BS: There are 2000 year old living people!

Subject: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: frogprince
Date: 02 Oct 11 - 10:48 PM

To the best of my knowledge, every Christian church that makes any claim to theological conservatism holds to the belief that Jesus of Nazareth will return. It would appear to be impossible to believe in the inerrancy of the Bible without holding to that belief in the second coming. I couldn't begin to count the sermons and lessons that I've heard which have touched on or totally focused on this belief. But I have just discovered a significant aspect of the Biblical message which I have never heard anyone mention before: the existence among us of living people over two thousand years old.

"The Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels....I tell you the truth, some of you who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." Matthew chapter 16, New International Version.

The implication is clear; a number of those who were there to hear Jesus speak in his time have never died. It may be hard to believe, but it is unquestionably true. Life spans of hundreds of years occured in the Old Testament period, but all fell short of one thousand years.

There have been numerous science fiction treatments of the theme of extreme extended life. As it happens, some of these have reflected the actual experience and problems that the living disciples must face over the passing centuries. Like some of the fictional characters, the disciples have obviously chosen to remain incognito and keep their unique situation a secret. In order to do so, they must have maintained something much like a fugitive existence. If these people have ever shown any of the normal signs of aging, it has to have been at a rate so slow as to become conspicuous to everyone around them within the span of a few years. Time after time it would become necessary to disappear, relocate, and assume a complete new identity.

While the number of these disciples is never given, this has to involve at least several people over the entire intervening period of two thousand years. That none of them has ever been discovered would seem to suggest that their efforts at concealment have been aided by an element of miraculous divine intervention. I can scarcely believe that no one else has ever deduced their presence, but I have never once heard it mentioned before.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 12:14 AM

I'm pretty aure the crabby teacher I had in the sixth grade was that old.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 02:57 AM

PMSL!

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 03:08 AM

No there aren't.

SF? Worth recalling the ancient myth of Tithonus ~~

from the
Encyclopædia Britannica

Tithonus, in Greek legend, son of Laomedon, king of Troy, and of Strymo, daughter of the river Scamander. Eos (Aurora) fell in love with Tithonus and took him to Ethiopia, where she bore Emathion and Memnon. According to the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, when Eos asked Zeus to grant Tithonus eternal life, the god consented. But Eos forgot to ask also for eternal youth, so her husband grew old and withered. In a later version Tithonus was transformed into a cicada. The poem ""Tithonus"" by English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, famously begins:

    The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
    The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
    Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
    And after many a summer dies the swan.
    Me only cruel immortality
    Consumes; I wither slowly in thine arms.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Musket
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 03:26 AM

Oh good. If they are that old, then as per other old people, we don't have to take their views on board or indeed take anything they say seriously.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Darowyn
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 03:29 AM

Tennyson's line "After Many a Summer" is also the title of a book by Aldous Huxley which tells a story of someone who is able to extend his lifespan by centuries. Based on the idea that neotony is an aspect of evolution, meaning that the young of many species are livelier and cleverer than fully grown adults, he theorises that Homo Sapiens are a sort of larval ape, which is what the protagonist becomes. After many a summer he reaches maturity as a small, wrinkly white haired gorilla-ish thing.
Cheers
Dave

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 04:33 AM

After many a summer he reaches maturity as a small, wrinkly white haired gorilla-ish thing.

Hey - who's been peeking at me?

(For the potential hellishness of eternal life, check out the "Makropolous Case" (opera) by Janacek.)

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 04:56 AM

I'll take a raincheck on that if you don't mind, Will; Janacek being one of those who breaks the terms of one proviso of my BOF's Credo, qv on the thread I OPd about it.

~M~

Oh, allright, here it is again if you insist:

Boring·Old·Fart credo: to which, at nearly 80, feel self entitled:   viz that my Literature shall be Comprehensible;   my Art Representational;   my Music Tonal: naught else shall penetrate my perception-zone. —

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: GUEST,999
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 05:03 AM

"I can scarcely believe that no one else has ever deduced their presence, but I have never once heard it mentioned before."

Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks?

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 05:29 AM

Ah well, Michael, I fell in love with Janacek's music the first time I heard his Glagolitic Mass.

Actually, from a folk music perspective, Janacek's very interesting. I'm sure you know that he used to wander the countryside, listening to the folk music of Moravia and other Slavic music - which provided the basis of his own composition. He also noted down the sounds of animals, birds and insects, which inspired some of the composition of "The Cunning Little Vixen".

I suppose I'm biased as I'm a huge fan of composers like Bartok and Janacek, whose string quartets, IMHO, are some of the most moving pieces in modern music.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 06:22 AM

Actually, great apologies Will, I was confusing Janacek, whose Cunning Little Vixen I remember once much enjoying in a production at the Cambridge Arts Theatre, with Berg. Can't imagine how I became so confused ~~ tho the first bit of my Credo might provide a clue!

Silly Old Fart, Michael!

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: theleveller
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 07:29 AM

"Silly Old Fart, Michael!"

The memory starts to go after the first millennium ;)

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 07:31 AM

Could it be that among the elderly ladies who regularly block the aisles in my local supermarket with their shopping trolleys are some of these 2000 year olds? You'd think that they'd have learned some manners and common sense over that sort of time span.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 08:19 AM

"I can scarcely believe that no one else has ever deduced their presence, but I have never once heard it mentioned before." Me

Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks? 999

Ya, but 999, he was only one thou old, so no connection with the scriptural thing, and he wasn't keeping his age or existence a secret.

I lived in the world of the inerrant Bible for a number of years. Some things like this we rationalized with some remarkable mental gymnastics; other things we just screened out mentally, so the problems didn't exist for us.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 08:23 AM

Also, I was just thinking; if you look at some of the mudcat members...could they possibly look that old after just one average lifespan?

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 08:26 AM

Well, let's see. The Naz brought Lazarus and others back from the dead. Since every person has only one death assigned, and there's no record that they died twice, they're obviously still around. Since aging stops at death they'd look much like they did when they were brought back to life.

I don't think I want to meet Laz. "Lord, he has been dead three days and he stinketh."

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: GUEST,999
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 09:50 AM

O, ye of little faith: It's on Youtube, Frogprince.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 11:47 AM

My bad, 999; I never had the record, and it's been about 500 years since I heard any of the routine. On my way to give it a listen.
                               Dean

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 11:53 AM

One standard explanation is that "see" doesn't mean to "experience" but rather to "perceive" in their hearts. They'd be fully convinced by grace of the truth of Christ's message, perhaps by the Transfiguration.

Another possibility is that Jesus is referring to the evangelical age that would begin with His resurrection.

A third is that the passages are really about the coming destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.

You be the judge.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 11:56 AM

If you believe everything you read in a "translation" you are stark raving bonkers.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 12:17 PM

Except Bible translations, unlike others, are supposed to be guided by grace. In other words, though phrasing may differ somewhat, any serious translation by a faithful scholar reflects what's in the original.

Furthermore, serious readers of the bible are also guided toward correct understanding through divine grace.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: theleveller
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 12:26 PM

Lighter, I can't work out whether you're serious or taking the piss.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 12:41 PM

Okay....this thread started with the following statement:

"To the best of my knowledge, every Christian church that makes any claim to theological conservatism holds to the belief that Jesus of Nazareth will return. It would appear to be impossible to believe in the inerrancy of the Bible without holding to that belief in the second coming."


Fine. ;-) Okay, what's the big deal about Jesus returning? Does is say how? Does it say when? The reason I ask is that there are a really large number of spiritual traditions and groups out there that think we ALL return many, many times through the common process of reincarnation.

We are spirits, born again in another physical life.

No one notices, because the new baby is seen as a brand new and original person by its parents and everyone else around it, so the "return" is not recognized as a return.

So Jesus could already have returned many, many times and no one would even have noticed. For all you know, I could be Jesus! ;-D

And If I was, I probably wouldn't even be aware of it!

And for that matter, you could be Jesus. If so...get on the job, willya! There's a lot of stuff going on here that needs to be set right, moneylenders in the temple again, unforgiveness, war, that sort of thing. These things need fixing!

Don't let us down.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 12:45 PM

Furthermore, serious readers of the bible are also guided toward correct understanding through divine grace. he he he...

My mom, who is 82, looks 2082, so I could believe it...

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 12:54 PM

We are all guided by divine grace, in my opinion. However..........we've got our BIG personality standing out front doing all the talking, and our BIG personality mainly listens to its own voice, not to divine grace or to anyone else at all. This can go on for a very long time indeed. The voice of the human personality is LOUD...and the quiet and gentle voice of divine grace can only be heard..........when one becomes truly silent...and listens.   

Most people never do, except when they are in deep sleep. And they don't remember that. But they are renewed when in deep sleep.

For example, I bet you're already mentally chattering the very next thing YOU are about to say in rebuttal or amendment to what I just said. ;-) I bet it's sounding loud and clear in your own mind right now...that's the BIG voice of your personality.

The God of most people is their own ego...and its various gripes, desires, and concerns. They worship it by giving it their constant attention and loyalty, and feeding its boundless hunger as best they can.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: GUEST,999
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 12:54 PM

Frogprince,

Mel Brooks also did routines as the '1000 Year Old Man', so y'ain't losing it yet. Remember, at our age memory is the second thing to go; that's fortunate because it means ya can't remember the first.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 01:05 PM

You remind me, 999, that the first sign of madness is hairs in the palms of the hands.









& the second is looking for them. Gotcha!?

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: GUEST,999
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 01:20 PM

Maybe, LOL

Someday, MtheGM . . . .

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 01:28 PM

Oooohhh! Can't wait!

Saucebox!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 01:37 PM

As far as I know, those are standard interpretations, endorsed by leading theologians.

There may be others, of course.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 01:44 PM

Have they collected their old age security payments?

(Janacek''s "Makropolous Case " excellent. Get the DVD. )

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: olddude
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 02:10 PM

He came with his angels and knocked Saul off his horse and said "why do you persecute me" That is when Saul became Paul and a follower of Christ,the passage is referring to that event and several others where Christ appeared to individuals.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 02:55 PM

"If you believe everything you read in a "translation" you are stark raving bonkers." Bonzo3legs

I have to firmly disagree, Bonzo. At the risk of being somewhat serious here:

If your actual point is that anyone has to be "stark raving bonkers" to believe the Bible...no. If, as you are growing up, everyone who is close to you and supportive of you tells you to believe the Bible, you may be in error to do so, but you don't have to be "stark raving bonkers".

If you do literally mean that you have to be "bonkers" to believe a translation...no. Leaving aside the question of believing in the Bible in any form: there are numerous translations out there done by honest, diligent scholars deeply trained in the original languages. I say that as having known such people quite well. While there will always be questions as to how well any translation (of anything) conveys every nuance of the original, by far more people would get a better grasp of the original from a competent translation than by trying to read the originals with a superficial acquaintance with the languages.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 03:13 PM

It would kind of depend what you believe about the Bible, wouldn't it? After all, different people read it and draw some radically different conclusions from it, whether or not they claim to "believe" what they are reading.

It depends on how they interpret what they are reading. Some will interpret a given passage literally, while others see it as metaphor. You'll usually find that they interpret what they read in such a way that it bolsters up what they had already decided they wanted to do or believe anyway. Thus the Bible, like any other holy book, can be used by either the scrupulous or the unscrupulous to support their favorite beliefs and their general plan of action.

And so it has been. Either the forgiving or the vengeful can find some Bible passage that appears, in isolation, to be favorable to their own viewpoint.

Whether someone is "stark raving bonkers" or not is just an opinion. We're all crazy by someone else's definition, and they might be so by ours.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 03:25 PM

I omitted the rather obvious possibility that the words refer to the writing of the book of Revelation, which tells of the End Time and Christ's return to Earth.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 03:31 PM

"Whether someone is "stark raving bonkers" or not is just an opinion."
Well, maybe it depends on what your definition of "bonkers" is; : ) when I met a woman who apologized to a friend and me because she had been dead for three days and she realized that the smell of her decaying brain was offensive, I was inclined to think of her as "bonkers".

More pertainent to a discussion of the Bible: when an acquaintance, the principal of a local public school, mentioned having deducted that the "wheel in the middle of the air" that Ezekial saw was actually God riding around on a nuclear powered "throne", because a cyclotron is a big round "wheel", my "bonkers" light flickered at least a little.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 03:43 PM

Lighter, the passage is generally understood to refer to Christ's visible return to earth, and that really does seem to be the plain sense; that is why the statement that some of that audience, 2000 years ago, wouldn't die until that happens, raises the questions that it does.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 03:48 PM

frogprince - LOL!!! Well, that was a rare and unsual case, wasn't it? Yeah, most people would have defined her as being...umm..."bonkers"? Something like that.

The passage from Ezekiel is interesting, and many people have interpreted it as possibly referring to an ancient visitation of an alien extra-terrestrial vehicle of some kind, its occupants being seen by the people of the time as "gods" or "angels". It may be that such visitations occurred. If they had, the visitors would almost certainly have been seen as divine emmissaries from Heaven, and this would have had a very big effect on the minds of the people back then. They would have described it in the terms that made sense to them at the time.

We who live in a science-dominated age where flying machines and space travel are well-known phenomena would describe such an event in quite different terms.

I've seen what I strongly suspect were extra-terrestrial vehicles. I didn't think of them as Angels or as God riding around on a nuclear-powered throne, I thought of them as (most likely) extra-terrestrial beings a bit like ourselves, riding around in a high-tech vehicle of unknown (to us) design and origin.

If I'd been living 2,000 years ago, I'd probably have figured it was God's Angels.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Lighter
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 03:49 PM

Go here:

http://nprfreshair.tumblr.com/

and click on "Terry's Interview with C. Peter Wagner."

Not directly related to the topic, but of some interest.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 03:49 PM

"raises the questions that it does" for those who insist that the Bible is inerrant and to be taken literally.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 04:16 PM

Just got back from Lighter's link, which sets off both my "bonkers" light and my "dangerous" light.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 04:51 PM

Just an itsy-bitsy bitty confused, that Mr Wagner, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 04:58 PM

Chongo has no problems with this stuff at all. He is waiting for the 2nd coming of King Kong instead. (movie sequels don't count)

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 07:29 PM

Not about Derek Brimstone then......

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 07:44 PM

I would rather see the second coming of Fay Wray.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 08:04 PM

By the way, what is PMSL! ?

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 08:55 PM

Never mind,I looked it up; now I feel bad,'cause Richard didn't take me seriously!

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 10:18 PM

Of course there at 2000 year old living people. Shucks, I even know people older than one year.

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Kent Davis
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 10:52 PM

Frogprince,

Some people do assume that, when Jesus spoke of the "kingdom", he was referring to his return on the Judgment Day. I used to assume that myself. I was wrong. Eventually someone showed me that, contrary to my assumptions about the "kingdom", the Christians of the first century believed that the "kingdom" had already come in their day. For example, consider Colossians 1:13,14, "He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." The first century Christians were described as having ALREADY been transferred to the "kingdom".

Similarly, Revelation 1:5 says that Jesus has "made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father" and, in verse 9 of that chapter, the writer describes himself as "John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom". Since the Christians of the first century described the "kingdom" was something that was already present then, and said that they were already in the "kingdom", I had to admit that my assumption about the meaning of "kingdom" was wrong.

Politically speaking, those who are under the authority of a king are his kingdom. Those who are in rebel-held territory are not in his kingdom (though perhaps they should be). It is no different in the New Testament. Those who are under the authority of the King are in His Kingdom. This world, as you have no doubt noticed, is rebel-held territory. Here and there in this "break-away republic" we call Earth, there were (and are) loyalists who are citizens of the Kingdom.

In the New Testament, contrary to what I assumed, Christ's return in judgment is not the beginning of his kingdom. It is just the opposite. It is the END of his kingdom. I Corinthians 15:24-26 says, "Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death."

With this as background, it is easy to understand Matthew 16:28, "Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

What Jesus said that day was not hyperbole or mysticism at all. It was actually an understatement. Of those to whom Jesus was speaking, most (apparently all but Judas) lived to "see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom" and then lived their lives as citizens loyal to the King who was "not of this world" (John 18:36).

Kent

Subject: RE: BS: There are 2000 year old living people!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Oct 11 - 11:19 PM

Jesus also said "Seek ye the Kingdom of Heaven which is within." This is the same thing which is said in pretty much of all the Eastern and other esoteric traditions, and it refers basically to a state of consciousness, not a place or an outer phenomenon. I think that fundamentalists are mistaken in assuming it to be an outward event when it is in fact an inner change in consciousness that is being referred to.

The esoteric traditions (in a great many religions) also refer to God as being within each person, and God-consciousness as something every person can therefore attain to. God-consciousnes would be a state where one completely lets go of fear and completely embraces love (every form of love). If a person did that, they would be in a heavenly state of consciousness and would, in effect, be experiencing the Kingdom of Heaven.

Imagine what it would be like to have no fear and to feel absolute love. Imagine the energy it would give a person and how much creativity it would bring forth. To me, that would be Heaven.