Easter: Message of Jesus?

Jesus taught the 'kingdom of god' is
coming soon, repent and be ready. It
will come any day. He taught this in
town after town, all his disciples believed
it, even Paul believed they were living
in the end times. 'Kingdom of god' is
mentioned 110 times in the NT because
that was the message of Jesus. He didn't
carry an End Is Near sign, but he might
as well have.

Jesus preached about the Kingdom of God
for 3 years, it's why he had followers. This
was the core of his message. He was a
doomsdayer, that was just as effective
then as it is now. Beware, repent, the end
is near. He pandered to a certain kind of
person, unhappy, unsatisfied people who
needed to believe they were special. Its
a tactic that still works every time it's tried.

Why are you wrong about everything?!? "Kingdom of God" is mentioned 122 times in the NT the vast majority of times in the four Gospels and the vast majority coming from Jesus.

It has nothing to do with the end of time, or doom and gloom. If you had read the Gospels you would know that. It is not at all about a worldly kingdom either. It is a complicated notion that probably deserves its own thread but suffice it to start the conversation by saying that Kingdom of God has three dimensions to it:

Christological - Jesus is the Kingdom of God. He, the incarnate second person of the Divine Trinity, ushers in the kingdom of God by His person. God's Kingdom breaks into our world like the rising Sun or better yet, the Risen Son.

Mystical - The Kingdom of God is in us. We need not look to any worldly or heavenly kingdom, the reign of God begins in our own hearts and mind. We are part of the kingdom and are its ambassadors in the world.

Ecclesiastical - The Kingdom of God is present in the Church that Jesus started. In this sense the kingdom is already here but not yet because the Church is imperfect. It is both human and divine and we look forward to its perfection someday, but there is lots of work to do.

Mark 1:14-15 "Now after John [the Baptist] was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel'

It's 'at hand', meaning almost here. Better hurry,
better repent, better have your house in order,
the kingdom of god is almost upon us, don't
get caught with your pants down and your hand
up your neighbors wife's skirt. Repent, before
it's too late. The time has been fulfilled, it's finally
here. Repent.

That was the message, it's very clear what was
meant. It was the end times, you can't read it
any other way. After Jesus died and it was
apparent he was wrong and the end times
were not here, they reinterpreted what he
meant. But his message was clear as a bell,
you can't change it to fit your whims. He
preached they were living on borrowed time,
the end was near. That's it, end of story.

I could point you to the many parables that Jesus uses to describe the Kingdom of God and I think they would be helpful you to round out your understanding. Yes, the Kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus is here and He is the Kingdom of God breaking into our world. The Kingdom of God is at hand in that God enters into our lives. The Kingdom of God is at hand in the Church he established. Finally, yes, the Kingdom of God is at hand in the sense that we must be prepared for the end of our lives and end of the world. We are all living on borrowed time after all and you nor I are promised tomorrow. Jesus speaks of this to be prepared for the end of our lives. However the Kingdom of God does not refer to end times or some doomsday prediction. You can't just change it to fit your whims.

The language of both Jesus and John
the Baptist were very strong. They were
both saying, the time is very near. It is
now. You better repent! Peter, James,
John, Paul, the writer of Hebrews, the
angel who spoke to John in Revelation,
and even Jesus all thought, and the
apostles wrote, that Jesus would return
in their lifetime. They all thought and
preached they were living in the end
times. They obviously were not, but
the Church can never admit the truth,
so they have a song and dance routine
to cover it up. Silliness personified..

Bob, what I am objecting to is your silly simplification of something to make it sound like Jesus was a gloom and doom "end of the world" preacher. He was not that and a cursory reading of the Gospels will tell you as much. I am a little surprised you who are so hazy about religion keep insisting you know the one and only thing Jesus preached about? Would it help you if I agreed that Paul's early writings did think the Lord would return any minute? His later writings did not carry that idea though and it is very clear that people who followed Jesus in His lifetime and after His Ascension did not do so because they thought the Kingdom of God in its fullness was going to end the world anytime soon. They followed Him because of what Bab was mentioning about His teachings, but more than anything because they came to believe that He was truly God. As I've said; He is the Kingdom of God who came into the world.

Every real NT scholar (by real I mean non Xtion)
has come to the conclusion that Jesus was a
man of his times, an apocalyptic prophet, of
which there many wandering around.

"Jesus can be best understood as an apocalyptic prophet--a man convinced that the world would end dramatically within the lifetime of his apostles. Jesus' belief in a coming apocalypse and his expectation of an utter reversal in the world's social organization not only underscores the radicalism of his teachings but also sheds light on both the appeal of his message to society's outcasts and the threat he posed to Jerusalem's established leadership.. The majority position amongst New Testament scholars, at least the ones who aren't Christians, is that Jesus was a Jewish apocalyptic preacher of a kind that would have been reasonably common at the time.
Jesus was born into a world in which many Jews were expecting an apocalypse. The earliest parts of the gospels have Jesus declaring the coming apocalypse will be very soon, in his lifetime or at least in the lifetime of his followers."

The NT ends with an apocalyptic manifesto,
the book of Revelation. Why is that even
there if Jesus main message was not an
End is Near preacher. This research pisses
off Christians no end, they whine and whine
that no no no, Jesus was the lovey dovey
savior guy. That's what he became as his myth
grew after he died, but in reality he was a gloomy
apocalyptic prophet, that's how he got his
followers, and apocalyptic prophets still get tons
of followers today.

Bob why do you think to be a real NT scholar you must be a non Christian? Who is it that you quote?

The Book of Revelation is not an apocalyptic manifesto, seriously where do you get this stuff? It is written in a unique apocalyptic genre, but this does not mean immediate end of the world. A study of this genre, which you can also find in the OT, will show you that it is mystical writing usually written to a people under great persecution or troubles to encourage or exhort them with fantastic symbolic imagery. I really am asking you to do a little more research before you write or maybe better yet ask questions about the things you don't understand. I feel that if you did this you will learn more, be more humble, not so aggressively mean, and be less embarrassed by your ignorance.

Every Xtion who becomes a NT scholar
has a huge bias to find his particular
story, no matter how hard he tries not
to. It's a well established fact that any
researcher in any field that has a bias
going in, will always have flawed results
that favor his opinion. He contaminates
his own research no matter how hard
he tries not to.

Even in scientific research, into anything,
the researcher has to carefully plan his
experiments so as to weed out any opinion
or bias he has going in. If you don't, you
will always find the results you expected to
find, like Xtions do when they examine Jesus.
It's absolutely impossible for them to be
objective. Objectivity and Xtionity are polar
opposites of each other.

We all understand the importance of objectivity but you are wrong in thinking that Christians cannot be objective in their study of the NT. First of all your suggestion that a non-Christian is the only ones who can truly study the NT is just stupid. You forget about their bias as well. What you are saying is akin to saying that the only way to objectively study chemistry is to have a botanist study it. A Chemist is the only one who can seriously study chemistry because a chemist is the one who cares deeply about the subject and want to truly learn about what it has to teach us. Surely such a chemist has to subject his or her findings to peer reviews and the comments of other lay folks like you who think they know it all. They then have to defend their work. This is how it is supposed to work. You don't want someone who dislikes chemistry or doesn't believe in it or think it is important to do chemistry. Their results will be lazy, incorrect, and poor. This is the case in almost all of your presentations and the anonymous sources you quote.

Again, just a suggestion but if you want to attack Christianity then don't try to find non-Christians to provide you with straw-men and false and lazy scholarship. Instead look to real Christians and debate with them and wrestle with their answers. You keep running from every point you are shown to be wrong on and you find some obscure thought, non-Christian theologian, or verse to hang yourself on. Here is the very best thing you can do: Read "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis and lets start a thread where you attack his arguments. I think we can all agree that his book is a classic, it is not Catholic, and he offers strong arguments for God and Christianity. That would be fun and I think we would all learn something. Just stop trying to think you know it all and these non-Christian authors have somehow discovered a truth that thousands of years and minds like C.S. Lewis never thought of, it is just silly.