The Death of Christ and How it Relates to Eschatology.

Ephesians 4:11


11So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.

As you grow in Christ, you gain 'discernment' and learn to test things against what scripture says. Sometimes that means that you will be able to dismiss things out of hand. Sometimes doing so will cause you to lose a nuance.

Sometimes you will spend a long time pondering something before accepting or rejecting it. Sometimes you will know right away.

It is different for everyone, but the Spirit will guide you.

I may be able to shed some light on your predicament, including a perception which, if I can explain well, may enlighten you.

However, I need to use some modern pschology to do it. Please understand, I have no social skills. It is how I am wired. God has given me the ability to use words fairly well, and so I hope they will help me communicate. The things I will discuss below have helped me immensely to interact with people. Some who are reading this may immediately recoil at the thought of using modern psychology, due to 'horror' stories and its general dismissal, in certain circles, of a Biblical foundation. I believe there is a Biblical foundation for using some of the tools that have been 'discovered', but always with the fundamental understanding of man's sin nature. 

In modern psyhcology, there was a fellow named Karl Jung. You may have heard of him. He pioneered quite a lot of what modern psychology uses today. Many have come after him, such as  Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers and David Keirsey who all developed metrics for evaluating how people process information (perception) and how they communicate. Now, since their contributions, there have been greater sophistications applied to their initial hypotheses. IMHO; however, their testing methods for 'sorting' into 16 temperament types are still valid as a baseline, but should be limited as such. 

I am going into a bit of detail on this, because I hope you will receive with an open heart and mind my explanation of why you believe some on this board 'know a different Jesus'.  IMHO, you are a part of the group that you want to be a part of, but maybe not for the reasons you think. Not because there is a different Jesus, but because you, like those you have named, evaluate things with your heart. Your emotions. Not your head - rationality. This is perfectly okay! This is one of those situations where there is no wrong answer!


To understand why this is, needs a (i will try to make it) brief explanation of how the 16 temperament types work. Please accept my explanation with a grain of salt, and do a little homework on a couple websites I recommend:

www.humanmetrics.com  (the Jung Typology link at the top if you want to take the quiz free - be sure to save a screenshot of the results, including the percentage strength)

www.personalitypage.com (for free explanations of the temperament types)

I have had the opinion that one cannot effectively deal with others, until one knows, understands and accepts onesself. Then one can maximize the ability for 'accommodation'.

So, temperament types, and strengths. There are 4 categories:

Introvert / Extrovert - which has little to do with how friendly you are, and a lot to do with where your 'world' is - internal, or external

iNtuitive/ Sensory - which is, are you abstract or concrete?

Thinking / Feeling - do you use your heart or your head to evaluate things?

Perceiving / Judging - a note here. Judging has more to do with a Judge banging his gavel and saying "case closed" than being judgmental. Perceiving people are the spontaneous, fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants / go-with-the-flow types and Judging people are the kind that like closure, order, i's dotted and t's crossed.

In addition, just so you understand that the purpose of the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator)/Jung Typology/Kiersey Temperament Sorter has little to do with pigeon-holing people, please see below, how there is a continuum of strength, which allows for infinite variation among the types. (see the thread that describes discrete versus continuous values mathematically). Although the sorters/indicators give discrete values for strength, they really should be considered approximations, which vary based upon many many factors at the time the test is taken. This pigeon-holing is not possible, despite the perception.

Imagine a numberline going from 100 down to 0 and back up to 100 again:

Introvert  100----------------------0------------------------100   Extrovert

For any given category above, your score may fall anywhere between the 100s. IMHO, scores which are 25 or less are indicative of high flexibility. Whereas high scores indicate specialization. Most people have 2-3 scores that are near 0 (<30).

For the purposes of fairness, I tested as INTJ with the following scores:

I - 89
N - 75
T - 75
J - 69

What does this mean in plain english?  I am a socially inept rocket scientist.

I am sure you wil find many here to corroborate that. But if you like, the personalitypage website will give you a nice rundown on my type.

Now, what does this have to do with you?

Well, @cage , you strike me as a very sensitive guy. My hat's off to you. You see the human side of things. Peoples feelings. That is an awesome talent. Some, such as myself, see the process side of things, we miss the human part (especially with scores like mine). I can promise you, though that we are not insensitive, despite our appearances as cold and dispassionate.

Remember that we have a sin nature. No one is perfect. There is no perfect temperament type (though I could hypothesize that a perfectly balanced type would scores 0's all the way across.)

So the people that you identify with are also likely emotional people who have real hearts for others. Whereas people whom you may believe you have issues with, are in fact just more inclined to use their head first before they use their heart. Forgive them. Give them some wiggle room. Make some allowances. Accommodate. Let them use their analytical skillz to help you better understand your salvation, and your Savior. They are not here to put you or anyone else down, despite approaching things from the 'just the facts ma'am' perspective.

I can promise you that they care much more than you think they do. Even if they aren't so good at showing it.

I hope you find this helpful.

Thanks for reading such a long post.


 

yardstick

Very interesting. Pretty spot on. Thanks for the link!

Humanmetrics Jung Typology Test™
Your Type
ISFP
Introvert(19%) Sensing(19%) Feeling(31%) Perceiving(66%)

You have slight preference of Introversion over Extraversion (19%)
You have slight preference of Sensing over Intuition (19%)
You have moderate preference of Feeling over Thinking (31%)
You have distinct preference of Perceiving over Judging (66%)

fascinating. Thank you for sharing.

FWIW, please pay very close attention to "preference". You are not 'locked in'. You just prefer one over another.

With the earnestness of Cage's posts and his mention of my comment about people not listening even if the Lord did speak, I thought I should check out the post he keeps referring to by silentknight. After reading this post, I wanted to read more of what silentknight had written and found an unusual pattern for this forum. It seems like his primary focus for being here was not even eschatology. He did talk about the child being Emmanuel, but that is not purely eschatological, but rather a more general understanding of sonship and our relationship with our Father. I'm not saying he made no comments about the end times, but most of his contribution was in understanding the gospel, the feasts, the sovereignty of God. He also spent much of his energy on asking us to join the spiritual battle that rages and will rage. That is a bit odd on a site primarily dedicated to end times events. Another thing I noticed would confirm what yardstick is saying, this man, silentknight, was seeking the heart of God whereas some others here are seeking the mind of God. That may cause some apparent conflict. But it would also explain why silentknight did not defend himself, Cage. It would not matter to him if people believed him. It is not his job to convince the minds of others. It is his job to move their hearts. God has put us here with different callings. It could be that yours, cage, is to defend the defenseless. I would suggest that you consider this - when silentknight was here - he did not defend his experience. Should you take a cue from that? This does not mean that he does not firmly believe what he experienced. It means that the truth of it was less important than defending it.

But now, I fear that I have started something that has completely shut down disciple4life 's thread. But yardstick , I am curious how you would respond to the statistical question that @cage posed. And since that situation did revolve around the death of Christ, perhaps we are close enough for disciple4life to allow it?

I am an analytical guy. I believe the entirety of creation has multiple coexisting and interfacing mathematical models to support it. Whenever there is a mathematical model, there is order. Pattern. A logical Creator (and yes, the Creator is an emotional guy too!).

Here are some thoughts to ponder:

1. knowledge has increased. This leads to the opportunity for software packages (which are built around mathematical modeling) to exist that permit the mapping of celestial patterns both forward and backward. Based upon prior knowledge, historical reports and data and Biblical passages, we can get a 'ballpark' for certain events. When we add science and mathematics to the mix, I believe its absolutely possible to accurately pinpoint at least some specific events.

2. Sept 23 exactly maps a data point in time which was prophesied in Revelation 12:1-2. The only questions are "What does it mean?" and "What happens next?"

3. It is not 'wrong' to speculate one way or another on a given topic. The whole 'date setting' phenomenon is based upon fear. Fear that the alleged 'date setter' will be wrong, and will be condemned as a false prophet. But the concept of taking an educated guess, based upon the facts, records, history and perspectives currently available has been twisted to amalgamate these speculations into the condemned prognostications for any number of reasons; not the lease of which is pride, power, and money; notwithstanding, the speculation - hypothesis - should and could be subject to change based upon new data, including, but not limited to: passing a speculated event date. In this way, the 'christian' community has taken the methods of the enemy and used them against its own members.


As far as the crucifixion of Jesus on a specific feast day; nay, even that he fulfilled the first 4 of 7?  Why not? Do we have any new evidence, or data that proves this did not occur? Are there 2 or 3 witnesses to establish something else? This is a good hypothesis.  But wait!  How many understand what the word Hypothesis means?


www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypothesis

Should we not be testing everything against scripture?


1 Thessalonians 5:19-22



Acts 17:11


So this begs these questions really: Is the date of the death of Christ 'Essential' or 'non-Essential'? And does it require 'Charity'?

And one last thing (I hope I have answered your question. If not, I am probably having a comprehension problem. Please help me out here.): 


2 Cor 13:1


In the absence of 2 or 3 witnesses (to corroborate), we must take a statement made by someone as hypothesis only.

Thanks yardstick. I'll keep that stuff in mind.