Magus55

No im saying it was common in that period of time for people to claim to be the Messiah, however, when they died - their followers disbanded because they had nothing left to hold onto. Jesus was different - the Apostles didn't go back to their Jewish tradition, they continued to spread Jesus' message and teach that He was the Son of God - and they faced execution for it. You don't teach a lie that will lead to your death just for the heck of it. They didn't believe[/b] Jesus to be the Son of God - they [i[knew he was, because by coming back a live - they had a leader that wasn't lying to them and came through on His promise.

Magus55

Mageth, the mention of Mohammed and Roman Empire was a typo - I meant wasn't under the authority - and I changed it right afterward. Mohammed didn't have an oppresive government hindering the spread of Islam - Jesus did. The Roman Empire didn't want Christianity to spread, yet it still succeeded - something no other religion has ever done in history.

Thor Q. Mada

Oh my,

I hope I am not sitting in an airplane when the pilot is suddenly gone!!

Thor Q. Mada

Hey,hey, Magus55,

wait a minute, the Roman Empire was politically oppressive, but not religiously oppresive at jesus time. And in fact the jewish state was such a small and insignicficant part of the empire, that jesus never made headlines in rome so to speak until much later. The romans actually adopted all foreign gods into their culture. Persecution came only much later after the xians made a nuissance of themselves. After that they quickly learned to invade the power brokers, and became part of the establishment so they could start persecuting others.
You must have been looking a "Quo Vadis" to many times.

Calzaer

Prove it.

You have yet to even begin to prove that he lived, much less died.

Prove it.

winstonjen

Hang on. You Christians and other theists don't want atheism to spread, and yet it is, in many cases taking followers from your own ranks.

Stephen T-B

Magus: You do realise, don’t you, that the early Christian belief that God was about to wrap everything up and come in Glory to rule the Earth was a very important factor in persuading people that time wasn’t on their side and that they’d better hurry up and confess Christ because tomorrow it might be too late?

You do realise, don’t you, that Christ’s first followers believed his message that the Kingdom of God was at hand and that they’d very likely see it in their liftetimes - not knowing, of course, anything about tribulations and raptures and the Anti-Christ and the Mark of the Beast because at that stage the revelations of Revelations hadn’t been revealed - not even to Jesus Christ.
Odd, that, don’t you think - him being the Son of God?

That was near-on 2,000 years ago, and “The End is Nigh,” has been a recurrent theme for some Christians ever since, and every single one of them has been disappointed.

Let me guess: you are saying to yourself: “But this time it’s real.” As indeed Christians will continue to think for as long as there are Christians, which won’t be as long as there are yeasts and bacteria and stars and galaxies and black holes and comets and asteroids and all the other things in the universe, which were not known about by Jesus Christ (despite being God) or the author of Revelations. Think about it, Magus, how will the Kingdom of God change things in Andromeda, for instance?

Mageth

The Roman Empire didn't want Christianity to spread, yet it still succeeded - something no other religion has ever done in history.

Are you saying that no other religion in History has ever successfully spread ( ) or that no other religion has ever successfully spread due to opposition?

The first is obviously not true, the second I would seriously question (Mormonism and the Protestant Reformation being two obvious examples).

Besides, how successful would Christianity be today if Constantine wouldn't have made it the official religion of his empire in the Fourth Century??? It's hard to say; maybe it would be the major religion it is today through some other path, or maybe it would have have been swept into the dustbin of history.

Radcliffe Emerson

And I think anyone who believes supernatural, religious bull is a moron, and chimps are probably smarter.
Anyway, these people have hired one really evil guy they know won't be raptured to send the emails. They've told him all their money will be laying around after they're gone for him to pick up.

As for the apostles, those are tales also, pure myth. The alleged 'gospels' were written decades after Jesus supposedly existed. Paul is the earliest writer, and he mentions very little that is mentioned decades later in the other gospels.
The only way someone could rise from the 'dead' is if they were in a coma.
And it's been learned through archaeology and other venues that the Romans left bodies on the wood until they were completely rotted away, then threw them to dogs to be eaten, which is why only one crucified skeletal remains has ever been found. And the Romans did not allow ANYONE to remove the bodies, especially for religious reasons. IF someone named Jesus was crucified, the Romans wouldn't have cared squat for a Jewish person wanting the body because of a religous holiday.
Paul doesn't mention a physical resurrection because there wasn't one. And this info comes to me from a friend who attended a Methodist seminary, where they officially taught him this stuff. They said it's myth, but congregations don't want to hear that it's not true.
Which is why he left the seminary and abandoned Christianity as a faith.
Of course, Christians will say "Well those are people controlled by Satan teaching false beliefs."
Yeah right.

And speaking of Constantine, what about the earliest beliefs of Christians, that were largely stamped out by him as being heretical? Having the Council of Nicea VOTE on the Trinity? Then forcing it on people? That's man-driven if anything ever was.
90% of what Christian churches now require people to believe (virgin birth, resurrection, miracles, eternal torment,to name a few), were NEVER mentioned by the earrliest Christian followers.
They were NOT early beliefs. Several of the earliest communites were Universalist, they did NOT believe in eternal hell.
That was also voted in at the Council of Nicea, as well as the so-called 'divinely inspired' books that now make up the bible.
Well, except for the Apocrypha, which the Protestants removed. The bible is the un-alterable word of God, yet they vote on books and remove or add at will?
Give me a break.

JP2

Actually, it was the complicity of the Christian faith towards the Roman occupiers that allowed it's spread until - eventually - it was adopted as the official religion of the Roman State.

The Jews rebelled against Roman occupation. So did Jesus. But Paul - who's teachings formed the basis for much of the early church as well as those of today - didn't want to rock the boat. The early church was centralised upon the tenets of Paul, including the accpetance of the Roman state. It was the Christian factions who denied Paul's teachings (and thus the validity of the Roman occupation) and, by and large, who accepted the tenets postulated by James, who were persectuted. Many of the fundamental tenets of these decentralised, Jamesian Christian factions appeared later on in - you guessed it - Islamic theology.