So Paul was really the same as Jack Van Impe????? Come on now ... Van Impe has made money off of this stuff for decades. Paul never set any dates or even charged the people who heard him speak. You claim Paul was "selling" Christianity: what exactly was he asking his potential "customers" for, and what did he ever get out of the deal?
YES, absolutely. It's the same damn thing. Whether he did it for money or did it for 'the cause,' it's still the same issue. It's the same thing we've seen over and over and over again, whether it is Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Joseph Smith, some guy with bones through his nose, or whatever. Repent. The end is near. Christianity is nothing more than a Cargo Cult that succeeded. The difference between a cult and a religion is the size of its membership.
And Paul was definitely interested in money--that was the major point in Second Corinthians (He used the term 'burden you' to mean, "I need money from you.") There's a passage where the congregation in Jerusalem is quite delighted that he had raised funds for them. And certainly the Christian church is all about money. Go into any poor Mexican village and visit the church. That's where all the gold is. The Vatican is amazing in the amount of treasure it has accumulated--mostly from poor people. Pass the collection plate. Pledge your gift. Be sure and tithe.
So yeah, I agree. The church is different than Jack van Impe. It has extracted a lot more money. He's just a two-bit con-artist in comparison.
You're the first person I've ever heard of who argued the parable of the ten virgins was literally about keeping real lamps burning as they existed 2,000 years ago. And it seems that parable, using images of a Jewish wedding celebration as an illustration, was likely geared more towards a Jewish audience than Romans.
Good Lord! It's a metaphor! Get over it. Paul was NOT speaking to Jews. he was spreading Chrisitianity throughout the Roman world, EXPORTING it from the Jewish tradition to people who were not Jews. When you read his letters to the far flung little groups of Christians throughout the Roman world you can see he was trying to keep them together and keep them from straying from the true path, which they were inclined to do without him around. In fact, in Corinth a rival group of Jews gave him a lot of trouble preaching against what he was saying. He nearly lost the group in Corinth altogethe and was at one point rebuffed by the local leaders who refused to let him preach. He ran back to Ephesus all pissed off about it.
His major issue was that Jesus was coming again ANY DAY and that his followers could not afford to stray personally from the true path. It wasn't some sort of personal end in infinity or some murky future. It was NOW. his is EXACTLY the same message that Elizabeth Clare Prophet tried on her 'congregation' and EXACTLY the same thing happened when nothing happened. They found a way to keep going and revise their thinking that the end of the world will happen, well, sometime anyway.
For the record, I have have spent months literally walking in Paul's footsteps in Turkey, Greece, and Rome. I have been to Ephesus, seen the wall where Paul preached in Corinth, and been to his tomb outside the walls of Rome. I've even been in the catacombs beneath the Vatican, strolled the streets of the original City of the Dead that still exists there and seen the burial place of St. Peter.
Note to others: If you ever get a chance to go to the Vatican it is well worthwhile, whether or not you are a Christian. St. Peter's Basilica will absolutely blow you away, guaranteed. Special permission is required to go underneath the church to the catacombs. It's not advertised, but small tours are available if you ask. Nearly every Pope is buried there.
I have no wish to get into debates about points in Christian theology. This thread is about millennial thinking. Christianity is simply another millennial cult that happened to be successful
