Julio

LOL!
Perfect, lovely & beautiful.
You are a decent poet.
Loved it!

Julio

Good points, of course.
But I abhor gospels in code!
Sorry; it's just me.
The gospel writer should have thought of those who want the story told in straight lines.

Julio

You see, the angel healed one of the sick every six months, from the day when there was only ONE at the pool, always losing ground to the Enemy:
now hundreds were waiting, and this [untrustworthy] angel wouldn’t accelerate the process!
Or was it a GAME he played for his own pleasure, at the expense of HUMAN SUFFERING?
Angels like that one are a dishonour to their union, I say.
They should be demoted and ostracised to the outskirts of the Big Bang.
We do not need such angels in our universe; how are the other ones like?
But Jesus lied again to the Pharisees, because of two clear aspects:
one, none of those around him and the future readers of this story had ever seen such a “Father” (they knew another god, their nasty one, called Jehovah – also “Invisible Vacuum”), and two, why then wouldn’t that Father finish the job quickly and honourably?
Why were there at the pool so MANY sick people, waiting for some weird angel to “agitate” the waters and give a chance to just one to be healed?!
What sort of plan was that from the Almighty in mercy and a God of love?!!
Who designed this “mechanism”?

Julio

This story is utterly discredited by Higher Criticism, mainly because of the “problem” of verse four.
"For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had."
It is found that the verse was some later gloss or interpolation to sort of complete the sequence.
Well, if that verse (like in many other cases in the NT) wasn’t “genuine” scripture, not only the story is false and thus not Holy Scripture, but also discredits the entire New Testament.
Do you wonder why so many leave the faith after discovering such facts?
Simply because by STUDYING the Bible they arrive at the most disconcerting conclusion:
that is, the text is not to be trusted; a scholarly finding, though the Bible was NOT written for the intellectual and well-learned.
It appears that Jesus came here telling LIES to innocent, naïve and superstitious folk.
Or maybe he never did or said anything John concocted from his weird brain, when he was in his late eighties, suffering from memory deterioration, after a life of religious trauma.
How come God was working at the pool with so many sick people in the waiting list, unless we have to believe such satirical stuff in order to be accepted into the kingdom of heaven?…
Some translations say “multitudes” of the sick lay around the pool, a place in terrible disarray and dirty, where SHEEP came to drink and defecate (verse 2).
Imagine the blind walking over all that stuff, even falling on it?
Wouldn’t the angel help those first?
Imagine the smell around the area, with all that excrement and urine [not only from sheep]!
“In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralysed.”, John 5:3 (RSV).
According to Jesus, God was “working” on the problem, and only that particular SATURDAY could he take care of ONE of those hundreds of sick people – finally sorting out the problem after 38 years!
How would God define “a problem”; what’s “a problem” in God’s mind?
Did that Jesus tell the truth about the Father?
I firmly believe that such a “job” was never finished; neither there nor anywhere in the world: an incompetent Father we have here!
How can we honestly believe in his future promises?!
That is, the number of the sick dwindled eventually – many dying on the spot [in winter] – for they had to realise that the trick didn’t work out well for everybody.
Besides, Jerusalem – the eternal city of peace, the headquarters of Jehovah’s best plan – ended up completely destroyed sometime later, the magic pool emptied of its precious water [and stench!] and filled with rubble.
Do you still believe in miracles?

Chili

Never mind Higher Criticiism, I know their stuff . . . .Julio, just to give you a scope of reference:

The reality of this Sheep Pool is just opposite to "Billy Graham" style 'dunking' based on John 3:16 where the evangelist is litterally jerking on peoples spiritual hymen and fornicating those who succumb . . . litterally raping their 'essence of being' and so robbing them of eternal life.

Nobody died in the Sheep pool allegory nor in Billy Graham style crusades. The only difference is that the Sheep Pool brough eternal life to those who received attendance while in crusades (altar calls) those who go for attendance get spiritually fornicated (= fucked in the head?)

Chili

Remember: "where the carcass lies the vulchers will gather" . . . . patrolling our steets with 'two by two's' because they know that desperate people often stay home to ponder their sorrows.

Oh and then there is this millstone passage that should be added and then hear that these same flat earthers want to protect the whales to make sure that there is one around so that JC can come back.

Julio

Chili, you are a genius, you really are!
Great comments.
...
"...vulchers..."?

Julio

But again, why had Jesus to upset and confront the religious Pharisees with a Saturday miracle?
Was it one miracle one problem?
When Jesus told the Pharisees that his Father had been at work HEALING the sick [at the pool] he really messed it up with no chance of recovering.
How could his Almighty Father have been at work and the sick were all still there and growing in number?!
If one God could not do the job with precision and honours, would two?
Three years later, at Pentecost the sad news arrived with more victims:
NO, neither the Father nor his Son managed to fulfil the originally marvellous-to-be promises of the prophets; all ended up in the hands of a special elite of MERCHANTS, doing merchandise with FEAR and superstition, said one of the benefactors (2 Peter 2:3).
Horrible, if you ask me.
I would like to ask this weird Jesus (there are two different ones in the gospels) why he wouldn’t heal ALL those unfortunates right there in front of him; oh, yes, I would.
What excuse do you think the Lord could offer?
The next question would be why on earth did he decide to heal that particular person on the Sabbath?
Didn’t he know that the Pharisees would be terribly upset?
Where was his wisdom to act in love and understanding?
”Blessed are the peacemakers” and WHAT?!
Oh, the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus’ inobservance thereof.
Why teasing the Pharisees those rabid dogs and swine (Matthew 7:6)?
Why not build a better world, where divine power would heal ALL the sick at the pool some other day to avoid unnecessary confrontation and eventually another crucifixion of an innocent agitator, and instead promote good human relations everywhere?
Healing ALL on the next Monday morning would create a better world for all of us.
The sick could hold on another forty-eight hours, what the hell!

Julio

Jesus was God, wasn’t he?
So! Come on!
Isn’t this world in a moral mess and many sick and wounded?
If the idea was to heal to demonstrate real divine love, oh heavens of mercy!, let us have a job properly executed.
Don’t send us down here an amateur Christ, for Christ’s sake!
Nobody had to mock God’s inability to “heal the brokenhearted and set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18).
Healing one sick man in Jerusalem in the first century wasn’t a big deal: any other proletarian christ could do better!
That shows us how dangerous some messiahs are.
Why provoke instead of pacifying?
You can clearly see the IMMATURITY of this “Jesus” in this APOCRYPHAL fable.
Now, don’t you again go around town calling the Bible the precious word of God, fully inspired and inerrant; don’t, please; you’re unwarrantedly fooling yourself.

Julio

That shows us how dangerous some messiahs are.
Why provoke instead of pacifying?
You can clearly see the IMMATURITY of this “Jesus” in this APOCRYPHAL fable.
Now, don’t you again go around town calling the Bible the precious word of God, fully inspired and inerrant; don’t, please; you’re unwarrantedly fooling yourself.
The healed man had been sick for 38 years, and later when Jesus finds him in the Temple tells him to sin no more because something nastier would happen to him the next time.
This “Jesus” (John invented, here) advertised the nastiest Jehovah of the Old Testament. Do you see the message in this warning?
For thirty-eight years that poor man had been punished for some whatever [undisclosed] sin he did in his younger days, after which he could sin no more due to his handicapping for life, but now Jesus is telling him God would punish him even more if he sinned again.
“Oh, no! Not another 38 years by the dirty pool, NO!”
Why was God worried with that poor soul, if in the next twenty centuries MILLIONS more would upset the same deity without much punishment?
To accept Jesus’ words we would need to know exactly what that sin had been; but the Bible is ALWAYS short on detail.
And now we have a history of millions of evil people who never got any disadvantage in this life, neither had to “wait for the moving of the waters” – how’s that for divine injustice!
Later, Jesus would contradict this “teaching” when he healed the blind man who was born blind for God’s glory: “Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him”, John 9:3.
“WORKS OF GOD?!!”
Of a merciful God, who lets an innocent child be born blind for a future publicity stunt of the Saviour?!
Oh, my goodness!
What’s going on here?!
Couldn’t God find a better way without attacking us?!
Look at the horror: one is born blind, INNOCENT, with no sin, because years later the Saviour of the blind will need a miracle stunt to impress the spectators [at the expense of that INNOCENT child]; while another unfortunate is made blind because of some undisclosed sin he did in his youth, and threatened with something more horrible if he relapses again.
Who therefore sinned the most: the man or God?
Please, scratch this passage from your Bible; it wasn’t a dignified miracle.