We continue considering the various comments made by Oleg Dei who is the founder, president and publisher of the Science Club of Long Island. While the club claims to be about science, it is an anti-Christian support group and, apparently, Dei’s job description also includes, as he puts it, “I eat stupid dumb*** Christians for lunch!” (expletive removed).
His comments came about due to the essay Science Club of Long Island (which was originally posted at the blog Atheism is Dead which is one of the website True Freethinker’s predecessors).
Picking up from the previous segment: as far as the claim that, “Christ never fulfilled his promise to return in the lifetime of his apostles as he promised” we appear to have another case of a misunderstandings based on lack of knowledge of immediate context, the greater context, the grammatical context, the historical context, the cultural context, etc. Such a claim is yet another well-within-the-box-atheist-group think-talking point-de jour. At this point, he does not provide any quotations or citations, does not delve into the grammatical context, the historical context, the cultural context, etc.
He does not note that, for example, just like any word, term or phrase “Kingdom of God” has many meanings within the New Testament.
Here is a sample:
seek first the kingdom of God (Mat 6:33)
the kingdom of God has come upon you (Mat 12:28)
the kingdom of God will be taken from you (Mat 21:43)
the kingdom of God is at hand (Mar 1:15)
The kingdom of God has come near to you (Luke 10:9)
the kingdom of God has come upon you (Luk 11:20)
when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God (Luk 13:28)
They will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and sit down in the kingdom of God (Luk 13:29)
Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, "The kingdom of God does not come with observation (Luk 17:20)
the kingdom of God is within you (Luk 17:21)
Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it (Luk 18:17)
they thought the kingdom of God would appear immediately (Luk 19:11)
for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God… for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes (Luk 22:16-18)
These are not contradictions, they are merely examples of the manner which we all know that language functions: words, terms and phrases derive their meaning from their context.
Here are two interesting and relevant ones:
Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God present with power (Mar 9:1)
But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the kingdom of God (Luk 9:27)
Both of these refer to the same event so let us consider Mark and do so actually within its own context by reading the very next verses:
And He said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God present with power."
Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His clothes became shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them. And Elijah appeared to them with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus…because he did not know what to say, for they were greatly afraid. And a cloud came and overshadowed them; and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!" (Mark 1-6 & 7)
Thus, within this context, the Kingdom of God manifested via Jesus transfiguring, ancient personages appearing and God’s voice from heaven endorsing Jesus.
Oleg Dei gets into none of these issues because his tactic is actually very typical: ask a Christian, “Oh yeah, what about this?” insert something copied and pasted from websites such as Evilbible.com, ExChristian.Net, PositiveAtheism.org, etc. and leaves you to do the research, reading, musing, writing and then merely says, “You’re just rationalizing. Ok, what about this?” and on it goes ad infinitum.
In short, Ben Witherington, Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary, puts it nicely (in his review of Bart Ehman’s latest book, Forged: Chapter Three—An Appalling Number Of Forgeries):
…if you bother to read both early Jewish and early Christian eschatological texts, they frequently juxtapose remarks about the possible imminence of an event with discussion of the events that will precede it. While to a late Western mind this might seem to be a contradiction, obviously it wasn’t for early Jews and early Christians.
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