Hallandale

As Jesus traveled around Israel preaching he was
often asked to provide a "sign".
When asked for a sign, he answered..[Matthew 16:4]
"""An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign;
and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah."
And He left them and went away.

By the "sign of Jonah", Jesus was referring to his future
death and resurrection.
But carefully notice who Jesus was speaking to when
he predicted his future death and resurrection.
""An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign""
Jesus was not speaking to his apostles and disciples.
Jesus was speaking to all the non-believers who heard
his message and asked for a "sign".

So after Jesus died and supposedly was resurrected,
how come the only people who see him are his own
followers.
He promised the ""evil and adulterous generation""
a "sign", but he never provided one.

The evil generation that was promised a "sign" has
died without seeing the sign that was promised them.
Doesn't this failure make Jesus a false prophet?
Doesn't this failure really prove that the resurrection
of Jesus was just wishful thinking, and imagination,
by his followers who were disappointed by his
death.

Nick Hallandale
enterprisestrategy@earthlink.net

Zeichman

Paul as an "evil" individual having seen the risen Jesus seems like an objection which apologists would make.

mdarus

You are asking for a lot. You need Jesus to appear to unbelievers in such a way that these unbelievers do not suddenly become believers and spoil the whole targeted intent! Saul was a good example of how this could go wrong. Darn, every time he appears to a doubter, their doubt vanishes and the proof of his resurrection is diminished!

Hallandale

A "Sign" is something you can see.
Paul didn't see the risen Jesus.....he only said he heard a voice.
Acts 9:3-7 KJV.....
3And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:

4And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

5And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

6And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.

7And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.

Paul only heard a voice he did not see Jesus.
He did not know whose voice it was. (''Who art thou, Lord? ")
At Acts 9:7 KJV, Paul says that his traveling companions heard the voice..("And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.")
But Paul clarifies what the men traveling with him heard at Acts 22:9 KJV.......
("And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.")
So in one telling of the story, Paul's companions heard the voice ......and in another telling of the story, Paul's companions did not hear the voice. When details like this contradict each other it casts doubt on the truth of the whole story.
But in any event, Paul did not SEE the supposedly risen Jesus, he only claimed to hear a voice.......A voice he did not recognize......but even if Paul would have seen Jesus....how would he have known him if he never met Jesus before?

Nick Hallandale
enterprisestrategy@earthlink.net

Hallandale

THE EMPTY TOMB
When trying to prove that Jesus was resurrected, Christians have always relied on the empty tomb as proof that Jesus was resurrected.
If a body were missing from a mortuary, would you assume that miraculously the dead body was resurrected and the deceased had gone on his way? I seriously doubt it.
My cousin, Kathy, moved to California, and wanted to move the body of my uncle from a cemetery in New Jersey to one in California close to where she was now residing. She went through a lot of legal haggling and eventually secured a court order to move the body. When they dug where the body was supposed to be, the coffin and body were missing. You may have read about this in your newspaper when my cousin sued. My family jokes about Uncle Ed being resurrected, and my Aunt Peggy claims she saw him in the stands while watching a football game on TV, but nobody seriously believes that he is walking around somewhere wearing the new suit he was buried in.

Yet this is the type of evidence that Christians present to prove that Jesus rose from the dead.
Don't you expect extraordinary evidence to prove extraordinary claims?
Or do you believe that Jesus and my uncle Ed are alive and hanging together at football games?

Boro Nut

By the mechanism of cartoon, whereby the forbidden images of long dead prophets are immediately recognisable. This is similar to the mechanism of smokey bacon, whereby companies are sued for putting forbidden flavours in wrongly labelled potato snacks.

Boro Nut

Hallandale

Let's take a look at the Bible and learn more about that empty tomb.

Jesus is buried.....Matthew 27:57-61KJV
57When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple:

58He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered.

59And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth,

60And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.

61And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.

So what happened the NEXT DAY?......Matthew 27:62-66
62Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate,

63Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again.

64Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first.

65Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can.

66So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.

As you can see if you are reading along carefully, Jesus was placed in the tomb. Joseph of Arimathaea rolled the stone over the door of the tomb all by himself, and then left. On the next day, the Jews requested a guard on the tomb, and the tomb was sealed. FOR ONE WHOLE NIGHT THE TOMB WAS UNGUARDED AND NOT SEALED. It would have been easy for just one man to remove Jesus' body and set the stone back in place by himself. Christians often exaggerate the size of the stone that was placed over the mouth of the tomb. They inflate the size and weight so that you can imagine that the equivalent of a fork lift truck was needed to move the stone. But Matthew 27:60 KJV says that Joseph of Arimathaea, all by himself, "rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed. "


An empty tomb is only evidence that the body was removed. That's all

Chili

But we look with our eyes and see with our mind. In the same way do we listen with our ears but hear with our mind and so this would be where the sign of Jonah is perceived.

For Jonah it was to feel guilty without a direct cause since he had paid for his fare and was asleep at the bottom of the ship when the tempest of life came his way.

Magdalene facing the tomb next to Mary is what sealed the tomb wherein lay the impostor-without-cause in the absence of Magdalene who is the reason to impose something that he was not. Consider here that the tomb was the tree of knowledge that Magdalene had vacated and here was looking at it from the tree of life.

In the KJV this may be called a deceiver but I think that the word impostor is better because it addresses the identity itself as a deception by which others are deceived.

The final deception would be if this deceiver itself would be raised with status like it was before and that is what the pharisees warned Pilate about. We would call them born again Christians that refuse die and be raised until they finally die.

gstafleu

It is all very well for Jesus to say that "no sign shall be given." In fact in Mark 8:12 he doesn't even promise a Jonah sign:
Exit Jesus in a huff. But after snottily dismissing any sign giving, he then proceeds to give a whole list of them!

That must be rather embarrassing. The "no sign" proclamtion appears multiple times, so it's not just a typo: Matthew 12:38, Matthew 16:4, Mark 8:12, Luke 11:29 (quick search in bible gateway). I couldn't find any in John, so maybe he had smartened up (being the last gospel writer he was perhaps not suffering from the disadvantage of the lead).

Zeichman

Why would it have to be seen? And even so, why wouldn't the blinding light be counted as the risen Jesus? And what about the creed in 1 Cor 15?

I do want to disclaim that I agree that the concept of "resurrection" is a third/fourth generation Christian creation (depending on how you care to define it), but I'm just raising obvious objections that apologists would make for you.