Question about Christianity and Social Media

A Facebook friend posted something that I've probably seen a permutation of a hundred times but it just struck me.

That's the preamble. I'm guessing it's a jab at scientists, doctors, climatologists, and epidemiologists. Not sure what it has to do with the following.

This part sounds like a pretty standard, boilerplate testimony, right? Here's the part that poll axed me...

Did she just copy and paste someone else's testimony as her own, and then challenge people to copy and paste it as their own? Is that kosher? Is she going to Hell for it? What would Jesus say about this?

I love chain spam, especially religious chain spam, because the way it spreads and adapts is a perfect example of evolution in action.

If I'm not too shagged out from work tomorrow, I'll try to provide you an answer for this.

I'm pretty sure it is absolutely not kosher as Jews don't believe in Hell or the rapture


But yeah, these things are so stupid. I hate all copypastas anyway, but the judgy "If you aren't ashamed" one irk me the most.

Smugly sticking it to the other side, classic. Also standard, melodramatic visualization of how the rapture will play out. Ooh, and is that a humblebrag? You know what Jesus told a group of other people who thought they saw while everyone around them were blind, right?

I dunno, I think Satan got that checked off his list a long time ago and is just watching it snowball down the hill now

Also this is just really not something to focus on. We're supposed to work toward bringing God's Kingdom about on Earth, not sit around waiting to be shined up and whisked away like a bunch of fatalistic Calvinists. Maybe Satan inspired this?

Good, good, good, good, good, a bit misattributed on the quote there but it's not like the ancient Israelites ever cared about that either.

A good verse to keep in mind, you see how it implies consequences on how you live your life? Now, what personal course of action did you draw from all that kindergarten stuff you copied and pasted before? You know c+ping spam on Facebook is a useless way to get the Gospel out there, right? Also, if you can't capitalize Bible, you better not be posting angry spam about "Xmas" or "Happy Holidays".

The best in the past five minutes, at least.

Hahahah fooool, I guilt-trip myself over much more important things than this every day, your passive aggression has no effect on me

And then feel the happy chemicals flow as a reward for defying Man's corrupt nature and striking a blow for Jesus by boxing up the Word and putting it on social media . . . until two minutes later when you see a news item that gets you angry.

As you say, it's pretty boilerplate, and therefore she can do it but it's pretty useless for spreading the Gospel or for setting any souls on fire in a good way. Sort of a millennial Apostle's Creed as written by a hack. And at this point, Jesus would tell me "Judge not, lest ye be judged" so I will leave it there.

Faith without works is dead, and testimony without personal experience isn't feeling so good either. Especially in this day and age, when we've been trained more and more to look for emotional experiences over dry education, and to trust a friend's word over some boring expert on the TV. There's not one bit of personal experience in this, and no push beyond the basics into reformation of one's life, so the only people who will care are the people who already know its contents and will get nothing from it.

Consider this a warning: you spend too much time on facebook and have questionable taste in friends.

That said, isn't this pretty much standard evangelical doctrine? Unlimited get out of jail free cards, just accept bla bla bla...

As I understand it, the modern version of "the rapture" is based on a pretty severe misinterpretation of scripture anyway, so I'm not particularly concerned.

I've taken a break from Facebook because of stuff like this. It's become nothing but your grandmother's endless stream of forwarding stupid e-mails writ large. The mantra, said jokingly, is that "if it's on Facebook, it must be true." That's not the case. The truth is that, "it agrees with my world view, so it's true, regardless of the source."

American Cultural Christianity =/= Historic Biblical Christianity

The idea of a "Rapture" as we know it today was introduced by Darby in the 1830's and was made popular in the US by the Schofield Reference Bible in the first quarter of the 20th Century. The eschatology is called "Pre-Tribulation Dispensationalism."

They believe that Christ will return and remove his Church (the "rapture"). There will then be a 7 year long "tribulation" culminating in Armageddon where Christ will return a second time, judge the living and the dead, and set up a literal 1,000 year kingdom on a new earth before returning to heaven with all of the believers for eternity.

I can find zero evidence for this in the Bible. Therefore, I hold to the historic view called Amillenialism. I believe that Christ will return, once. I believe the events described in 1st Thessalonians 4:13-18 (specifically 16 & 17 ) and Revelation 19:11-16 are talking about the same event.

Isn't this the way it's supposed to go?

thank god for wikipedia.

Not that I disagree with you, but let me splain.

No, is too much. Let me sum up.

I hold the belief that anyone who claims to know the Maker's plan is acting on human conceit and nothing else. A finite being cannot comprehend an infinite one. Therefore, anyone who says "God is gonna do . . . " is almost certainly wrong.

Not that I disagree with you, but isn't "one" a little limiting? It might be a committee.

And you have just provided a perfect example of a finite being attempting to comprehend an infinite one.

I'll go one better. You're almost right. The Bible does not contain everything there is to know about God. We, as finite humans, can not possibly understand the completeness of an eternal, self-sufficient, Holy Triune Godhead. However, His Word is His "special revelation" to us. It contains everything He needs us to know about Him to accomplish His purposes and to establish His promises and covenants with us.

No. It is a blatant deformation of evangelical doctrine. Unfortunately, it is more and more widespread among evangelicals, so in that sense you are correct.

Evangelicalism started out as a pietist movement in the 19th century, when traditional protestantism was getting into liberal theology. It was a movement that taught that you can "get out of jail" because you choose to turn from sin, let yourself be transformed by Christ, and walk with God in holiness. But like all religions, it degenerated from there.

It is not for nothing that I am a reformist evangelical theologian. The situation among evangelicals here in Europe is vastly different from what it is in the States, but there is still too much "believe in Jesus and you will be healed, prosperous, successful, etc" and not nearly enough "Christ died to make us holy and if becoming holy doesn't interest you, then stop pretending to be a disciple of Jesus".

As for the "rapture" (the idea that all the "true Christians" will suddenly disappear and the world will go on, into the Great Tribulation), that particular doctrine was invented in the 19th century (it has no history whatsoever in Christianity before that time) and it is already dying out very fast. For now, it is holding up better in the States than in Europe, but even in the States its most fervent defenders are all over 50 or 60 years old. In another generation, it will be a footnote in the history of theology, like so many other crazy ideas. It has no basis in the Bible, in any case. (And I say that as someone who was brought up with it and defended it strongly for years, until I got to know the Bible well enough to realize that it just isn't in there.)

An anti-pedophilia commandment couldn't have been squeezed in there?
Or an anti-rape one?
Or how about, oh, I dunno "you're not allowed to own people"?

What, is God like the kill-screen in the final level of Donkey Kong, he runs out of rom, and his Mario just drops dead?

How about something about germs?
That would have come in handy.

"Oh, and there are little bugs you can't see that cause all diseases. You can kill them by washing your hands, and cooking your food really well. Also, don't eat shit, or let shit fall into your food".

There, that didn't even take up a page, did it?

If God needs the disk space, he can toss out the minor prophets.
There's nothing in there worth a damn.
Plenty of real-estate to clear out there.

Everything we need to know, my hairy ass.

You missed the most important word in that sentence. The Bible isn't everything we need to know. It's everything He needs us to know about Him.

The Bible isn't about us. It's about Him. We, even as believers, have a tendency to insert ourselves into biblical settings. This is wrong for a whole host of reasons. But, people read the story of David and Goliath and insert themselves into the story. They then claim that if God puts a Goliath in our path, we must be David. No. You're not David. You slung your stone and missed.

Who says your ass is hairy?

And what we can figure out about him rather easily, is he cares more about false idols than he does about kid rape, or slavery.
I wouldn't let someone like that into my house.

My toilet seat.

Behold the flea, confidently standing on his grain of sand, claiming understanding of the universe. Marvelous, isn't it?

So......

Y2K was suppose to be end of days..... OOPS!


9/11 was suppose to be the beginning of end of days....OOPS!

Barack Obama was suppose to be the Anti-Christ......OOPS!


These fools need to make up their minds.

The ultimate cop-out.
Anything immoral or stupid is "too complex for your puny mind".
For fuck's sake, Lex Luthor used that excuse for being evil in BvS.

I'm on my phone so I'm giving a simple comment here. The rapture theology is much older than Darby. Ephream the Syrian talked about it in the 4th century.

Note that we've been referring to the "modern" version of the Rapture schtick.

Religion is another thing the Ancient Greeks had over us - religion should be viewed, also, as idealism rather than realism. It's the ... drive ... so that we are always reaching to be better.

You mean this?

The rapture is a the biggest retcon of all time.

To be pendantic, that's really Pseudo-Ephrem and it's from the Sixth Century, but the point is valid that at some time before Darby someone was articulating something that sounded a lot like a pre-trib rapture.