecrated laity that stayed his hand. In Scotland the parson killed the witch after the magistrate had pronounced her innocent; and when the merciful legislature proposed to sweep the hideous laws against witches from the statute book, it was the parson who came imploring, with tears and imprecations, that they be suffered to stand.

There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain..

It is not well worthy of note that of all the multitude of texts through which man has driven his annihilating pen he has never once made the mistake of obliterating a good and useful one? It does certainly seem to suggest that if man continues in the direction of enlightenment, his religious practice may, in the end, attain some semblance of human decency." ~Mark Twain~

Hell Fire and Damnation.. Hundreds of millions of sermons were preached over hundreds of years but when folks began to let the church know that they believed the idea of "My Way Or Ashes" wouldn't hack it and stopped putting money in the plate guess what? The church said the whole idea was based upon poor translation of the original writings.....Yeah Right!! The scripture is still right there where it's always been

 

[Lonestar_logic]

I can't but the one in closest proximity was Josephus the Jewish historian and he mentioned Jesus' name one time.....nothing about a miracle.

The bible itself is the only way to reference the occurrance of a miracle.

So why make a claim that you cannot support?


I assume you're talking about Flavius Josephus who penned this:

“Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works—a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”

He clearly speaks of Jesus' resurrection.

Yeah Right:

It is impossible that this passage is entirely genuine. It is highly unlikely that Josephus, a believing Jew working under Romans, would have written, "He was the Messiah." This would make him suspect of treason, but nowhere else is there an indication that he was a Christian. Indeed, in Wars of the Jews, Josephus declares that Vespasian fulfilled the messianic oracles. Furthermore, Origen, writing about a century before Eusebius, says twice that Josephus "did not believe in Jesus as the Christ."

Probably like the Republicans adding "Under God" to the pledge of allegianace in 1954, "In God We Trust" to the coins during the civil war and then to the currency during the McCarthy years. The original writings of Josephus mentioned him one time and referred to his status as a Jew...nothing more.

It's really in the interpretation of what Josephus wrote.

In this quote he refers to Jesus as the "so-called Christ" , perhaps it's as you say he doesn't personally believe Jesus is the Messiah but recognized that some did call Him Christ.

Antiquities 20.9.1 But the younger Ananus who, as we said, received the high priesthood, was of a bold disposition and exceptionally daring; he followed the party of the Sadducees, who are severe in judgment above all the Jews, as we have already shown. As therefore Ananus was of such a disposition, he thought he had now a good opportunity, as Festus was now dead, and Albinus was still on the road; so he assembled a council of judges, and brought before it the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ, whose name was James, together with some others, and having accused them as law-breakers, he delivered them over to be stoned.


Your response does not look at the possibility that some Jews followed Jesus completely.

 

[Lonestar_logic]

I can't but the one in closest proximity was Josephus the Jewish historian and he mentioned Jesus' name one time.....nothing about a miracle.

The bible itself is the only way to reference the occurrance of a miracle.

So why make a claim that you cannot support?


I assume you're talking about Flavius Josephus who penned this:

“Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works—a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”

He clearly speaks of Jesus' resurrection.

Yeah Right:

It is impossible that this passage is entirely genuine. It is highly unlikely that Josephus, a believing Jew working under Romans, would have written, "He was the Messiah." This would make him suspect of treason, but nowhere else is there an indication that he was a Christian. Indeed, in Wars of the Jews, Josephus declares that Vespasian fulfilled the messianic oracles. Furthermore, Origen, writing about a century before Eusebius, says twice that Josephus "did not believe in Jesus as the Christ."

Probably like the Republicans adding "Under God" to the pledge of allegianace in 1954, "In God We Trust" to the coins during the civil war and then to the currency during the McCarthy years. The original writings of Josephus mentioned him one time and referred to his status as a Jew...nothing more. One really needs to be careful when anything the church currently believes is at hand:

"The methods of the priest and the parson have been very curious, their history is very entertaining. In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. Long after some Christian peoples had freed their slaves the Church still held on to hers. If any could know, to absolute certainty, that all this was right, and according to God’s will and desire, surely it was she, since she was God’s specially appointed representative in the earth and sole authorized and infallible expounder of his Bible. There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; she was right, she was doing in this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery. Yet now at last, in our immediate day, we hear a Pope saying slave trading is wrong, and we see him sending an expedition to Africa to stop it. The texts remain: it is the practice that has changed. Why? Because the world has corrected the Bible. The Church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession - and take the credit of the correction. As she will presently do in this instance.

Christian England supported slavery and encouraged it for two hundred and fifty years, and her church’s consecrated ministers looked on, sometimes taking an active hand, the rest of the time indifferent. England’s interest in the business may be called a Christian interest, a Christian industry. She had her full share in its revival after a long period of inactivity, and his revival was a Christian monopoly; that is to say, it was in the hands of Christian countries exclusively. English parliaments aided the slave traffic and protected it; two English kings held stock in slave-catching companies. The first regular English slave hunter - John Hawkins, of still revered memory - made such successful havoc, on his second voyage, in the matter of surprising and burning villages, and maiming, slaughtering, capturing, and selling their unoffending inhabitants, that his delighted queen conferred the chivalric honor of knighthood on him - a rank which had acquired its chief esteem and distinction in other and earlier fields of Christian effort. The new knight, with characteristic English frankness and brusque simplicity, chose as his device the figure of a negro slave, kneeling and in chains. Sir John’s work was the invention of Christians, was to remain a bloody and awful monopoly in the hands of Christians for a quarter of a millennium, was to destroy homes, separate families, enslave friendless men and women, and break a myriad of human hearts, to the end that Christian nations might be prosperous and comfortable, Christian churches be built, and the gospel of the meek and merciful Redeemer be spread abroad in the earth; and so in the name of his ship, unsuspected but eloquent and clear, lay hidden prophecy. She was called The Jesus.

But at last in England, an illegitimate Christian rose against slavery. It is curious that when a Christian rises against a rooted wrong at all, he is usually an illegitimate Christian, member of some despised and bastard sect. There was a bitter struggle, but in the end the slave trade had to go - and went. The Biblical authorization remained, but the practice changed.
Then - the usual thing happened; the visiting English critic among us began straightway to hold up his pious hands in horror at our slavery. His distress was unappeasable, his words full of bitterness and contempt. It is true we had not so many as fifteen hundred thousand slaves for him to worry about, while his England still owned twelve millions, in her foreign possessions; but that fact did not modify his wail any, or stay his tears, or soften his censure. The fact that every time we had tried to get rid of our slavery in previous generations, but had always been obstructed, balked, and defeated by England, was a matter of no consequence to him; it was ancient history, and not worth the telling.

Our own conversion came at last. We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.

Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch - the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. At Salem, the parson clung pathetically to his witch text after the laity had abandoned it in remorse and tears for the crimes and cruelties it has persuaded them to do. The parson wanted more blood, more shame, more brutalities; it was the unconsecrated laity that stayed his hand. In Scotland the parson killed the witch after the magistrate had pronounced her innocent; and when the merciful legislature proposed to sweep the hideous laws against witches from the statute book, it was the parson who came imploring, with tears and imprecations, that they be suffered to stand.

There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain..

It is not well worthy of note that of all the multitude of texts through which man has driven his annihilating pen he has never once made the mistake of obliterating a good and useful one? It does certainly seem to suggest that if man continues in the direction of enlightenment, his religious practice may, in the end, attain some semblance of human decency." ~Mark Twain~

Hell Fire and Damnation.. Hundreds of millions of sermons were preached over hundreds of years but when folks began to let the church know that they believed the idea of "My Way Or Ashes" wouldn't hack it and stopped putting money in the plate guess what? The church said the whole idea was based upon poor translation of the original writings.....Yeah Right!! The scripture is still right there where it's always been

When you cut and paste this stuff you are required to post the source per USMB rules.

If I wanted to debate Sam Clemens aka Mark Twain I would dig his ass up and debate him.

Face it, you are not intelligent enough to argue your case.

 

[Mad Scientist]

When you cut and paste this stuff you are required to post the source per USMB rules.
If I wanted to debate Sam Clemens aka Mark Twain I would dig his ass up and debate him.

 

[Avatar4321]

Amazing how you seem think a time that has 6 historians would be heavily documented. It's not exactly like they had video, photographs, or audio recordings. Nor that they had our ability to travel.

Yet, somehow we are supposed to ignore the scripures from eye witnesses & contemporarieswhich detail Christ's life because historians in other parts of the world with no modern equipment didn't know about him. Now that seems a bit silly to me.

It's also interesting how your ridiculous arguments are similiar to Cammmpbell's ridiculous arguments.

 

[Melvin01]

So why make a claim that you cannot support?


I assume you're talking about Flavius Josephus who penned this:

“Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works—a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”

He clearly speaks of Jesus' resurrection.

Yeah Right:

It is impossible that this passage is entirely genuine. It is highly unlikely that Josephus, a believing Jew working under Romans, would have written, "He was the Messiah." This would make him suspect of treason, but nowhere else is there an indication that he was a Christian. Indeed, in Wars of the Jews, Josephus declares that Vespasian fulfilled the messianic oracles. Furthermore, Origen, writing about a century before Eusebius, says twice that Josephus "did not believe in Jesus as the Christ."

Probably like the Republicans adding "Under God" to the pledge of allegianace in 1954, "In God We Trust" to the coins during the civil war and then to the currency during the McCarthy years. The original writings of Josephus mentioned him one time and referred to his status as a Jew...nothing more. One really needs to be careful when anything the church currently believes is at hand:

"The methods of the priest and the parson have been very curious, their history is very entertaining. In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. Long after some Christian peoples had freed their slaves the Church still held on to hers. If any could know, to absolute certainty, that all this was right, and according to God’s will and desire, surely it was she, since she was God’s specially appointed representative in the earth and sole authorized and infallible expounder of his Bible. There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; she was right, she was doing in this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery. Yet now at last, in our immediate day, we hear a Pope saying slave trading is wrong, and we see him sending an expedition to Africa to stop it. The texts remain: it is the practice that has changed. Why? Because the world has corrected the Bible. The Church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession - and take the credit of the correction. As she will presently do in this instance.

Christian England supported slavery and encouraged it for two hundred and fifty years, and her church’s consecrated ministers looked on, sometimes taking an active hand, the rest of the time indifferent. England’s interest in the business may be called a Christian interest, a Christian industry. She had her full share in its revival after a long period of inactivity, and his revival was a Christian monopoly; that is to say, it was in the hands of Christian countries exclusively. English parliaments aided the slave traffic and protected it; two English kings held stock in slave-catching companies. The first regular English slave hunter - John Hawkins, of still revered memory - made such successful havoc, on his second voyage, in the matter of surprising and burning villages, and maiming, slaughtering, capturing, and selling their unoffending inhabitants, that his delighted queen conferred the chivalric honor of knighthood on him - a rank which had acquired its chief esteem and distinction in other and earlier fields of Christian effort. The new knight, with characteristic English frankness and brusque simplicity, chose as his device the figure of a negro slave, kneeling and in chains. Sir John’s work was the invention of Christians, was to remain a bloody and awful monopoly in the hands of Christians for a quarter of a millennium, was to destroy homes, separate families, enslave friendless men and women, and break a myriad of human hearts, to the end that Christian nations might be prosperous and comfortable, Christian churches be built, and the gospel of the meek and merciful Redeemer be spread abroad in the earth; and so in the name of his ship, unsuspected but eloquent and clear, lay hidden prophecy. She was called The Jesus.

But at last in England, an illegitimate Christian rose against slavery. It is curious that when a Christian rises against a rooted wrong at all, he is usually an illegitimate Christian, member of some despised and bastard sect. There was a bitter struggle, but in the end the slave trade had to go - and went. The Biblical authorization remained, but the practice changed.
Then - the usual thing happened; the visiting English critic among us began straightway to hold up his pious hands in horror at our slavery. His distress was unappeasable, his words full of bitterness and contempt. It is true we had not so many as fifteen hundred thousand slaves for him to worry about, while his England still owned twelve millions, in her foreign possessions; but that fact did not modify his wail any, or stay his tears, or soften his censure. The fact that every time we had tried to get rid of our slavery in previous generations, but had always been obstructed, balked, and defeated by England, was a matter of no consequence to him; it was ancient history, and not worth the telling.

Our own conversion came at last. We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.

Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch - the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. At Salem, the parson clung pathetically to his witch text after the laity had abandoned it in remorse and tears for the crimes and cruelties it has persuaded them to do. The parson wanted more blood, more shame, more brutalities; it was the unconsecrated laity that stayed his hand. In Scotland the parson killed the witch after the magistrate had pronounced her innocent; and when the merciful legislature proposed to sweep the hideous laws against witches from the statute book, it was the parson who came imploring, with tears and imprecations, that they be suffered to stand.

There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain..

It is not well worthy of note that of all the multitude of texts through which man has driven his annihilating pen he has never once made the mistake of obliterating a good and useful one? It does certainly seem to suggest that if man continues in the direction of enlightenment, his religious practice may, in the end, attain some semblance of human decency." ~Mark Twain~

Hell Fire and Damnation.. Hundreds of millions of sermons were preached over hundreds of years but when folks began to let the church know that they believed the idea of "My Way Or Ashes" wouldn't hack it and stopped putting money in the plate guess what? The church said the whole idea was based upon poor translation of the original writings.....Yeah Right!! The scripture is still right there where it's always been

When you cut and paste this stuff you are required to post the source per USMB rules.

If I wanted to debate Sam Clemens aka Mark Twain I would dig his ass up and debate him.

Face it, you are not intelligent enough to argue your case.

Face it....either you didn't even read it or you missed that about eight paragraphs of it were from Mark Twain. I scribed the rest.

 

[Lonestar_logic]

Yeah Right:

It is impossible that this passage is entirely genuine. It is highly unlikely that Josephus, a believing Jew working under Romans, would have written, "He was the Messiah." This would make him suspect of treason, but nowhere else is there an indication that he was a Christian. Indeed, in Wars of the Jews, Josephus declares that Vespasian fulfilled the messianic oracles. Furthermore, Origen, writing about a century before Eusebius, says twice that Josephus "did not believe in Jesus as the Christ."

Probably like the Republicans adding "Under God" to the pledge of allegianace in 1954, "In God We Trust" to the coins during the civil war and then to the currency during the McCarthy years. The original writings of Josephus mentioned him one time and referred to his status as a Jew...nothing more. One really needs to be careful when anything the church currently believes is at hand:

"The methods of the priest and the parson have been very curious, their history is very entertaining. In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. Long after some Christian peoples had freed their slaves the Church still held on to hers. If any could know, to absolute certainty, that all this was right, and according to God’s will and desire, surely it was she, since she was God’s specially appointed representative in the earth and sole authorized and infallible expounder of his Bible. There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; she was right, she was doing in this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery. Yet now at last, in our immediate day, we hear a Pope saying slave trading is wrong, and we see him sending an expedition to Africa to stop it. The texts remain: it is the practice that has changed. Why? Because the world has corrected the Bible. The Church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession - and take the credit of the correction. As she will presently do in this instance.

Christian England supported slavery and encouraged it for two hundred and fifty years, and her church’s consecrated ministers looked on, sometimes taking an active hand, the rest of the time indifferent. England’s interest in the business may be called a Christian interest, a Christian industry. She had her full share in its revival after a long period of inactivity, and his revival was a Christian monopoly; that is to say, it was in the hands of Christian countries exclusively. English parliaments aided the slave traffic and protected it; two English kings held stock in slave-catching companies. The first regular English slave hunter - John Hawkins, of still revered memory - made such successful havoc, on his second voyage, in the matter of surprising and burning villages, and maiming, slaughtering, capturing, and selling their unoffending inhabitants, that his delighted queen conferred the chivalric honor of knighthood on him - a rank which had acquired its chief esteem and distinction in other and earlier fields of Christian effort. The new knight, with characteristic English frankness and brusque simplicity, chose as his device the figure of a negro slave, kneeling and in chains. Sir John’s work was the invention of Christians, was to remain a bloody and awful monopoly in the hands of Christians for a quarter of a millennium, was to destroy homes, separate families, enslave friendless men and women, and break a myriad of human hearts, to the end that Christian nations might be prosperous and comfortable, Christian churches be built, and the gospel of the meek and merciful Redeemer be spread abroad in the earth; and so in the name of his ship, unsuspected but eloquent and clear, lay hidden prophecy. She was called The Jesus.

But at last in England, an illegitimate Christian rose against slavery. It is curious that when a Christian rises against a rooted wrong at all, he is usually an illegitimate Christian, member of some despised and bastard sect. There was a bitter struggle, but in the end the slave trade had to go - and went. The Biblical authorization remained, but the practice changed.
Then - the usual thing happened; the visiting English critic among us began straightway to hold up his pious hands in horror at our slavery. His distress was unappeasable, his words full of bitterness and contempt. It is true we had not so many as fifteen hundred thousand slaves for him to worry about, while his England still owned twelve millions, in her foreign possessions; but that fact did not modify his wail any, or stay his tears, or soften his censure. The fact that every time we had tried to get rid of our slavery in previous generations, but had always been obstructed, balked, and defeated by England, was a matter of no consequence to him; it was ancient history, and not worth the telling.

Our own conversion came at last. We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.

Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch - the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. At Salem, the parson clung pathetically to his witch text after the laity had abandoned it in remorse and tears for the crimes and cruelties it has persuaded them to do. The parson wanted more blood, more shame, more brutalities; it was the unconsecrated laity that stayed his hand. In Scotland the parson killed the witch after the magistrate had pronounced her innocent; and when the merciful legislature proposed to sweep the hideous laws against witches from the statute book, it was the parson who came imploring, with tears and imprecations, that they be suffered to stand.

There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain..

It is not well worthy of note that of all the multitude of texts through which man has driven his annihilating pen he has never once made the mistake of obliterating a good and useful one? It does certainly seem to suggest that if man continues in the direction of enlightenment, his religious practice may, in the end, attain some semblance of human decency." ~Mark Twain~

Hell Fire and Damnation.. Hundreds of millions of sermons were preached over hundreds of years but when folks began to let the church know that they believed the idea of "My Way Or Ashes" wouldn't hack it and stopped putting money in the plate guess what? The church said the whole idea was based upon poor translation of the original writings.....Yeah Right!! The scripture is still right there where it's always been

When you cut and paste this stuff you are required to post the source per USMB rules.

If I wanted to debate Sam Clemens aka Mark Twain I would dig his ass up and debate him.

Face it, you are not intelligent enough to argue your case.

Face it....either you didn't even read it or you missed that about eight paragraphs of it were from Mark Twain. I scribed the rest.

No I didn't read it.

8 out of 11 paragraphs were cut and paste. I don't have the time to try to figure out which is which.

Oh and you failed to credit Twain which is in violation of USMB rules.

 

[Caroljo]

I can't but the one in closest proximity was Josephus the Jewish historian and he mentioned Jesus' name one time.....nothing about a miracle.

The bible itself is the only way to reference the occurrance of a miracle.

So why make a claim that you cannot support?


I assume you're talking about Flavius Josephus who penned this:

“Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works—a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”

He clearly speaks of Jesus' resurrection.

Yeah Right:

It is impossible that this passage is entirely genuine. It is highly unlikely that Josephus, a believing Jew working under Romans, would have written, "He was the Messiah." This would make him suspect of treason, but nowhere else is there an indication that he was a Christian. Indeed, in Wars of the Jews, Josephus declares that Vespasian fulfilled the messianic oracles. Furthermore, Origen, writing about a century before Eusebius, says twice that Josephus "did not believe in Jesus as the Christ."

Probably like the Republicans adding "Under God" to the pledge of allegianace in 1954, "In God We Trust" to the coins during the civil war and then to the currency during the McCarthy years. The original writings of Josephus mentioned him one time and referred to his status as a Jew...nothing more. One really needs to be careful when anything the church currently believes is at hand:

"The methods of the priest and the parson have been very curious, their history is very entertaining. In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. Long after some Christian peoples had freed their slaves the Church still held on to hers. If any could know, to absolute certainty, that all this was right, and according to God’s will and desire, surely it was she, since she was God’s specially appointed representative in the earth and sole authorized and infallible expounder of his Bible. There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; she was right, she was doing in this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery. Yet now at last, in our immediate day, we hear a Pope saying slave trading is wrong, and we see him sending an expedition to Africa to stop it. The texts remain: it is the practice that has changed. Why? Because the world has corrected the Bible. The Church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession - and take the credit of the correction. As she will presently do in this instance.

Christian England supported slavery and encouraged it for two hundred and fifty years, and her church’s consecrated ministers looked on, sometimes taking an active hand, the rest of the time indifferent. England’s interest in the business may be called a Christian interest, a Christian industry. She had her full share in its revival after a long period of inactivity, and his revival was a Christian monopoly; that is to say, it was in the hands of Christian countries exclusively. English parliaments aided the slave traffic and protected it; two English kings held stock in slave-catching companies. The first regular English slave hunter - John Hawkins, of still revered memory - made such successful havoc, on his second voyage, in the matter of surprising and burning villages, and maiming, slaughtering, capturing, and selling their unoffending inhabitants, that his delighted queen conferred the chivalric honor of knighthood on him - a rank which had acquired its chief esteem and distinction in other and earlier fields of Christian effort. The new knight, with characteristic English frankness and brusque simplicity, chose as his device the figure of a negro slave, kneeling and in chains. Sir John’s work was the invention of Christians, was to remain a bloody and awful monopoly in the hands of Christians for a quarter of a millennium, was to destroy homes, separate families, enslave friendless men and women, and break a myriad of human hearts, to the end that Christian nations might be prosperous and comfortable, Christian churches be built, and the gospel of the meek and merciful Redeemer be spread abroad in the earth; and so in the name of his ship, unsuspected but eloquent and clear, lay hidden prophecy. She was called The Jesus.

But at last in England, an illegitimate Christian rose against slavery. It is curious that when a Christian rises against a rooted wrong at all, he is usually an illegitimate Christian, member of some despised and bastard sect. There was a bitter struggle, but in the end the slave trade had to go - and went. The Biblical authorization remained, but the practice changed.
Then - the usual thing happened; the visiting English critic among us began straightway to hold up his pious hands in horror at our slavery. His distress was unappeasable, his words full of bitterness and contempt. It is true we had not so many as fifteen hundred thousand slaves for him to worry about, while his England still owned twelve millions, in her foreign possessions; but that fact did not modify his wail any, or stay his tears, or soften his censure. The fact that every time we had tried to get rid of our slavery in previous generations, but had always been obstructed, balked, and defeated by England, was a matter of no consequence to him; it was ancient history, and not worth the telling.

Our own conversion came at last. We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was all.

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood.

Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch - the priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. At Salem, the parson clung pathetically to his witch text after the laity had abandoned it in remorse and tears for the crimes and cruelties it has persuaded them to do. The parson wanted more blood, more shame, more brutalities; it was the unconsecrated laity that stayed his hand. In Scotland the parson killed the witch after the magistrate had pronounced her innocent; and when the merciful legislature proposed to sweep the hideous laws against witches from the statute book, it was the parson who came imploring, with tears and imprecations, that they be suffered to stand.

There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain..

It is not well worthy of note that of all the multitude of texts through which man has driven his annihilating pen he has never once made the mistake of obliterating a good and useful one? It does certainly seem to suggest that if man continues in the direction of enlightenment, his religious practice may, in the end, attain some semblance of human decency." ~Mark Twain~

Hell Fire and Damnation.. Hundreds of millions of sermons were preached over hundreds of years but when folks began to let the church know that they believed the idea of "My Way Or Ashes" wouldn't hack it and stopped putting money in the plate guess what? The church said the whole idea was based upon poor translation of the original writings.....Yeah Right!! The scripture is still right there where it's always been

Is your other name CAMMMPBELL?? You sure sound like that other moron, havent seen him in a while

 

[uscitizen]

Is it a violation fo rules to not credit God and Jesus? in postings?

 

[Melvin01]

When you cut and paste this stuff you are required to post the source per USMB rules.

If I wanted to debate Sam Clemens aka Mark Twain I would dig his ass up and debate him.

Face it, you are not intelligent enough to argue your case.

Face it....either you didn't even read it or you missed that about eight paragraphs of it were from Mark Twain. I scribed the rest.

No I didn't read it.

8 out of 11 paragraphs were cut and paste. I don't have the time to try to figure out which is which.

Oh and you failed to credit Twain which is in violation of USMB rules.

You know....I think I've been singled out here. Try looking at the quotation mark in front of "The Methods of the Priest" and eight paragraphs later, "Some Semblance Of Human Decency"..................then look at the ~Mark Twain~

Cheez!

 

[Avatar4321]

BTW. I have to point out that the OP still hasnt made any sort of assersion of what a praise report is. And that is supposedly what this thread is about.

 

[Lonestar_logic]

Face it....either you didn't even read it or you missed that about eight paragraphs of it were from Mark Twain. I scribed the rest.

No I didn't read it.

8 out of 11 paragraphs were cut and paste. I don't have the time to try to figure out which is which.

Oh and you failed to credit Twain which is in violation of USMB rules.

You know....I think I've been singled out here. Try looking at the quotation mark in front of "The Methods of the Priest" and eight paragraphs later, "Some Semblance Of Human Decency"..................then look at the ~Mark Twain~

Cheez!

Perhaps you need to read the rules here at USMB when using cut and paste material.

It's states:

"Copyright. Link Each "Copy & Paste" to It's Source. Only paste a small to medium section of the material"

 

[Melvin01]

BTW. I have to point out that the OP still hasnt made any sort of assersion of what a praise report is. And that is supposedly what this thread is about.

It's more major bullshit from the church. It happens every time they see the number of suckers dropping money into their plates is falling off:

Praise Reports

 

[Avatar4321]

BTW. I have to point out that the OP still hasnt made any sort of assersion of what a praise report is. And that is supposedly what this thread is about.

It's more major bullshit from the church. It happens every time they see the number of suckers dropping money into their plates is falling off:

Praise Reports

How do you know it's BS? Why should we disbelieve the people who post there?

 

[Underhill]

Amazing how you seem think a time that has 6 historians would be heavily documented. It's not exactly like they had video, photographs, or audio recordings. Nor that they had our ability to travel.

Yet, somehow we are supposed to ignore the scripures from eye witnesses & contemporarieswhich detail Christ's life because historians in other parts of the world with no modern equipment didn't know about him. Now that seems a bit silly to me.

A large percentage of scholars believe that the authors of the bible didn't even meet Jesus.

Several of the gospels appear to simply rehash the stories of Mark. And Mark's writings have their own issues.

So you have some second and mostly 3rd and 4th hand accounts of what may have happened. Not exactly the same thing as eyewitness accounts. And even eyewitness accounts are shit when it comes to evidence. Ask any police investigator.

A eyewitness says, 'People kept donating food.' Which becomes; 'Food seemed to come from nowhere.' Becomes; 'It was a miracle, the food just seemed to magically appear in his hands...'

So the author writes, "Holy shit! Jesus fed 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 fishes!"