What Dawson said. It’s very effective. We also have one of those curly hazels in the garden and we’ve cut twigs from that, arranged in a pot and hung decorations from it.

One of the most pathetic and depressingly ignorant things I’ve ever read.

Blimey! Hasn’t anybody on this forum heard of satire?

We thought of crown too but that came up as the answer to another question (worth five shillings)Like willard we also thought of beret; though the Ivy has a flower, not a berry, in the song.

I’d rather listen to Sooty on the radio than Chris Moyles

sorry – it wasn’t funny the first time!

You lot are blardy amazing. Wait til I show Mrs Wheel.
algarvebairn, I thought of slip for this one, but I thought slip had more to do with a position on the field than dropping a ball? Or am I still wrestling with the wrong end of the stick??

Ten minutes of tickling? I’d rather go to prison.

The reforming if Israel happened after the 2nd world war, etc.

Well, I suppose prophesies may get fulfilled if enough people who believe them devote their lives to bringing them about. Jesus clearly believed he would be back pretty quickly:
“Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:28)
And yet this hasn’t happened. Did he change his mind? Did he lie to his followers? Or was he THE WRONG GUY…

Foul things. Everything that’s wrong with English chocolate.

Revelation for example, a prophetic book in the bible, speaks of a time that is yet to come.

Ah. So any prophesies Jesus failed to fulfil, that’s because he’s saving it up for next time?
I have to say, looking through that very useful list, a lot of those prophesies are very shaky: He will be born of a woman (no kidding). He will be called a Immanuel (by his mother) – not Jesus then? He will be called a Nazarene..I look at Matthew to see that Joseph took him to live in Nazareth “So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.” Yet, when I look at the OT scripture that supposedly supports this, it says “Out of the stump of David’s family[a] will grow a shoot”. It makes no mention of what town the messiah will be associated with. When I looked into this a bit I find that nowhere did “The prophets” say he would be called a Nazarene. This little quote is forced into the job because of some obscure pun to do with Nazarenes and shoots.
And so it goes on. It all looks a lot like people looking for prophesy with the benefit of hindsight and then endowing vague and opaque phrases with meaning. I still say, you got the Wrong Guy!

To get back to the OP: I have to laugh when people think they’ve uncovered a major flaw in something that teams of theologists have been working on for years after a few moments idle pondering in a carol service.

I know, mike. I was quite surprised myself how easy I found it. Surprised, but a little bit proud.

@PhilAmon: thanks for the list. Don’t you think a good candidate for Messiah would have to fulfil ALL the prophesies? And it’s not as if failing to become King of Israel is a minor detail…

Michael Moorcock wrote an interesting short story called Behold the Man that goes into some of that stuff, Mike – how much of the story got filled in afterwards.
Something else that I noticed recently is that nowhere in the NT does it mention anything about 3 kings. Matthew mentions “wise men from the east” – he doesn’t say how many. I guess we’ve all come to assume there were 3 because they brought 3 gifts but one of them could easily have carried the myrrh and the Frankincense. I don’t think they are very heavy. The rest of the gospels don’t mention them at all. Then suddenly they have names – Balthazar, Melchior and Caspar. So somebody made that up!

Hmmm – so are there still people around who claim to be able to trace their line back to David? If not, the Jews are going to struggle to find anyone to fulfil the prophesies.

I think we’re getting away from the point, friends. I was interested to hear how people who use the prophesies of the OT as part of their support for their view that Jesus was the Messiah, square my quotes in the original post with the character they believe to be The One. The prophesies appear to be about someone else – a strong military leader/politician who is going to free Israel and rule in peace etc. Jesus never did that. So the Jews (whose views also need to be given respect) might have a point, no??

Jesus and David are both descended from Adam created by God. So they would still be in the same family ie humanity”
Well, that hardly narrows the field does it? So the prophecy says: The Messiah will be …a person.

Jesus mother, Mary, was also a descendant of the line of David.

I didn’t know this, Underhill. Where’s the source?

The mainstream jewish point of view is that Christians have got the wrong guy and their still waiting for a messiah who will bring earthly peace etc etc

well quite, and I guess they’ve used exactly the same prophecies that Christians use to identify Jesus as the Messiah, to come to the conclusion that he wasn’t.
Seems to me they were looking for a politician – a King, or military leader. Here’s another:
“Marshal your troops, O city of troops, for a siege is laid against us. They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod. 2 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:1-2)

And another:
“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. 6 In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness.” Jeremiah 23:5-6

scu98rkr is right that Jesus isn’t even descended from David as Joseph is not his father.
It’s all looking a bit shaky for Jesus.

Was the carol service any good? We were thinking of going along this year. Not religious but I do like christmas carols…

Yes, but take a warm coat and get there early if you go on Christmas Eve.

Ever considered (frickin’) laser beams?

I’d still have to wear reading glasses, I am told. And it’s expensive.
That pic is grossing me out. Make it go away.

Northwind – that seems a reasonable compromise – I suppose I just ditch the bit of the prescription that says 175 and 015?
Thanks lungman. Since I mainly wanted contacts for cycling, and there’s less map reading to be done these days what with GPS and that, I might compromise by just going for distance correction. How do I interpret my prescription to achieve that?

You’re just trying to control something you can’t control. Get stressed about something that matters and stop trying to control a situation you can’t control.

Got your fog lights on, pebblebeach?

Mwa hwa hwa! (evil laugh)

This Disco everyone is talking about – is it the Mark Green Disco?

In performance terms they’re terrific but they take more maintenance than (most) hydraulics because you have to manually adjust the “pistons” to account for pad wear.

the majority of you will be using your expensive hifi to listen to absolutely appalling quality mp3s.

I couldn’t tell the difference between mp3 and CD in a blind test on our hi-fi! :oops:

Sometimes spokes compensate for each other. The wheel may be true but adjacent spokes (on the same side) will be tensioned differently. In a properly finished wheel the differences in tension between each spoke on the same side should be quite minor (though whether the spoke is facing in or out at the hub makes a bit of difference). Anyway, if you are musical you can check the tension is fairly even by twanging adjacent spokes. There should be no big differences in pitch of the “note” produced as you go around the wheel.
(thinks: maybe you could true a wheel using an electronic guitar tuner!)

oh yeah – and take plenty of mozzie repellant!

Stoner. Ignore it. Ignore all future threats/warnings, same with threats from their debt recovery agents. They will go away. I know; I have tried this.

Essential reading (if I say so myself…)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/K%C3%B6k-Tv%C3%A4tt-Through-Scandinavia-Tandem/dp/B0046H9ZA4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294299673&sr=1-1

Much hillage!

anagallis_arvensis – thanks for the Townes. Saw him at Cambridge folk festival about 6 months before he died. He was so good we went to see him perform his second set the next day. His sense of humour was so dry it was practically Saharan.

Luka Bloom…

As usual, Shakespeare said it better:

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

I seem to have said McQuid…

McSquid – invertebrate.

Thorn tandems have all the drive train on the same side and they work very nicely. It also means there is a “clean” side of the bike (useful when you are lifting etc). We used the “3 teeth advanced” method on ours – helpful if the stoker is a less powerful rider as it forces them to begin the pedal stroke and prevents them from feeling like their feet are being dragged around by the captain’s pedal stroke.

Yup, Yell is a waste of money.

So, turned away for not being married, nothing to do with being gay …

..except that they never asked whether the couple in question were in a civil partnership. Nor, apparently, did they insist on seeing the marriage certificates of all the hetero couples who came to stay.
Mary and Joseph weren’t married when they asked for room at the inn either, btw.

a lot of people on here are biggoted towards CHristians and they think that’s OK because people who are Christians are just wackos who don’t deserve to be treated with respect.

Anyone who thinks their opinions are somehow worth more than anyone else’s because they are based on a book of fairy stories will have to work hard to justify respect. (Heads for bomb shelter).

Being gay appears to be at odds with the Christian faith; being black isn’t.

Bigotry is bigotry, however you dress it up. Anyway, plenty of people seem to be able to call themselves Christians without taking on the homophobic baggage. Are they then not true Christians?

Not sure which I saw first – the Omen or Psycho. Both scared me when I was about 10 but Psycho in a funny way.
Sure I saw the film about the phone box twice! Brilliant.

you never hear anyone say “even though they were a bit thick” when talking about someone involved in a tragic accident …

:-)
For the same reason, never move to a “close-knit community” where “everybody knows everybody else”. Very dangerous places.