Johnny Skeptic

It is interesting to note that if Lee Merrill's challenge had any merit, at least one prominent Christian would be making it, but not ANY prominent Christians have made the challenge. Not only that, but in past debates regarding the Babylon prophecy, Lee refused to produce ONE SINGLE corroborative scholarly source, EVEN A FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIAN SCHOLARLY SOURCE.

It is also interesting to note that Lee Merrill cannot produce one single Bible commentary that interprets Isaiah 13:19-20 the way that he does. Consider the following:

Believer's Bible Commentary, by William MacDonald

That flatly contradicts what Lee Merrill claims.

http://www.raptureready.com/rr-iraq.html

The article says that "Some [Bible scholars] believe that [Babylon] will be rebuilt on the very real estate once occupied by ancient Babylon." That also flatly contradicts what Lee Merrill claims.

It is quite odd that even though Lee Merrill is the challengee, he has never delivered his challenge to the challengees, the Iraqis. As far as I know, this is unprecedented, issuing a challenge to parties (skeptics) who have no authority to accept the challenge. Why is Lee so bashful. Why didn't he contact the Iraqi government years ago?

What benefits would the Iraqis derive if they spent billions of dollars and years of time rebuilding Babylon? Would more than a relative handful of Christians give up Christianity and become Muslims? There is no credible evidence that that would happen.

Would the U.S. government be willing to deliver Lee's challenge to the Iraqi government at the same time that the U.S. government is trying to bring stability to Iraq? Well of course not, which proves that the U.S. government does not believe that there are any benefits that the U.S. could derive from making the challenge.

Readers can be assured that it is Lee Merrill's intention to limit debates to the Internet and avoid any contact with the Iraqi government, the U.S. government, Muslim scholars, Liberal Christian scholars, and fundamentalist Christian scholars. No Christian who really believed that he had a good case to make would exclude all of those parties. If I was defending Lee's position, I would have contacted all kinds of people in order to find corroborative support for my arguments.

Johnny Skeptic

Why would God want to predict the future?

ktsai

Ahhh, he wouldn't cause he would already know. But I'm sure that the apologetics would use an argument like, "so we can know His infinite wisdom and powers." If that was the case, then he could just show us...in the literal sense, not the vague prophetic sense. Unless people still consider natural disaters an act of God. Kind of malicious don't you think?

TheInerrantWord

I always liked the prophesies that predicted things that were absolutely physically so improbable that only Yahweh could do it. Like the plagues of Egypt and such. Now THERE's a prophesy. No messing around with "okay, guys its not so bad, our god's better than their god, so .. okay.. someday our god is going to get around to punishing them.. because they're.. uh.. evil. Yeah"

No, Moses got serious. "Check this, Pharoah. Seriously. If you don't let my people go, I'm serious now.. it's going to RAIN FUCKING FROGS!" That was awesome. And then it rained frogs. Now there's a good demonstration of your god's powers!

The fall of Babylon? Meh. Kind of pedestrian by comparison.

ktsai

I just received another question from my friend:
This is of course assuming that the accounts in the bible are accurate. I guess this is supposed to be proof of the resurrection. Anyhow, I did a search and found that in Mark 16:1-5, when Mary Magdalene, and Mary the [mother] of James, and Salome arrived at the tomb, the stone was rolled away already and there was a "young man" sitting there. Could this "young man" have taken the body?

Any extra input and help here will be much appreciated. Thanks.

TheInerrantWord

Is there a prophesy involved, or are you going off topic in your own thread?

Anyway, no. Jesus had something of a weight problem. The boy could never have carried his body off by himself. Everybody knows that. Geez.

Lucretius

Even if we were for the sake of argument accept the idea that Rome= Babylon then I am sure I have seen U.S Marine guards at the U.S Embassy in Rome .

Toto

Your friend should read Acts 1 more carefully. After Jesus supposedly rose from the dead, leaving an empty tomb, there was a period of 40 days when he stayed with the disciples, presumably getting them to finally understand the message that they couldn't get in Mark. He then ascended to heaven, and it was only after that when the disciples chose a replacement and started preaching the Holy Spirit.

After 40 days, a body has decomposed to the point where it cannot be identified.

I don't think this is a true story, of course, but your friend believes in the Bible.

In fact, the earliest Christians propably believed in a spiritual resurrection of Jesus as a spirit, leaving his body behind. A dead body would do nothing to disprove this.

-Jay-

(Bold mine.)

That's a pretty generous assumption.

Start with the observation that all four resurrection accounts in the Gospels are different. They're so different, in fact, as to be mutually exclusive.

As your friend to explain how he harmonizes all four.

regards,

NinJay

lee_merrill

But a prediction that it cannot be rebuilt or reinhabited is astonishing, for we can try this. That's like God saying there will never be inhabitants just south of Dallas--if I was wanting to test the existance the supernatural, I'd get busy on this and see what happened, especially if there were two people in two separate instances who tried and failed, that's evidence this might be a good test with a clear result one way or the other.

P.S. I'm sorry I can't get to everyone's questions, I'm running short on time, and also I do want to keep the discussion focused.