Do you believe in ...

[Cops]

These are the shoes I wear 'cept mine are blue & white B)

slip ons are hot shit, i've only got green chucks but if i had the money i'd pick up a pair.

[HeavenSent]

Also Fun Fact for you all that didn't know. Persians (now-a-day Iranians) discovered Jesus' true birthday through astronomy while you were celebrating some pagan holiday that is now known as Christmas.

Are you serious? Any student of history and theology can trace the date of His birth by the clues in scripture.

The world celebrates the birth of Jesus on December 25th - Christmas. The early Christian church did not celebrate his birth, thus the exact date was not preserved in tradition and festival observances. The first recorded mention of December 25 is in the calendar of Philocalus (354 A.D.) which showed Jesus’ birth to be Friday, December 25, 1 A.D. The date is inconsistent with itself for December 25 of that year was, in fact, a Sunday.

The date of December 25 was officially proclaimed by the church fathers in 440 A.D., and was chosen because it Christianized the pagan festival of the Saturnalia. The winter solstice had meant the diminishing of the sun and its return again. Its central idea, the return of light, became the hope of the world in the birth of Jesus, the light of the world. The transition from paganism to Christianity was gradual, but became generally accepted after the fall of Rome in 476 A.D.

The exact date of Jesus’ birth can, however, be determined from the available historical records. The information given in the Bible concerning the time of the conception of John the Baptist furnishes one method of calculation. Elizabeth, the mother of John, was a cousin of Mary and the wife of a priest named Zacharias. Luke 1:5 states that Zacharias was a priest of the course of Abia (Abijah). Verses 8-13 state that while Zacharias executed the priests office before God in the order of his course he was given the message that Elizabeth would have a son and that they should name him John. In verses 23 and 24 it is recorded, And it came to pass that as soon as the days of his ministration were accomplished, he departed to his own house.

The priests were divided into 24 classes (1 Chronicles 24:7-19) and each class officiated in the Temple for one week. The courses of the priests changed duty with the change of the week, i.e., from the end of the Sabbath at sundown until the next Sabbath. Both the Talmud and the historian, Josephus, state that the Temple was destroyed by Titus on August 5, 70 A.D., and that the first course of priests had just taken office. The previous evening was the end of the Sabbath. The course Abia (Abijah) was the 8th course, thus figuring backward we are able to determine that Zacharias ended his course and came off duty on July 13, 3 B.C., and returned home to Elizabeth. The conception of John occurred that weekend (13th - 14th) and the birth of John would take place 280 days later, namely April 19th - 20th of 2 B.C., precisely at the Passover of that year.

Elizabeth hid herself 5 months, and at the beginning of her 6th month the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, telling her of Elizabeth’s condition. At the same time Gabriel told Mary that she, too, would conceive and bear a son who would be called Jesus. Upon hearing this Mary went with haste from Nazareth to Ein Karim to visit Elizabeth, who was then in the first week of her 6th month. The time was the 4th week of December, 3 B.C. The 23rd of December of that year, according to the Julian Calendar then in use, was precisely the winter solstice. If this were the date of the conception of Jesus, 280 days later would place the date of his birth at September 29, 2 B.C., i.e., 1st Tishri, the day of the Feast of Trumpets - the Jewish New Year. This day had been set aside in the Law of Moses as a holy day. How fitting that the holy Son of God should be born on that day!

The day on which Jesus was born was not only the first day of the year but was also the first day of the 77th Sabbatic Cycle since the Jewish return from Babylonian captivity. From the re-establishment of the Sabbatic Cycles in Tishri 534 B.C. till the birth of Jesus in Tishri 2 B.C. was also a great Paschal Cycle of 532 years - a Paschal Cycle being the product of the Metonic Cycle (19) and the Solar Cycle (28), i.e., 19 x 28 = 532 years.

Luke 3:1 clearly states that John the Baptist began his ministry in the 15th year of Tiberius. According to the Law of Moses a Jew was considered of age for the ministry at 30 (Numbers 4:3). Augustus had died on August 19, 14 A.D.; thus that year became the accession year of Tiberius, even though he had been involved in and associated with the Roman rulership before Augustus died. If John the Baptist had been born April 19th - 20th, 2 B.C., his 30th birthday would be April 19-20, 29 A.D., or the 15th year of Tiberius. Thus the 2 B.C. date for the birth of John is confirmed by the Biblical record. John was 5 months older than Jesus, making the birth of Jesus to be in the autumn of that year.

That his birth was in the autumn is further confirmed by the prophecy of Daniel (Daniel 9:24-27) which prophesied that there would be 3 and a half years from Jesus anointing as the Messiah until his death. If his ministry began when he was 30 (Luke 3:23) and lasted 3 and a half, and if he was crucified on the day of Passover (spring), simple arithmetic would show that his birth had to be in the autumn.

[Mythrandir]

Look.... you're quoting from the same book where food mysteriously multiplies, people start walking on water, an entire world floods, a sea gets split and dead people become alive. In short, I wouldn't consider the bible historically accurate.

[Superted]

If you were living in a two dimensional universe and you somehow came across a book which described the three dimensional universe in it's simplicity, would you also refuse to believe that too? I assume you would because the stuff listed in that book would seem impossible to you and therefore could never happen, when the truth is that it actually does. My point is that God and his three dimensional ways are impossible to comprehend with our two dimensional minds.

[K2Grey]

My point is that the Invisible Pink Unicorn and her 6 dimensional plane is beyond your human understanding. At this point, the only thing left for you to do is to have faith and not fear the hatred and and scorn of a faithless society of science and false religions.

On another note, I find it very bizarre that people should quote the Bible in order to prove its own authenticity. This turns into a circular argument since for the quotes to be meaningful they must be authentic in the first place.

Edit: Nearly any set of claims which includes an omnipotent god can avoid being self-contradictory by claiming that the omnipotent deity in question is beyond human understanding. This hardly helps on the question of why one should believe in the religion in question, though, as you can attach the omnipotent being to any kind of history or claims about the world, and you can also attach any behaviors to the deity.

Theoretically, the sun could really be revolving around the earth, and it's the awful power of God which blinds us to this fact. Or the earth revolves around the sun in a physical sense, whereas the sun revolves about the earth in mysterious and profound ways, more subtle than man can know.

But nevertheless everyone nowadays has switched over from "sun around earth" to "earth around sun" despite that because that is what the evidence that science has collected would seem to indicate.

[gran guerrero]

i saw a lizard running on water in my pool. it was cool. I named him jesus.

[T3l Ca7]

? I assume you would because the stuff listed in that book would seem impossible to you and therefore could never happen, when the truth is that it actually does. My point is that God and his three dimensional ways are impossible to comprehend with our two dimensional minds.

Just because God can turn into a dog does not mean every dog is God. None of the dogs I have seen turned into God, so I will assume the next dog I see will not be God. I will not be 100% right, but I will be 99.9999% right, and that is good enough - I am sure that beats your average maths marks.


Same applies to bible. Nothing like that have ever happened, but I guess you can bet on that 0.00000000001% of the chance. Hey but idiots buy lotteries too - that least on average they have a better chance at winning something big.

P.S. By better chance I am talking about at least 1000x more likely.

[T3l Ca7]

BTW, I am flying over to New York tomorrow, anyone there want to meet up? I will be staying somewhere close to mineola on Long Island.

Off 2 bed, laterZzzzz

[Superted]

Just because God can turn into a dog does not mean every dog is God. None of the dogs I have seen turned into God, so I will assume the next dog I see will not be God. I will not be 100% right, but I will be 99.9999% right, and that is good enough - I am sure that beats your average maths marks.

What... the..... fuck?!?!

[Mythrandir]

If you were living in a two dimensional universe and you somehow came across a book which described the three dimensional universe in it's simplicity, would you also refuse to believe that too? I assume you would because the stuff listed in that book would seem impossible to you and therefore could never happen, when the truth is that it actually does. My point is that God and his three dimensional ways are impossible to comprehend with our two dimensional minds.

Congratulations, you've shown that nobody can prove a negative.

Secondly, you're encouraging me to believe everything I read or hear about without critical thought. Other people may refer to that as 'gullible'.

[Cops]

Just because God can turn into a dog does not mean every dog is God. None of the dogs I have seen turned into God, so I will assume the next dog I see will not be God. I will not be 100% right, but I will be 99.9999% right, and that is good enough - I am sure that beats your average maths marks.


Same applies to bible. Nothing like that have ever happened, but I guess you can bet on that 0.00000000001% of the chance. Hey but idiots buy lotteries too - that least on average they have a better chance at winning something big.

P.S. By better chance I am talking about at least 1000x more likely.

i want to kick you in the cunt

[ZeUs!!]

BTW, I am flying over to New York tomorrow, anyone there want to meet up? I will be staying somewhere close to mineola on Long Island.

Not unless they want to catch something

[genocidal]

Catch a big fat case of the stupids. BTW Telcat, I love your opinion on religion. Your metaphors move mountains.

[gran guerrero]

Pure_Luck want's to meat you.

And no I didn't spell it wrong.

[Liquid Blue]

i want to kick you in the cunt

I approve.