Christianity the biggest scam ever!!!

by William Penwell 54 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  DevonMcBride

  Jesus didn't fulfill ALL of the Messianic prophecies.

  • The Jewish Messiah is to be a mortal human being born to two mortal parents. He is neither to be a god, nor a man born of supernatural or virgin birth. There is nothing in the Bible that states that the Messiah would be a god or God-like, or that he would be born to a virgin. The concept of the former contradicts the Jewish concept of God being above and beyond taking human form and limitations. Jews believe that only God should be worshipped, not a being of His creation, not even the Messiah himself. Besides, nowhere in the Bible is there any virgins giving birth. This idea is only found in pagan mythology, where virgins often bare offsping of gods. The only purpose of the concept of virgin birth is to attract pagans to Christianity.
  • The Jewish Messiah is supposed to return the Jews to the Holy Land, but Jesus lived while the Jews were still there before they were exiled by the Romans. How can he return them to their land if they were still living in it?
  • The Messiah is to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple, but Jesus lived while the Temple was still standing.
  • The Bible states that the Messiah will redeem Israel, but 30 years after Jesus died, Jerusalem was destroyed, and the Jews were exiled by the Roman to suffer 1900 years of persecution, mostly by the followers of Jesus.
  • The Prophets of the Bible foretold that all the nations of the world will acknowlege and worship the one true God (Isaiah 11.9, 45, and Zephaniah 3), but nothing like this happened after Jesus died; in fact, Islam develpoed and became the religion of many nations while Christianity splintered into many sects which constantly fight each other, and almost two-thirds of the human race worships idols. The world is very far from monotheism even to this day.
  • The Messiah's influence will extend to all who will worship God in the Jerusalem Temple. As the Prophet states, "My House will become the House of Prayer for all the Nations. This has clearly not taken place yet; therefore, the Messiah hasn't come yet.
  • A new spirit will fill the world man will no longer sin or commit crimes, especially the Jews (Deutteronomy 30: 6, Isaiah 60:21, Jeremiah 50:20, and Ezekiel 36:21). Soon after the days of Jesus, ignorance of God, science, and philosophy filled the earth, and the Dark Ages began.
  • If Jesus was God, why did he pray to and talk to himself?
  • The true Messiah will reign as King of the Jews. Jesus' carrer as a wandering preacher and "faith healer" lasted only three years until he was crucified by the Romans as a common criminal without any official postition or authority whatsoever.
  • One of the Messiah's main tasks is to bring world peace by ending wars and arms manufacturing (Isaiah 2:4). Yet, Christian nations are very war-like, and wars continue to be fought to this day.
  • Mark 13:30 and Matthew 4 states that the prophecies about the Messiah would take place during Jesus' generation, but nothing was accomplished after 2,000 years.
  • Nohwere does the Bible say that the Messiah would come once, die, and return in a "second coming". Such a concept was a Christian concept meant to rationalize Jesus' failure to function in any way as the Messiah or fulfill the Hebrew Bible's prophecies.
  • The Bible says that the Messiah would be descened from King David. If Jesus is the "Son of God", how could he be descened from King David from his father's side?
  • Missionaries constantly and deliberatly distort the meaning of the prophets' words in order to substantiate their claims; for example, the Hebrew term in Isaiah , "almah" means "young woman", not "virgin". Honest Christian scholars now admit this is a "pious fraud", and they translate the word correctly in the "Reverse Standard Version" of the Bible.
  • If Jesus' raising from the dead was so important to demonstrate who he was, why did it take place in secret instead of in the presence of his "thousands' of followers?
  • Jesus claimed that he didn't intend to change the laws of Moses (Matthew 5), but he later abrogated some of the laws, and his followers later abolished or changed nearly all of them; for example, Christians still eat pork and fail to celebrate Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanna despite what the Torah says. The Torah constantly says that its laws are eternal, and they can't be abolished or changed.
  • Judaism believes that God is eternal, above, and beyond time. He can't be born, die, suffer, "become flesh", or be divivded into sections ("Father, Son, and Holy Ghost").
  • If Jesus was the Messiah, why does the New Testiment admit that not one of the rabbis of the time accept his claim? Why did all the educated men and prominent men reject him?
  • If Jesus was the Messiah, why did most of his own people, the Jews of that time, reject him, including his own family? Why did his followers consist almost completely of a handful of poorly educated people?
  • Jesus ordered his followers to preach to the Jews only, not the Gentiles (Matthew 10), but his followers did the exact opposite. He clearly considered himself th Messiah of the Jews only, but he is accepted by foreign nations, and not the Jews.
  • The purpose of the Messiah is to bring us to the day when all the Jews will observe the Torah and to teach it to all humankind who will accept its truths. Nowhere in the Torah does it state that the Messiah will abolish it. The Torah is eternal.
  • Nowhere in the Torah does it state that forgivness of a person's sins can be brought about by someone else's death. Each man isaccountable for his own sins, and each man must repent of his own sins by changing his ways and seeking God's forgiveness.
  • Matthew 1 and Luke 3 both give different accounts of Jesus being descended from King David through his father Joseph.
  • If Jesus was the "Son of God", why did he say on the cross, "My God, my God, why did thou foresake me?" instead of "My Father"?
• 

  patio34

  Hi William Penwell,

  I've read several books on the historicity of Jesus Christ and feel that he was invented by the early Christians to support what had already been written. The writers presented some powerful arguments such as: Paul not once quoted any of the gospels, never referred to an earthly Jesus, and actually seemed unaware of anything but a mystical Jesus. Of course there was much, much more.

  Some other books I have were Jesus the Greatest Story Ever Sold, and, oh well, I can't remember the books and am too disinterested to go look. But you get the drift.

  Someone on this thread referred to a Josephus writing, which is the only, I think, clear non-Biblical mention of an actual man, Jesus. I didn't look it up, but in the book I read, it showed the part that mentioned Jesus and it appears to many scholars this was added at a later date.

  Anyway, I don't much care at this point. I read those books in the first two years after leaving JWs.

  James Thomas, I respectfully disagree so MUCH with what you wrote about people being unable to change what they were raised with. For one, I was raised Catholic, became a JW for 28 years and easily left when I became convinced that neither were possible. Intellect is very powerful once it becomes convinced.

  Cheers,

  Patio
• 

  patio34

  Oh, another important point I remember from my time of reading that genre of books was from a book called Mideastern Mythology and the Bible or something like that.

  It made a well-known (but not to JWs, haha) point that the prophecy of the Messiah being born of a virgin was not from the Bible at all. Matthew was using the Septuagint version which had mistranslated Isaiah where it said "Look the woman will give birth . . . " The Greek mistakenly used "virgin" here and so the writer of Matthew conveniently said Jesus was born of a virgin.

  Sorry, I'm not looking up all the references, but if anyone is interested, it's a pretty well-known discrepancy. I don't recall the WTBS ever addressing that problem.

  Pat
• 

  flower

  Flower, have we really escaped the Matrix? Many ex-Witnesses are still Christians, a infinitesimal change of identity within the universe. A few others perhaps have changed to other beliefs: Buddhist, Wicca, New Age, or some other, or now call themselves atheists, a belief in not-believing. Little has changed.

  I disagree, A LOT changes when you leave the jw's!

  Even in the movie Matrix, when Neo escapes he is still the same guy. He never escapes from who he believes himself to be, so much as changes superficial situations.

  I dont understand. Why would he need to change who he believes himself to be. The only thing that has changed is his 'truth'. Who we are is always going to be tied up into how we were raised and what we beleived to be truth during our childhood and while we were being raised. But its not like when that fake 'truth' is gone there is nothing left of us.

  We are programmed very early with fundamental beliefs about who we are and our relationship to the universe. We rarely question any of it; and just because one day we call ourselves a Jehovah's Witness, and the next day an Atheist, does not mean our core fundamental beliefs have changed. They haven't.

  Again, I dont understand. Of course if we call ourselves a jw one day and then call oursleves an athiest our core fundabmental beliefs have changed! In one case our core belief is that there is a God and in the other case there is none. I dont get what you are saying..either it makes no sense at all or its way over my head. lol
• 

  Nan

  Of course everyone has the right to believe.....or not believe in God. It's called free will. But I've noticed some people "throw out the baby with the bath water", and turn away from God altogether. I understand the bitterness some people must feel after being "spiritually raped" by the WTS. But, didn't Jesus WARN us that there would be deceptive false prophets walking this earth? It's not His fault you chose the wrong path. You were deceived. Please think about this...... and don't let this cult come between you and a rich relationship with the Lord.

  Nan
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  flower

  I dont believe my view of God or religion is 'throwing the baby out w/the bath water'. Its more like...'reading the bible without the watchtower organizations publications and realizing its full of unbelievably sickening accounts of murder, rape, child abuse, slavery and lies all condoned by the God of the bible.

  Personally, even if I did believe the God of the bible was real I wouldnt follow, serve or try to please someone with such wicked tendencies. I would rather die myself than kill an innocent child for something his great great grandfather or mother did.

  but hey, thats just me. ;)
• 

  JamesThomas

  I dont get what you are saying..either it makes no sense at all or its way over my head. lol

  Chances are extremely good -- that it makes no sense at all. j
• 

  ThiChi

  I have not seen any convincing evidence that Jesus did not exist. Please present evidence he did not exist. A search here will show historical evidence presented that points to the existance of Jesus. "Non Nobis Domine Non Nobis"
• 

  2escaped lifers

  I have not seen any convincing evidence that Jesus did not exist. Please present evidence he did not exist.

  With all due respect, that is some really strange logic. That's like saying "provide convincing evidence that fairies don't exist." You can't provide "evidence" that something DOESN'T exist. You can, however, attempt to find, unearth, discover, or reveal "evidence" that something (or in this case someone) DID exist. And therein lies the problem with Jesus. The only known evidentiary data that he DID exist is the mention of him by name in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus. However, as somone in this thread has already pointed out, that piece of evidence has been called into question by various scholars.

  Therefore, it is a FACT that there is NO reliable "evidence" that proves Jesus was a real person.

  Hence, the skeptical disbelief of so many here on the forum. However, if you want to believe in fairies, whether or not we can prove they don't exist, is entirely up to you.

  Best regards,

  Brandon
• 

  gitasatsangha

  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as Sagan used to say.

  Saying there was a dude in Pax-Augustus Galiliee named Jesus aint something that needs to be proved. There was probably tons of them.

  Saying a certain one raised people from the dead, converted H20 into ethyl alcohol and grape juice, cast demons from demoniacs (a disease which is strangely eradicated nowadays), cured blindness with spit, cured heavy menstration with his skirt, violated the laws of thermodynamics by turning one fish into a bunch of fish (ditto with bread), forced pigs into suicide, demonstrated water striding, visited long dead prophets, demonstrated weather control, was himself raised from the dead, flew up into the sky, AND had all this recorded down perfectly posthumously be three people who knew him, and one that didn't.. that requires extraordinary evidence.

  Or perhaps it doesn't, if believing in Jesus helps you in your life, or more importantly if the things he taught help you. It's all about what makes you happy, in the end. Who Jesus is, inasmuch as what is important to most people, tends to change with the ages.