If someone claimed to be the Son of God today…

[Nutcracks]

If someone claimed today all the things that Jesus did/said, would you believe them?

Curious about how people would respond in today’s world.

You're probably not the kind of person I'm talking about. You're probably one of the many millions of nice, normal Christians, the ones who engage like human beings, rather than one of those who seem to take pleasure in the idea of their fellow humans being condemned to eternal pain and suffering for the crime of being wrong about something. Smug parting jabs about the prospect of your interlocutor "meeting their maker" probably don't roll glibly off your tongue.

A mortgage and speed limits are facts not fiction.

This is a good point. So God would inflict the greatest pain a child can go through, the death of their parents simply because they didn’t believe in Him. Even if they were ‘good’ people. That is beyond cruel.

I don't know what they all believe. There's millions of them. Don't really care, TBH. They don't cause me any trouble, and lots of Christians I know are perfectly nice people, whatever ideas might be in their heads.

I do know that in general, when discussing these issues with non-believers, they don't tend to take the "Well you're going to hell and I'm not; just you wait till Christ Jesus returns IN TRIUMPH [incidentally, it's always a sign when they say Christ Jesus instead of Jesus Christ — I wonder why] and that'll show you, you'll be wetting your pants and begging for His forgiveness, can't wait to see you dragged off to Hell pleading and grovelling while I'm sitting pretty in Heaven, so yah-boo-sucks to you" approach (whether blatant or veiled). I would guess maybe it's generally seen as a little uncouth to bring up someone's impending torture if they refuse to agree with you, purely as a cheap'n'easy debating ploy (besides being ineffectual, since those of us who don't believe in God or Hell aren't likely to change our minds through fear of it).

Presumably, most have enough empathy that they don't enjoy thinking about unbelievers going to hell anyway. Whereas I've come across a fair few Christians from outside the UK (okay, they tend to be from the US — though there's plenty of perfectly nice, normal Christians there, too, of course) who seem to have no such qualms about vocally celebrating the imminent torture of billions of their fellow human beings on the say-so of their best buddy Jesus.

Mainly, though, I mentioned it because of the dog-walk. The timing of that was what made me wonder if OP was from another part of the world to the majority of MN posters. Despite various posts, it is a UK-based site with mainly UK-based posters, so while anyone from anywhere can read and post, most posts and most threads will tend to broadly reflect British cultural norms. The poster I was responding to was approaching the topic in a way that I haven't seen much from British Christians when discussing these issues, and things seemed to potentially slot into place a little better when there was an indication that they may have been operating from a different set of norms.

As clever as ChatGPT is trying to be, a lot of what it says is unintelligible word soup, with no substance nor true meaning. Usually spottable a mile off. 🙃. I do, sort of, maybe, get the need to use it in an attempt to sound clever. I wonder what it would say about the return of Christ Jesus, and does He like dogs from anywhere other than the UK? Are the only ‘nice’ Christians from the UK? Are only the acceptable cultural norms, based in the UK? What are the acceptable times to dog walk? No, truly, I really do not wonder at all. 🤣🤣🤣

but at the time of the return of Christ the Earth will be under the Rule of the Antichrist. He will be the ruler of the One World Government, and will be, by this time, persecuting any Christians and also will have set himself up in the new Temple in Jerusalem (which will be rebuilt at some point). The world will be going through what is called 'The Great Tribulation' and it will be marked by the worst evil that has ever happened, plus a lot of other things probably too much to go into at this point

So Donald Trump and/or Elon Musk as the Antichrist, ruler of the One World Government?

Mortgages and speed limits are tangible and real, a god that has never been seen is not real because “he” has not been proven to exist. The bible doesn’t prove anything

😂😂😂

I really hope not!! No I don't think that at all. Probably some do though! I think they're wrong. There's a line of thought that says the AntiChrist will come from Rome. I've no idea.

If it were today, I don’t think it would be any different than it was in Jesus’s time. Much higher chance of being locked up in a psych facility, but honestly the way mental health services have gone, probably not as he wouldn’t be hurting anyone.

I have some kids who I would say are very religious. They are associated with a major Christian religion, call themselves Christians, but on another thread people said they were not so?? I couldn’t care, nor will I tell anyone what they are/are not. I would say they are biblical scholars given intense study of the Bible, and they believe in God but pretty much stop at the Old Testament, in fact quite similar to Jewish philosophy I guess. They believe Jesus existed but that he was mentally ill manifesting as an adolescent, protected by his parents who didn’t want him labelled as crazy (stoning was a fix back then!), so they publicly went along with him, the immaculate conception bit and probably had him stuffed away somewhere safe for the period he ‘disappeared’ as opposed to him being off finding himself in the desert. Or he ran away in psychosis and took quite some time to come back.

Having said that, and while they believe he suffered mental illness and delusions, and was not ‘the son of God’ per se, they worship him for the qualities he espoused. The looking after others that need it, feeding the poor, the crippled, the lepers, encouraging everyone to help and love thy neighbour, expecting nothing in return. As for the ending they think his mum and Mary M were assisted to get him out of the initial cave and somewhere basically no one knew about as apparently after that they both decamped to another location altogether and lived out their lives there together. They presume their end location was probably where Jesus’s remains ended up. To be frank, it does all sound like more of a likely scenario. It also doesn’t take away the fact they worship him in regards to seeking to follow his good deeds and teachings (unrelated to being the son of God).

Goodness. That's quite a take on the life of Jesus! Do they believe there's a Messiah still to come? The OT does prophesy one.

I just wish he'd hurry up!

Get down here and do some smiting!

But I'll pass on the eternal life, thanks.

And you accuse others of lacking reading comprehension 🤣

By this point, it's the end of the Great Tribulation. A huge percentage of the Earth's inhabitants are already dead from all the disasters.The Earth is a massive mess of destruction.The AntiChrist heads up a huge army (I think around 200 million people) who all support him. These aren't nice people out for an afternoon walk or shopping. So I can't feel bad about those, who after all support Satan, being wiped out. They made a choice and despite all the disasters and trials beforehand, they chose to stick with him.

It's also possible all children are taken up in the Rapture (a rather Hollywood name, perhaps 'Gathering' might be better) before the tribulation happens so they are spared the suffering, because I don't think God would put them through all that is to come.

I don’t know what you’ve posted means but I still haven’t been persuaded anything is ever going to happen.
Jesus (if the Bible is correct and who knows) was a regular bloke, got into trouble with the wrong crowd and got killed. He wasn’t anything special so can’t see him having any influence going forward.

why do humans need gods anyway ? why not believe in ourselves and try to be good people, why chain ourselves to what a bible says because if people followed most of what the bibles say then its not compatible with modern society

I agree - I’m an atheist so gods aren’t involved in my life. As most humans I know the difference between good v bad, right v wrong. I don’t need a third party to make me happy.

What value does a god add?

to me its like if you had a boss constantly saying oh you shouldn't do that, etc

in the show stargate its dont believe the false gods, and with all due respect to humanity when you get books written by humans, edited by humans then influenced by humans then some humans are false gods with their religious texts.

“So I can't feel bad about those, who after all support Satan, being wiped out. They made a choice and despite all the disasters and trials beforehand, they chose to stick with him”.

This is such an awful thing of you say. So even the most kindest and good people, by virtue of not believing in your god are automatically satanists, that need to be wiped out? Oh my goodness. This is just something else now.

You've totally misrepresented what I wrote.

The 'kindest and most good people' will not be there in that army, for sure. They'll either have converted to Christianity (and been killed for it) or just died in the disasters that have taken place before. The army will be filled with people who want to fight FOR Satan. They believe in HIM. Why would you want to feel sorry for or even support people like that?

I'm not sure, but they seem to. Humans have invented God since the beginning of time, over and over again. Maybe its a way of putting things into some kind of order, or a way of providing things that people need, like a sense of community, rules, belonging to a group, helping others, confession etc into an easy package. People have tried to set up atheistic forms of 'church' communities but it is very difficult to hold it together as all they have in common is something they don't believe in, and often consists of the same types of people (middle class University educated, older) whereas on the occasions I go to church ( I'm Catholic, so it may be different in the C of E) there are many different races, age groups backgrounds etc.

Some people seem to need rules given to them (by a church) whereas others of us can work it out for ourselves.

All seems very pointless if so many people would be killed.

What kind of people would support Satan, in the scenario who describe, up thread. ? If i don’t believe in your god, because he doesn’t exist, and if he did exist i still wouldn’t ever follow him, would i be classed as a follower of Satan?

What kind of people would support Satan - well he's pretty clever at being deceptive. How many people do you know who've ended up in abusive marriages, thinking the person they married was a kind and decent soul? That's sort of what will take place. At first, the AntiChrist will appear to sort out peace and people will be happy. Then things will start to go downhill. He'll end up wanting people to worship him, and many will because they are so deceived.

As for the rest of your question, Jesus can answer that: Matt. 12:30 "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters."

So from what you say these are fallible mortals who've been deceived by the master deceiver, and who you compare to the victims of domestic abuse. But you say "Why would you want to feel sorry for or even support people like that?"