The apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians speaks of Christians as people who ‘wait for [God’s] son from heaven…who rescues us from the coming wrath’ (1 Thess 1.10). Later, Paul adds that ‘we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep’ (1 Thess 4.15). He does not say, ‘those who are alive’ (which could refer to some far future and as yet unknown group), but ‘we who are alive’, thus showing his expectation that the Lord will come before Paul’s death. Furthermore, Paul boldly claims that this is ‘the Lord’s own word’ (1 Thess 4.15).
The plain fact is that the end of the world simply did not come before Paul’s hearers had all died. Paul was writing in the 50′s AD and today’s date is 2019. So one can demonstrate empirically that Paul was mistaken.
But why does this matter? Paul said that his teaching was the ‘Lord’s own word’. But if this is the case then the Lord (presumably Jesus) made a mistake and mislead Paul about Jesus’ second coming. Paul therefore thought he had a true word from the Lord but the passing of historical time absolutely disproves this.
A more plausible explanation is that Paul, who had several visions of Jesus, was not in fact receiving truth from Jesus/God but was the victim of his own religious imagination. If this is the case (and the empirical evidence leads to this conclusion) then it puts in serious doubt the authenticity and veracity of Paul’s other visions of Jesus, above all the Damascus Road vision in Acts. So this little problem passage has momentous consequences for Christian belief which rely heavily on the integrity and truthfulness of Paul’s testimony. If Paul was mistaken about the end of the world occurring in the first century then we cannot automatically trust his other claims to have received divine revelation in the rest of his letters.
Here are the verses in their immediate context:
13Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. 14We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18Therefore encourage each other with these words.
Categories: Bible, Christianity
Reblogged this on The Quran and Bible Blog and commented:
Why Paul was not a true apostle.
How can we trust Muhammad who comes 600 years after Jesus death and resurrection and speak sometime about Jesus.
https://youtu.be/X_u-0JErmmk
No evidence of crucifixion never happened.
https://youtu.be/6hTj4JtSt8A
Islam is a pagan religion.
Changing the subject!
I take it that you agree then that the end of the world simply did not come before Paul’s hearers had all died. Paul was writing in the 50′s AD and today’s date is 2019.
So one can demonstrate empirically that Paul was mistaken.
We are waiting for your answer Zozeph Francisco.
😂🤣 Brother Paul, I see you have met Zozo, the inbred monkey. Stew and I have been destroying this loser on my blog. He never stays on topic and always tries to divert and deflect.
You could not defeat me you son of Muta. You could not answer anything. You coward.
🤣😂 Sure, sure monkey. Keep telling yourself that. But why have you run away from answering so many questions? Need I remind you of them, son of Satan?
Bassam Zawadi writes:
One of the most common arguments that Christian missionaries pose to the Muslims is that Islamic teachings allegedly affirm the authenticity and divine nature of the Bible that Christians follow today (I’m not sure if they are referring to the Protestant or Catholic version or both. I guess it depends on with which Christian you are debating.).
There seems to be a misconception amongst Christians. They think that Islam teaches that there once was an original Bible and then the Bible got corrupted. This is not what Islam teaches.
We don’t believe that there was an original book of Philippians or Corinthians, which then later on got corrupted. We don’t even believe that these books are divine in the first place.
What we believe is that parts of the original revelations sent down to Moses (Torah) and Jesus (Gospel) peace be upon them both still exist in the Bible today. We believe that people came and wrote things from their own and claimed that it was from God. They then went and mixed their own writings with the original revelations (Torah and Gospel) and removed and added to them.
The Arabic word most commonly used in the Qur’an and Hadith to state that the Christians and Jews distorted their books is Tahreef.
Evidence That Islam Teaches That There Was Textual Corruption of The Christian and Jewish Scriptures:
https://www.call-to-monotheism.com/evidence_that_islam_teaches_that_there_was_textual_corruption_of_the_christian_and_jewish_scriptures
https://www.answering-islam.org/authors/thompson/rebuttals/zawadi/allahs_words_unchangable.html
https://www.answeringislam.net/authors/shamoun/rebuttals/zawadi/torah_quran.html
https://carm.org/response-rebuttal-matt-slicks-more-questions-muslims-article-pt-2
https://carm.org/response-rebuttal-matt-slicks-more-questions-muslims-article
All that is convincingly refuted here:
https://www.call-to-monotheism.com/does_islam_endorse_the_bible__
Now let’s hear your reply to my article Why Paul could not have been an apostle of God.
Don’t run away from the challenge!
Yes if you read 1 Thessalonians 4:15 “will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep” the verse is very clear about the dead that first the dead will precede. Moreover you quoted the passage that agrees with Jesus Christ being crucified and risen which contridicts to Quran. So you agree with Paul.
Now if Paul really had illusions and was not inspired by God. Then how do you agree with Muhammad who was tricked by Satan and who could not judge between revelation from God and revalation from evil. So you believe in a satanic possessed prophet.
Firstly Paul clearly says ‘we who are still alive’ which includes him. No amount of verbal gymanstics will change that. Quoting Paul doesn’t mean we agree with him. Seriously where do you people come up with these logical fallacies?
Secondly the spell put on the prophet only slightly influenced his memory. That’s it. Revelation doesn’t come from the mind but from God through angel Jibreel so he could be under a spell for life and it still wouldn’t impact the revelation. Where does it say he had difficulties with revelation during the spell?
Thirdly the spell was removed by the Qur’an which if it is satanic doesn’t happen according to your mangod:
Matthew 12:26:
If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand?
So ty for bringing up the spell cus that elevates the prophet since according to your mangod the revelation he brought can’t be satanic.
Zozo can only deflect and use logical fallacies. He is without a doubt one of the dumbest crosstians I have ever seen.
Paul said unmarried Christians should remain unmarries because the “time is short”. What else could that mean other than that the world was about to end?
Hi coward didn’t you tell your wife to breastfeed me. Coward like Muhammad come online and debate me you son of Muta. Do you know who your father is if no then go and ask your mother. Bloody cowards.
Thank you Hanuman for showing yet again what a perverted Indian crosstian you are! What’s with all these sexually-frustrated crosstians lately? 😂
Now, now monkey. Don’t get angry with me. Be angry with yourself and your stupidity. Be angry with your holy spirit for leaving you in your depravity.
We are debating online. I’ve told you this before dummy. You morons can never hold your own in an intellectual discussion that requires thinking, not mouthing off.
But pervert was Muhammad so tell your wife to breastfeed me. Ok
But pervert, that’s just your perverted, sexually-frustrated mind in the gutter. I already schooled you on this.
@zozeph francisco
I’m still waiting for you to get me a slurpee you ganju fuck
Shouldn’t you be driving a taxi or dancing to some Bollywood crap right now?
Leave this forum and go join your Slumdog friends making IRS scam calls
Guys come on. Let’s all calm down and have a respectful dialogue. Surely we’re capable of doing that.
Bro, you know this moron. Do you honestly think he will have a respectful dialogue?
Then he should be banned.
He has now been banned.
Good, now he will go back to my blog for some more roasting. 😁
No you are not
Says the troll who has yet to engage anyone in a meaningful way.
We “who are alive” means alive spiritually, not physically.
That is the first qualification.
The second, to remain, means to be physically alive at the time of Christ’s return.
Carry on making fools of yourselves. It makes for good entertainment.
Oh really Iggy? Let’s put your claim to the test, shall we? And just to make things easier for you, I will use your precious KJV.
“For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.
16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
So, as you can see, those who are “alive” are literally alive, not just “spiritually”. Notice also that the word “spiritually” is no where in the text. You just inserted that on your own. Sola scriptura, anyone?
So, by all means, carry on making a fool of yourself. It makes for good entertainment.
By the way, we are still waiting for evidence that you are not a rapist. And did you get a chance to take a dive in Loch Ness to see if Nessie doesn’t exist? 😉
erAssmus :
The top reply was from /u/Tsegen who, adding to the texts that QTCicero cited, also mentions two others that are strongly suggestive of Jesus’ imminent return: Romans 13:11 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. The latter verse wasn’t discussed. As for the former verse, this is to be understood as something like “the hour has come for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than it was when we first became believers.”
In response to this, /u/Precaseptica noted “Unless you read it as the salvation you would receive through the church, which was indeed started in the 1st century.” And certainly, quite a few Christians throughout history have read “salvation” this way, or similarly. But most contemporary Biblical scholars disagree (Moo, 823; Fitzmyer, 682-83; Jewett, 821; Hultgren, 490). For one, Paul’s injunction for his addresses to remain awake and vigilant is most naturally connected with other related traditions throughout the New Testament—not least of which some of Paul’s own, like 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11—which also encourage wakefulness in a clearly eschatological context. Paul thought that Christians had already attained some preliminary kind of salvation, in the Church: something that they were to carefully hold onto as they awaited their ultimate eschatological salvation.[1]
Together, Romans 13:11 suggests that before those in Paul’s church converted to Christianity—and Paul groups himself with them, too, in his use of “we”—salvation was somehow already “near” to them, temporally speaking; but now there would be even less time between their current status and their ultimate eschatological salvation than there was between their pre-Christian life and their conversion: thus Paul’s language of this being even “nearer” to them than before, ἐγγύτερον. This is why, for example, in his commentary on this verse, C. K. Barrett wrote that “[t]he lapse of time between the conversion of Paul and of his readers and the moment of writing is a significant proportion of the total interval between the resurrection of Jesus and his parousia at the last day”—the resurrection of Jesus presumably being when salvation first came “near.”
This may have a striking parallel in 4 Ezra 4:5, where Ezra asks if the amount of time from his current time until the eschaton would be greater or less than that which has “already passed.” (As for Romans 13:11, Andrew Perriman is even more specific in his estimate of what sort of time-frame Paul was thinking of: that it “must be measured in relation to a period of no more than about twenty years.”)
Yes, Paul destroyed the Torah, which is unto Yehovah.
Yehovah says that,
“Recall the day of cessation to set him apart. {Within} six days, you shall work and you shall do all your business. But, the seventh day is a cessation for Yehovah your power. You shall not do all businesses. You, and sons of you, and daughters of you, and servants of you, and maids of you, and cattle of you and converts of you, who are in your gateways {shall not do all business on that day}. As, {within} six days, Yehovah made the skies, the land, the sea and everything in them {within} six days and he calmed down on the seventh day. So, Yehovah hath blessed the day of cessation and he set him apart… (Exodus 20:8-11)”
Sadly, Paul the apostle claimed that “Now, after ye have known “God”, how turn ye again unto the weak and worthless elements, unto which you desire to be enslaved to all over again??” in Galatians 4:9-10. So, Paul rejected Sabbath-observance.
So, “Christians” reject Sabbath-observance by claiming that:
1) Sunday is the day of cessation, since the resurrection of “Jesus” fell on a Sunday.
2) Only the Jews must be Sabbath-observers.
3) Any day in the period, which contains seven days, is a day of cessation.
4) Saturday is not the day of cessation.
5) “Jesus” is our Sabbath.