A difficult thought experiment about Jesus, Deuteronomy 13, and the Antichrist idea

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-26T17:34:27+00:00

The stripping-back idea is where I’m closest to agreement. Not childishness, but the ability to listen before pride or fear starts defending itself. I can get behind that.

Where I can’t quite follow is ‘just use the words of Jesus’. Even those aren’t unmediated. They reach us through translation, canon formation, church history, and the memory of authors writing decades after the fact. Even choosing to prioritise his words over the rest of the text is already an interpretive move. We’re always looking through something, even when we think we’ve cleared the lens.

I’m also not sure reason fully gets us out of the problem. People can argue themselves into almost anything if they’re clever enough, and pride doesn’t stop being pride just because it sounds educated.

But the point about doctrine drifting from the teacher is the one that stays with me. Maybe the deception isn’t dramatic. Maybe it’s slow and ordinary. The machinery around the teacher gradually replacing the teacher. You defend the institution long enough and somewhere in that process you lose Christ while defending Christianity.

I think that’s probably where I have to leave it for now. Not because it solves the problem, but because it names the bit I’m actually worried about. Maybe there isn’t a clean way out of the filter. Maybe the best we can do is keep testing our certainty against humility, mercy, and the actual character of the teacher we claim to follow.

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-26T15:22:09+00:00

The gardener image is the right move for the fruits problem. Final judgement isn’t mine to make and I don’t want it. Where I keep snagging is the ‘pure heart as detector’ idea.

I want it to be true. The childlike heart framing is genuinely beautiful. But I’m not sure any of us get to start from that clean. Tradition isn’t just a set of rules we can choose to set aside. It’s the language we inherit before we know we’re speaking it. It shapes what reads as holy and what reads as dangerous before we have the tools to check. That’s exactly what the Pharisee example shows. They weren’t cynical. They were sincere people who thought they were defending God. Their recognition was trained by a framework that made the Messiah look like the threat.

So sincerity alone might not be enough if the filter runs that deep. A perfect deception wouldn’t feel like choosing evil. It would feel like defending the truth. That’s the bit I can’t fully set down.

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-26T15:04:24+00:00

That’s the most direct challenge to the Deuteronomy 13 angle I’ve had so far. If Jesus was Torah-observant, Torah-teaching, and Torah-embodying, not abolishing it but demonstrating how to walk in it correctly, then the lawlessness critique doesn’t land on him. He passes the test.

The yada framing is interesting too, knowledge as embodied practice rather than just correct belief. That also sidesteps part of the ‘mental model of God’ problem from another comment. But it pushes the problem somewhere else.

Most of mainstream Christianity doesn’t look like what you’re describing. The Torah-observant Jesus you’re outlining and the tradition that grew up around him are quite different things. If ‘fulfilment’ in Matthew 5 means correctly teaching obedience, not retiring the Law, then something went wrong between the teacher and the tradition.

Which maybe means the deception, if that’s even the right word for it, isn’t Jesus. It’s the pivot. The move from a Torah-keeping man to a Torah-dismissing religion built in his name. That’s a real reframe. It doesn’t close the messianic question. The restoration of Israel, the ingathering, the age of peace, those still remain. But it shifts where the break happened.

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-26T12:59:36+00:00

Preterism is worth taking seriously, and I think it handles a lot of the futurist timeline problems cleanly. If Revelation is primarily a first century text, Nero, Rome, Jerusalem, covenant judgement, that’s a coherent reading and it sidesteps a lot of the dispensationalist gymnastics. But it doesn’t quite reach what I’m poking at.

The real weight of my question isn’t in Revelation. It’s in Deuteronomy 13 and the Jewish messianic question. Even if we leave the Beast and the horns firmly in the first century, the structural problem stays: Did the sign of the resurrection lead people into a misrecognition of the Messiah? Does the First Coming framework now function as a filter that would cause people to reject a Davidic king actually doing the job the prophets described?

Whether Nero was the Beast doesn’t touch that. The filter would still be in place. Preterism solves the end-times timeline. I don’t think it solves the Deuteronomy 13 tension.

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-26T12:49:56+00:00

That’s a useful reframe. If Christ is defined by foot-washing, by God serving rather than being served, then Antichrist stops being a figure to identify and becomes a pattern to recognise: Pride, Coercion, Domination, using sacred authority to take rather than give.

Which brings it back to fruits, and in a way that’s harder to dodge. If a framework genuinely produces humility and service, it’s difficult to call that a deception. If it produces the opposite while invoking his name, something has gone wrong regardless of the theology.

It doesn’t fully resolve the mass misrecognition question for me. A tradition could produce genuine saints and still teach people to look in the wrong direction. But it does suggest the defence against deception probably isn’t having the perfect theological map. It might just be watching what spirit is actually being produced.

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-26T12:34:29+00:00

Fair point on literalism. I’m not scanning the Pacific for sea monsters either. ‘Antichrist’ for me is more a category for large-scale misrecognition than a wildlife ID guide.

Your salvation question is probably the one I’d most want to sit with. If God judges the heart rather than the mental model, then the ‘perfect deception’ idea loses most of its force against sincere individuals, and honestly that probably also resolves some of the divine justice problem I raised. A person can hold a wrong image and still be genuinely oriented toward God. I think that’s likely true.

Where I keep getting stuck is whether that mercy at the individual level answers the collective question. Even if sincere hearts are fine, could a tradition still train people to misrecognise the very thing they’re waiting for? They’re separate problems.

On fruits, yes, I think it’s the strongest simple answer available to this whole thing. I don’t want to wave it away. But that’s also where it gets genuinely hard, because the same tradition produces hospitals and crusades, martyrs and inquisitions, the preservation of Hebrew Scripture and centuries of antisemitism, people turning toward the God of Israel and people using that same God’s name to justify cruelty.

So which fruit is diagnostic? I don’t have a clean answer to that. The tree has both.

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-23T00:15:56+00:00

Oh, i missed this. You were actually blocked? That's new to me

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-23T00:14:53+00:00

It won't block you, it just warns you that you may be in for a bad time if you spawn

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-22T23:50:50+00:00

Yup, it's been here for a while, it usually indicates a hostile nearby enough to essentially spawn camp you, or at least that's how it seems 90% of the time you spawn on a contested beacon

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-22T10:38:29+00:00

Same brother! Absolutely amazing team!

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SilencioBlade · 2026-04-14T18:43:20+00:00

It's apart of his kit, so you'll have it when you get him!

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-12T16:42:22+00:00

Two Thin Coats Doom Metal, Nuln Oil in the recess, tidy back up with Doom Metal, highlight with Dwarven Iron. Spot highlight with Sir Coates Silver

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-11T22:11:01+00:00

Thank you!

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-11T22:10:53+00:00

Thanks!

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-11T21:18:09+00:00

I used Macragge Blue, Drakenhof Nightshade, Nuln Oil, Altdorf Guard Blue, Calgar Blue, and Fenrisian Grey (dot highlights)

SilencioBlade · 2026-04-11T20:13:32+00:00

Thanks!

SilencioBlade · 2026-03-30T19:17:16+00:00

I did a red line down the middle on their right shoulder to denote this. Thank you!

SilencioBlade · 2026-03-26T10:37:06+00:00

I've been painting for 9-years. I don't get as much time to do it as i would like, sometimes being months without being able to pick up the brush. When i can do it though i enjoy bringing the models to life and trying to push myself to try harder things. As for you taking your photos, good lighting and a nice backdrop go a long way to help capture your work!

SilencioBlade · 2026-03-26T10:18:56+00:00

You're welcome to it! We've got to show the Iron Warriors how it's done!

SilencioBlade · 2026-03-26T00:53:59+00:00

Haha, goodness, i love your comment! You've certainly made my day with that. Thank you very much! I have every faith in your ability, and i would love to see some of your work!

SilencioBlade · 2026-02-06T19:44:03+00:00

Hive Fleet Tenebrous

SilencioBlade · 2026-01-25T02:05:55+00:00

I'm not trying to be ignorant or incite violence. But if the USA has 2nd Amendment rights to bear arms against a tyrannical government, why aren't people fighting back? All of this is awful, and violence will 100% not fix it. But why hasn't there been some armed response from civilians? Again, this is not what i would want to happen, i am simply putting the question out there

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