AW! Epistles
From P Cohen of Harvest Haven 5
Abstract
Abstract
Mike, what makes you presume you have a valid brain? The problem here is that even if you had the most brilliant and perceptive brain on earth, it is still not capable of comprehending God, Who is Spirit. You have a carnal brain that thinks carnal thoughts, even when contemplating heavenly things. How then can we expect you to believe and understand our answers? We cannot. Yet we preach the Truth as Holy Seed that will bear fruit in due time.
One of your complaints against Paul is that he revised the Law of God about circumcision: “Anyone with a brain still in their head would think that an almighty, omnicient being would need only to lay down the law once, and that would be enough, but scallies intent on fooling the gullible would try to make out that the Almighty could be in error and want to change His mind.” Mike, what makes you presume you have a valid brain? The problem here is that even if you had the most brilliant and perceptive brain on earth, it is still not capable of comprehending God, Who is Spirit. You have a carnal brain that thinks carnal thoughts, even when contemplating heavenly things. How then can we expect you to believe and understand our answers? We cannot. Yet we preach the Truth as Holy Seed that will bear fruit in due time. There is a very simple answer to this dilemma regarding the Law of God. Circumcision, whether by itself or as representative of keeping of the whole Law, never made anyone righteous. One incident above all others demonstrates this fact: when the Jews sought to remove Christ’s body from the cross so they could keep the Passover. They had slain the Son of God, Whose blood removes the sins that lambs and goats could never cleanse, but they remained faithful to the carnal ordinance while slaying the Lamb of God. They would not let His body stand in the way of keeping His Law! Amazing! Talk about irony!
Listen, chum, read your bible. The Romans not the Jews killed Jesus as the king of the Jews, a perverter of the nation, and one refusing to pay tribute. The gospels testify to the truth of each of these, though you will deny it. Blood sacrifices are disgusting. The whole notion is primitive and only primitive minds could hold on to it. Do you run about naked with a bone through your nose? Grow up, man!
The blood of bulls and goats, mandated by the Law, were not the Substance, only the shadow. The shadow is there to point us to the Substance. Without the shadow, we would not have known or expected there to be any Substance in the first place. Once the Substance came, that which pointed to it was no longer necessary. Circumcision of the flesh is not the Substance, it is only the shadow. Does that mean it was wrong or unnecessary? Not at all. There was much benefit in the keeping of the ordinances of God.
You rewrite the words of God again, as you always do despite the bible being sacred. It is sacred when some interpretation suits you and disposible otherwise. God as reported in the Jewish scriptures, which you claim to revere, was insistent that circumcision was necessary for salvation.
For Israel after the flesh and many others it has been the classic cart in front of the horse scenario. Trying to keep the Law to become godly does not work anymore than pulling a horse by the cart. But if God is giving grace and leading the way, the Law will be fulfilled as it should be, and we will be as He is. That is the example that Paul gave of Abraham, who kept the Law in spirit before he was circumcised. Abraham obeyed God by the faith God had given him in the offering up of his son, Isaac. He was law-abiding. Because of his obedience he was called the friend of God. It was after this that Abraham received the sign of the Law—circumcision. He became the father of all who believe, both circumcised and uncircumcised.
The covenant was with Abraham personally and all his seed forever because it was an everlasting covenant! Not to be circumcised was to break the covenant, and to be cut off from his people. All this is repeated for emphasis, and you boldly and confidently ignore it on the say so of Paul, your real God. Then you think God will save you anyway, even though you have disobeyed him in the most flagrant and obvious way by blabbering a load of supefluous bull about substance. If you truly believe in God at all, you find it remarkably easy to change His ordinances, so I cannot see that this belief of yours is other than a scam like all the others.
God never expected men to be able to keep the Law in their own power. It has always been by His grace. He knows our frames and our limitations. He gave Israel the Law of Moses, not to keep score as if one could score highly enough, but to make them realize that they needed Him and His grace and power to keep it.
You just cannot stop being God, can you. You know what God meant, and God’s own words as reported in the book you consider holy are so much tripe. You are right about that, but you are an absolute hypocrite and megalomaniac to make your claims knowing they are not at all what this sacred book says. Yet always you are right, and every other Christian kook in whatever guise thinks the same. You are all amateur Pauls, crooks and shysters.
The Law is a tutor to bring men to God through Jesus Christ, the Messiah. For this purpose God promised His Messiah, Who is not an external Deliverer firstly, but an internal One. Our problem is not an external one, solved by systems like communism or religion, but is within, which is where, Jesus said, the Kingdom of God comes. His Kingdom in us is the Law perfectly fulfilled according to the power and working out of His righteousness. This is salvation, the final solution to our problem.
So you say, but only you know what is happening inside you. For the rest of us we have to judge on behaviour, and Christian behaviour has consistently been abominable as long as they have had power, and sometimes when they did not. Since the enlightenment, Christians have lost power and men have become free to think. You want to stop it and return to the evil days of absolute Christendom, when roads were lined with burnt bodies.
I have spoken of circumcision as a sign, like the Temple sacrifices, but there is also the moral Law, the Ten Commandments, which was never fulfilled by ritual. Mankind has needed the Nature of Christ, to Whom the ceremonial Law pointed, to keep the Ten Commandments in the manner Christ taught and demonstrated. Without His Nature within, no person can keep the Law. Everyone, man and woman, needs the Law written on his or her heart, the circumcision of the heart promised by God through the prophet Jeremiah (31:33), which is also the new heart promised through the prophet Ezekiel (11:19).
People have to realize that society is necessary to human beings, and society can only exist by mutual co-operation. That means love for one another. It is that simple. But you do not get it. The only possible reason for God to have given a law is for people to live by it. That is what a law is. It is a measure, a yardstick by which anyone can judge for themself whether they have transgressed it or not. No one was supposed to transgress it, and those who did knew they were doing wrong. Ignorance of the law never was any defence, and the law was read in the temple and was emphasized by an invented sacred history, from which exemplary exhortations were taken, all given initially by the Persians to their colonists in Yehud.
This way the credit goes to God, not man. This way God is acknowledged to be in control, not man. So whatever happened to free will? In other words, there is a sovereign God, Who does as He will with His creation, and man is His dependent subject in all things.
What about free will? That does not exist in this scheme of yours. You are free to do as God says according to His will. You are incoherent in your feeble attempts to be God. You feel good, but you are deluded and condemned by your every word. You had better pray that I am right and there is no God, because you constantly do yourself no favours.
This way no one can ever say he or she got it right and became acceptable to God. We are all in the same boat, dependent on God and His mercy. Anyone who has received His mercy and the new nature in Christ will know it was strictly God’s choosing and doing. In that nature one manifests the fruits of right action and faith, and can perceive the fruits of others, whether they be good or evil. This is Jesus Christ come in the flesh. He is yet alive and with us, because He lives in us!
Constant assertions upon assertion with no foundation other than your delusion that you know! You had better try to be humble as a first stage to recovery, but my guess is that you have no chance of that.
*The Place of True Faith* You ask: “How do you remain righteous unless you have a standard of righteouness? What is the point of righteousness, if faith saves?” Could it be you have been fed the widespread lie of much of present-day evangelical Christendom, which is that there is a choice between faith and righteousness? If so, you have heard from liars and hypocrites; we encounter them often and shake our heads. Paul wrote of Abraham, our father of faith: “What then shall we say that our father Abraham has found, according to flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has a boast; but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness’” (Romans 4:1-3 MKJV). No one can “remain” righteous because without faith no one has been righteous to begin with. On this point the Scriptures are absolutely certain. Perhaps you have just used a poor choice of words, but you do have things backwards: Righteousness comes as the result of saving faith, never without it. As James famously wrote, “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:20). He wasn’t exaggerating.
I have already noted this in James, and it plainly means the opposite of your absurd interpretation. Faith is dead without works, my friend, means that faith is worthless unless works of righteousness accompany it. For faith to have any life, it has to be accompanied by works of righteousness. The work of righteousness is measured by the law in the Old Testament and by love of your fellow human in the New. In short, you can have faith dripping out of your every orifice, but it means nothing unless you show it by love or loving kindness. I am getting tired of running round the same blocks but getting nowhere because of your completely self-obsessed bigotry, the bigotry that every Christian fundamentalist must have. You can learn nothing because you know it all already—you think!
Righteousness is the proof of true faith. But of men’s works, which only appear to men as righteous, the prophet says: “But we are all as the unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as a menstruation cloth. And we all fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” (Isaiah 64:6 MKJV).
You cite a prayer to assuage God’s anger, not any judgement of God, trickster! By what standards, then, do we recognize the righteousness of God? By His standards of course, the Ten Commandments: “Whoever therefore shall break one of the least of these Commandments, and shall teach men thus, will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them, he shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall by no means enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:19-20 EMTV). Why only ten commandments? You, a Jew, should know, and must know that “these commandments” here spoken by another Jew means the law, the whole of it not just ten particular ones, and the context makes it indisputable. Trickster!
There was no disagreement between Paul and Christ on this matter, as you suggest; none whatsoever. Paul upheld the Law of God by the gift of faith. He writes: “Then is the Law annulled through faith? Let it not be! But we establish Law” (Romans 3:31 LITV).
Paul was two faced on this, as on many other things, unless you read him in a way no Christians do. Paul also wrote, “Now it is evident that no man is justified before God by the law", Gal 3:11. Is your true God being all things to all men, by any chance? Christ condemned Pharisees as hypocrites but Paul was the ace hypocrite of all.
*The Place of Love* Neither was Paul ignorant of, or negligent in, the love of God, as you also accuse: “Paul spent a lot of time expounding it, and reviling the law, but said not a lot about how love was necessary with it. That is why the world is full of fascist Christians.”
The “it” here is the doctrine of faith alone, not love as you suggest by giving a partial citation. The complete difference between the man Christians call God on earth and the man they endlessly cite as their true God is that Christ taught that love of neighbour was the message whereas Paul said it was faith in the redemptive power of Christ. The fourth and last of the canonical gospels adopts Paul’s take, but the synoptics describe an utterly different Christ.
Wherever do you get such patently unScriptural nonsense, Mike? On the contrary, Paul placed the love of God above all else, just as Christ summarized the Law as the love of God in action, which is obeying Him and loving your neighbor as yourself. Paul did this firstly by laying down his life for God and for the sakes of all to whom he preached, leaving us with the legacy of much of the New Testament by which we have been greatly edified and enriched. And his words reflect his actions: “Love is patient, love is kind; love does not envy; love does not boast, is not puffed up; does not behave disgracefully, does not seek its own, is not provoked to anger, thinks no evil; does not rejoice over unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8 EMTV). He concluded that discourse on love with, “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13 EMTV). What Paul describes are the fruits of Christ’s Spirit. He also writes about these: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control--*/_against such things there is no law_/*. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-25 EMTV). The Law has not been done away with by Paul; he speaks of how the Spirit of Christ has come to fulfill the Law in us. When we walk in the love of God, the Law can never convict us of wrongdoing, and we do not cast it aside. We walk by the Spirit of Christ, as did Paul. You do not understand or know these things, not presently having His Spirit or His faith.
What does Paul mean by, “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse", Gal 3:10? The simpler message of love is easier to comprehend but just as hard to practice to judge by Christians through history. You should try reading some. Faith is Paul’s message, and even if it was not, it is the message that Christians have taken as central. But faith without works of loving kindness is dead. You can say as often as you like that you have faith in God, but any almighty God knows whether it is true or not, and the rest of us know because, if it is true, it is accompanied by works of righteousness, something Christianity sadly lacks in its odious history.
*No Disagreement Between Paul and Christ* Plainly we show that you are wrong in declaring Paul preached something other than Christ, because Paul preached not simply the words of Christ, but Christ Himself. He is the Subject, Content, and Motivation of Paul’s words: “For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2 KJV). You argue that Jesus did not deny the Law, but Paul, the perennial whipping boy of many who deny Christ, did. That is not true, as I have been demonstrating.
And I have been demonstrating the opposite of! Paul denied the law repeatedly.
While neither denied the Law, Jesus said that all of It was summed up in two Commandments—to love the Lord your God with all your mind, heart, and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself. You criticize Paul for saying this very thing: “Above all, he says faith required love, and effectively he argues that love replaced the law.” Says you, but not Paul nor any portion of Scripture, leastways not as you interpret it. Paul affirms that, by the faith of Christ, we establish the Law: “Do we then by means of this faith abolish the Law? No, indeed; we give the Law a firmer footing” (Romans 3:31 WNT).
You quote what you quoted a few passages above in a different version. Which is God’s word? I have cited two passages of Paul that demolish this one in either version you care to cite, in two adjacent verses of Galatians. A few sentences before this one in Romans, Paul wrote, “For no human being will be justified in his sight by works of the law, since through the law comes knowledge of sin”, Rom 3:20, clearly saying that God encouraged sin by instituting the law through Moses.
However, there are many who claim to follow the teachings of Paul and Jesus who have done away with the Law of God, or they have left themselves to interpret and abuse It as they please. Jesus and His apostles warned that there would be great deception and iniquity (lawlessness) coming through those who claim to believe on Him, and that this would only get worse as time went on. So we live in a world today that is full of profession of faith in Christ, yet exhibits gross ungodliness and is almost entirely void of true faith.
“Lawlessness” is just what it says. It is ignoring the law, and Paul was the main propagandist of the movement against the law within Hellenized Christianity.
That is just how it was in the days of Noah (“the children of God mixed with the children of men”), which is why the world today has been reserved, not for water, but for fire, in order to cleanse it of all the filth brought on it by the false religious who help cause other sinners like you to blaspheme God.
Noah is a myth as anyone with a modicum of sense can see.
Being wrong about what Paul preached, as well as what Jesus preached, you are altogether wrong in your conclusions: “If Christ spoke God’s words, and Paul told you to believe something else, then what is Paul in the Christian mythos? … Either way, Paul is acting for Satan, according to your own sacred beliefs.” And: “You are only a good Christian when you live a good life. If you are a righteous man or woman then you will be saved, but not otherwise.” Jesus and Paul taught that there is no man who is good, and that Christ came to save sinners: “So Jesus said to him, Why do you call Me good? No one is good except One, that is, God” (Luke 18:19 EMTV).
So you accept that Christ is not God.
“As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, no not one; there is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God. They are all gone out of the way, they have together become unprofitable, there is none that does good, no, not one’” (Romans 3:10-12 MKJV).
Both you and Paul are tricksters. The psalm he is citing is condemning those who reject God, not everyone. Like you, the psalmist thought those who rejected God could not be righteous, a false belief, but one you and your namesake use dishonestly to condemn everyone. You claim here that no one can be good because no one can be perfectly good, an absurd notion that Christ certainly did not hold. He said he came to save the sinners of the world, and why was that? Because the righteous were already saved! They were the sheep already in the fold. Christ, in his famous metaphoric parable sought the lost sheep, not those that were not lost because they were already saved. Your next citations prove it.
“Faithful is this word, and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first. However, because of this I was shown mercy, so that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering, as a pattern for those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life” (1 Timothy 1:15-16 EMTV). “When Jesus heard it, He said to them, Those who are healthy have no need of a physician, but those who are ill. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Mark 2:17 EMTV).
You seem to think it is impossible to be healthy. The healthy ones are the righteous, that you deny can exist. Dunce.
*No Man Is Good* Therefore, Mike, we are saying the opposite of what you say, because we have learned that there is, indeed, nothing good to be found in man. You say “The criterion of salvation is how you treat other people,” but we say, “The */_evidence_/* of salvation is how you treat other people.” And not having spiritual discernment or sight, you cannot tell the difference between good and evil. You say “the ‘faith alone’ bunch … hate people more than any devil could, and you do not seem dissimilar.” You do not discern where we are coming from or our motives and therefore think we mistreat you. You call legitimate, helpful criticism, “hate.” And no doubt you would call some religious works, “love,” which are anything but. You think your own words are acceptable, if not loving, but are they?
They are just as loving as your own and meant to be just as helpful. They are an attempt to make you realize that your exegesis is self serving and not in the least objective or godly, if we are to accept that Christ is God.
“You say I am the servant of darkness and confusion because in fact you are. You believe in ghosts and fantasies, yet are intolerant and obnoxiously abusive to anyone who accepts reality.” Is it acceptable and loving to call the One Who laid down His life for us a “fantasy”? Is it loving to make yourself the arbiter of reality, telling us that what we receive from God does not exist? Are you not in darkness, confusion, and all contradiction because you do not believe in Christ and the Truth? If what we and the Bible report are true, you most certainly are in darkness, for which we do not condemn you as Jesus Himself testified: “For God did not send His Son into the world so that He might condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:17-18 EMTV).
Here we go round the mulberry bush again. This is well past where I came in, and it must be time to go. You believe ancient nonsense rather than modern knowledge. That is fantasy and delusion to me, and that is why I say you are quite mad. I would have no objection to Christian lunatics if they kept to their own asylums, but you are only happy when you persuade others to accept your particular brand of insanity.
It is you who is intolerant and abusive because you condemn us for telling you the Truth. It is you who make leaps of logic that are pure fantasy: “So you do as he [Christ] said, then. You are indeed humble. You love your neighbour. You forgive transgressors. You call people fools and ingrates and whatever comes into your arrogant head…. you spread your intolerance and insensitivity, your warmongering and punitive attitude. How does it all match the pacific Galilean who would not carry a sword?” “Warmongering and punitive attitude”? Where and how, Mike? We are not carrying swords, or threatening anyone with physical retribution. You make false deductions like these, and then think you are justified to dismiss what we say. You link us with Bush and Blair, with whom we have nothing to do, nor do we approve of their false Christianity. Indeed, by all we say, do, and are, we rebuke it, but you cannot see a thing. You make and knock down your straw men while trying to destroy the Real. Foolish man. We cannot help but tell you that you are wrong, and why should you and everyone else not know it? Should you all go on destroying one another endlessly in your madness?
Well, I would be delighted if you disagreed with Bush’s and Blair’s monstrous pervasion of the teaching of Christ. Christ was not God but his teaching, notably in the synoptics was a practical morality, but Bush and Blair ignore it, and so do you. That is why I speak generally of “you” Christians. I have just been discussing some of these points with a Catholic. He thinks Christians cannot openly and unequivocally criticize other Christians. You say you can, and you do, but I have only your word for it. I haven’t seen any mass Christian demonstrations against the perversion of their religion by greedy opportunists. Until I do, it is easier for me to bundle you all together, and whatever your arguments with Bush and Blair, your theological arguments sound much like theirs. All dogmatic spirit and no practical substance. Practical demonstrations of love of others is what is required not self-congratulatory paeans such as you offer.
*Distinguishing Good and Evil * Have I not said you cannot tell the difference between good and evil, between true Christians and false? I had written you: “Paul never said any such thing about professing ‘Christianity.’ He only spoke of professing Christ, Who saves us, and not any religion, which is all you can see.” To which you replied: “If professing Christ is not professing Christianity then the difference is too subtle for me. Is the Christian not a believer in Christ? Why is he called a Christian then?” The difference between professing Christ and professing Christianity is vast and profound. You yourself bring up an excellent example that demonstrates this point—the murder of Michael Servetus by John Calvin. John Calvin was religious, teaching Christianity as a religion, making his profession of Christ secondary and fruitless. Michael Servetus was spiritual, preaching Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior, and God, and his religion was to walk as Christ did, by the power of His Spirit. One is a work of man, the other a work of God (read *The Fruit of Cain Multiplied: The Murderer John Calvin
It sounds fine except that you are on the wrong side. Paul opposed the so-called judaizers who taught what Christ taught—practical love as the way to salvation. Paul taught a mystical Hellenized mish mash belief in the body of Christ, the same sort of belief that the followers of Dionysos and Orpheus professed, but combined with Judaism for its long sacred history. Pauline Christianity prevailed and you prefer it over the Christianity of Christ. You are the Catholic still.
You say Calvin was not a Catholic. On the contrary, he certainly was. What do reformers profess themselves to be except devotees of that which they seek to reform? They too are children of this world, looking for advantage and willing to use the Name of God to get it. Their just judgment does not linger. Our beliefs are not Catholic, and all one has to do is read from our site to verify this fact.
No, I am reading what you profess right here in this correspondence, and inasmuch as Paul is your true God, you are Catholic. Catholicism is gentile Christianity. Christ did not teach mysticism until the gospel of John was written long after the epistles of Paul, and after the synoptic gospels, which teach practical love.
*False Charges against Christ and God* You continue: “God is in your head, but Nature is the world you actually live in, and it has been spread over with blood and soot by you loving Christians as much as anyone else. So much for Christ and goodness.” Yes, the bloody whore, the Catholic Church along with all the daughters of Babylon, has spread blood and soot over this world, */_with your help,_/* because you do not distinguish between her and God. Therefore, according to Christ, you are part of the problem: “The man who is not with Me is against Me, and he who is not gathering with Me is scattering abroad” (Matthew 12:30 WNT).** How is it you blame Christ for the evil works of men, but also sing His virtues to me in other places and unfavorably compare me to those? You cannot have it both ways, Mike. You only seek to have it *your* way, thus the contradiction. That makes you no different than the pope or Calvin, who seek to have it their own way and also consider their word to be the final one.
You support and frequently cite Paul who was against the teaching of Christ, so you are the one against him. I am not a Christian and have no need to defend any form of Christianity, but I do defend the Christ of the synoptics because he shows you up as outrageous lying hypocrites, no different from the ones you say you abhore, and the reason is you are all Paulites. If you really want to get away from the Hellenization of Judaism which became the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, you need to go back to what was written in opposition to Hellenization of Christianity at the beginning. I have already told you that Christ was an Ebionite, a Poor Man, so you should read their literature, such of it as it remains fairly free of Catholic censorship, the Pseudo Clementine Recognitions and Homilies. If you truly empathize with Christ and not the figment invented by Paul as a latter day Attis or Adonis, you will cast off your presuppositions as much as is possible, probably not much, and start again with those who knew Christ in the flesh, and not as you do, through dreams and fancies.
So what that you argue with them? You are brothers, all claiming to be right while you and they are all wrong. You say of the pope’s work, attributing it to God: “Then he [God] invents a scheme of salvation for murderous cannibals, apparently forgetting that we had given up such practices. ‘Well it is only symbolic, just try it.’ ‘All right. It works, hallelujah!’ No, it does not work, except for people with a walnut sized brain.” You are right that the Catholic Mass does not work, but you are wrong that God instituted any such thing. He did not. Why assume such claptrap? Read Diabolical Doctrine 31) *The Lord’s Supper.
Erm, I do not believe in God, remember? You did not notice I was being heavily ironic. Kooks like yourselves, human nutters invent religions, and that is what you are attempting.
Another slander you cast at God is that He validated child rape. That wicked thought is all yours, foul-minded man. Of course, He did no such thing. The Scripture you allude to referred to the war Israel had with Midian: “But all the female children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves” (Numbers 31:18 MKJV). Who said anything about having sex with them? Yes, they became the property of Israel, just as adopted children belong to the parents who adopt them. Yes, they would grow up to become wives of the sons of Israel. Better than being slaughtered or having lived to be destroyed in the sins of their parents. But that does not concern or interest you, only does the scent of any opportunity to cast aspersions on God and the Bible.
It is a feeble justification of the fact I suggested to you, and that most scholars think is what was intended. This God of yours kills all the men, boys, old women and animals, but says to the victors you can keep the young girls for yourselves, and you call me foul minded. Anyone who could worship such a monster has a far fouler mind than I could even imagine. If this is God, He is Satan, and that is who you are worshipping, buddy. An old reprobate sinner like me could not bring myself to worship a devil. You have no trouble.
You think to prove that God is imaginary, by alleging that such things you imagine or suppose to be wicked were sanctioned by Him. The wickedness is inside you, foolish man. (The fool is the one who says there is no God—is that not you?)
I say it, but it is your judgement that I am the fool, and you can only make it because you have no reflexion in any mirror. You just cannot see yourself, and see how idiotic you are. Demons like vampires are supposed not to cast reflexions. Maybe that is symbolic of them being completely unselfcritical.
However, it is on account of God and those that have known Him that we have whatever good laws we have, which, if enforced, protect you from religious scofflaws like Calvin and other criminals. Servetus and Castellion purchased much good with their blood, as have many other God-fearing men and women. You are foolish to disdain and reject such influences.
You seem to forget that I mentioned Calvin’s crimes to you. And there are terrorists like Calvin, and the Dominicans of the Inquisition, and millions more Christians of all ranks and types because we have your odious religion as well as several other varieties of Patriarchal religions, all man made and all unnatural. Those who think God speaks and acts though them are the cause of much human savagery and madness. You are among them.
Your own countryman, and the greatest man of the 20^th century on the world stage, said this about the roots or foundation of your civilization: “We owe to the Jews in the Christian revelation a system of ethics, which, even if it were entirely separated from the supernatural, would be incomparably the most precious possession of mankind, worth in fact the fruits of all other wisdom and learning put together. On that system and by that faith there has been built out of the wreck of the Roman Empire the whole of our existing civilization” (Winston Churchill).
There would be more truth in this if the “even” were omitted. The Roman empire was largely destroyed by Christianity. The supposed barbarians were all Christians, and Christians within the empire largely refused to fight, and indeed exulted in the collapse of the empire as symptomatic of the coming End. Fundamentalists today want to drop the atomic bomb to force the End, not noticing, apparently, that it is meant to be God’s decision, not any Christian crack pot. But you all believe you are God anyway, so to you lot it amounts to the same thing, and always has. History is proof enough. I have suggested to you before that you try reading some.
However, since you do not believe us, God has provided some good, convincing teachers that will help you learn to appreciate the value of godly influence, which you have rejected. The Muslims are there to remind you of what you now stand to lose, if you have not lost it altogether, because you have despised it. They are there to teach you to appreciate it.
It ia another patriarchal religion, from the same root as your own, and with the same faults, notably, the idea that a superior life begins at death. Madness!
*The Most Reliable of All Books* How greatly you err in saying the Bible is not reliable! Your illogical reasoning that the Bible was written by people who wanted to gain control over others is sheer speculation. Talk about fantasy! If you want to see a book written by a megalomaniac to attain such ends, read the Koran; the Bible does not give power to anyone for illicit gain or to unjustly rule over others. Prove that it does. Pointing to those that use it for these purposes is not proof. Show us from the Bible itself. You say most of the Old Testament is forged and that Moses did not exist. This is more of the world according to Mike. We cannot take these things on your word. We have certainly found the Bible to be spiritual truth, and, for this reason, we know it cannot be based on lies. The Bible tells the truth about the nature of man, which is highly unflattering to all flesh, and for this reason alone is like no other book on earth. It speaks the Truth without apology or condemnation. That is why you find fault with It.
You keep telling me to read your testimonies, well try reading my pages. They go into considerable detail on many of these points. The Jewish state and scriptures were Persian. Christians and pious Jews resist the idea, but not most objective historians and the few believers who prefer honesty to making God into a liar. As for spiritual truth, it is necessarily lies because there is no way of verifying it. You take it or leave it, and sensible people leave it.
The Truth is ever pure and never adulterated or contrived. In fact, contrary to what you claim, archeology and other sciences are constantly confirming the Bible. While no one has found a physical piece of evidence with Moses’ name written on it from when he lived in Egypt and took the children of Israel out into the wilderness of Sinai, there is no evidence this did not happen. In fact, there is much evidence that these events did happen if you know where to look, as the atheist James Cameron found out (/The Exodus Decoded/).
You are lying though your hat. If it were true that there is no evidence that the exodus did not happen, that is not evidence that it did. There is indeed no evidence that it did, and the suggestions of times when it did, do not match Egyptian history. Most important, there is no evidence of a conquest of Canaan. I am not repeating several long pages, but you are welcome to read them. I know you will not. Ignorance is bliss to you believers.
We know the Bible is true because we know Him Who inspired It and is Its Subject, the Lord Jesus Christ. He */_is_/* the Truth. The Bible is a spiritual Book. Those who attempt to grasp It from a carnal point of view, no matter how much they believe It is true or not, are not on the right “wavelength” to receive the Truth that It transmits; one must be granted the mind of Christ. That is why you mock us for speaking from His mind. The Jews who rejected Christ also had this lack, as Paul the apostle wrote: “Therefore, having such hope, we use great boldness of speech-- and not as Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the end of what was passing away. But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is removed in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. But whenever one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away” (2 Corinthians 3:12-16 EMTV). More from your God. Why should Matthew interview the 500 witnesses who saw the risen Christ, as you suggest, since he was one of them?
Trickster. I made no such suggestion. I suggested that Matthew should have interviewed the saints he said had risen with Christ. That would have been a coup. Luke is the one who boasted he had interviewed witnesses, and Paul is the one who mentioned 500 with no fear of contradiction because he was hundreds of miles away.
Matthew spoke of what he saw, as did the other writers of the New Testament. Otherwise, they are liars. That is perceptive of you. But they proved their testimony by the laying down of their lives, just as Christ laid down His for them and us.
You do not know any of this. You continue the lying tradition of your founder, Paul.
You accuse them of being liars. We recognize their words of Truth, however, because we know Him Who is the Truth. The created world you worship is not the Truth. It is the product of the Creator Who is the Truth. He is reflected in His creation, but most specifically in His special appearing as the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, Who is God: “God, Who at many times and in many ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, Whom He has appointed Heir of all things, by Whom also He made the worlds, Who being the shining splendor of His glory, and the */_express image of His essence_/*, and upholding all things by the word of His power, through Himself cleansing of our sins, He sat down on the right of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:1-3 MKJV).
More blah, blah, Paul, Paul’s God, and the God of the Christians. The sociopathic God. When you are not lying outright, you are citing liars. The words of God as reported by Matthew, Mark and Luke, mainly do not suit your mystical, sacramental bent, papist.
*Jesus Affirmed that He Is God * Jesus never denied that He was God, as you insist. He said to the one who called Him good, “No man is good, only God.” He did not say that because He was not the Son of God, but because the man to whom He spoke did not know He was. That man was looking on Him as simply a man after the flesh.
Ha, bloody Ha! You openly call God a liar. And you still think you are saved. Moron. The simple answer is the one you refuse to accept. Jesus did not consider himself to be God, nor could he and remain a pious Jew.
On the other hand, when Peter confessed Christ to be the Son of the living God, Jesus said that flesh and blood had not revealed that to him, but the Father in Heaven. In other words, His identity was secret, only known to those to whom the Father gave it. Otherwise, the Jews would not have crucified the Lord of glory! “Then Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34 EMTV).
You get worse. Now you are saying that God fooled the Jews into killing Him. He deliberately pretended not to be God, but only a man so that they would kill him. You are seriously crackers. Could it have been that Jews refused to accept that God, having said that His people ought not to be fooled by false prophets, would appear on earth in person, and say he was the saviour. That is what most Jews now believe, and after Paul had started his flannel, many Christian Jews abandoned Christianity as a blasphemy.
So there is no contradiction at all when Jesus plainly confesses He is the Son of God, having all the power of God: “Jesus said to her, I am the Resurrection and the Life! He who believes in Me, though he die, yet he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this? She said to Him, Yes, Lord, I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, Who has come into the world” (John 11:25-27 MKJV).
Yes, John is the Christian’s preferred gospel these days, even though it is the last and the least reliable in the view of expert opinion, largely Christian. It is full of Persian and Greek ideas that do not appear in the synoptics, and the figure of Christ in it is unrecognizable to anyone who believes in the synoptics. It is a completely different Christ, one who assumes all along he is God, something that no Jew could have done. It is an Hellenistic romance.
It is abhorrent to the carnal man that God would come in the flesh, because His coming automatically condemns our flesh as corrupt and wicked. But, as Jesus said, He came to save, not condemn. Who needs saving but those who are corrupt and condemned? And Who can save them, but God? Those who trust not in their own righteousness, but in His, find hope and a better way. The Law never offered ultimate remedy, but Christ does, which is why He came. By turning to Him, we receive the grace to no longer walk in our corruption but to fulfill the Law. That is the power of God made active and real in our lives. God comes in the flesh!
The power of God, who is almighty, we are led to believe, would be such that he can simply command that humanity is saved and so it would be. Idiotic schemes like this are nothing to do with any almighty being, as ought to be plain, and is to anyone other than simpletons. You preach the idiotic God, or the God of idiots.
*Perfection on Earth* You cite a notion of certain Jews that nothing on earth can be perfect, and I must point out the total inconsistency in your selection of authoritative sources. You say the Jews lied and made up most of the Old Testament to gain power over others (/Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion/, anyone?), but now you appeal to those you call liars as spiritual experts on things that do not exist? How confounded you are! How stupid, Mike, how stupid!
Yes it is, and I never said the Jews made up the Old Testament. The Persians began it, and the Ptolemaic Egyptians continued it. You are acting the trickster again. You just cannot stop it. You lie without effort, and say I am at fault, even using the same tired anti-Semitic slurs, as you have before. You are pretty pathetic, Paul. Christianity is the source of anti-Semitism, yet you chose to reject Judaism to join an anti-Semitic religion. You are the stupid one. Or are you only pretending you were a Jew for effect, rather like the original Paul who claimed to be a Pharisee, though he obviously could not have been.
And to which Jews do you refer? Of course those who did not receive the Perfect One do not believe in perfection on earth. They proved that, didn’t they, by crucifying Him? But what did God say to Abraham, father of all true Jews? “I am the Almighty God! Walk before Me and be perfect” (Genesis 17:1 MKJV). And what did Jesus say to His hearers? “Therefore be perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48 MKJV). Of course men do not recognize Christ’s perfection, as I have already pointed out to you, and as you have pointed out to me countless times, intentionally or not!#
This is the same sort of reasoning as that above referring to what is good. I can exhort my children to be perfect, knowing it is impossible, but beneficial in the attempt, but you declaim everyone of us as sinners without merit. Nothing is perfect, or can be when the world itself is imperfect, but people can try their best to be perfect even so. You will not give anyone any credit, because it suits you, as it does the Catholic Church to make everyone riven by guilt, for then they will come running to you. You are mental vampires.
David’s psalm wherein God speaks to David’s Lord, Who is elsewhere referred to as David’s son, represents the very heart of the mystery of the Incarnation, wherein God became a human being of no account, yet was Lord of all. How greatly His appearing dignifies our existence! How greatly you demean and diminish yours in your unbelief! There is nothing more degrading than man living by his beastly senses, not recognizing His God and Creator, but making himself the end all: “As a dream when one awakes, So, O Lord, when You awaken, You will despise their image. For my soul was grieved, and I was pricked in my heart: So brutish was I, and ignorant; I was as a beast before You” (Psalms 73:20-22 ASV).
So David wrote the Psalms did he? Even though he is a mythical being on a par with Abraham, Moses, Solomon, Aeneas and King Arthur. Imaginary people cannot write anything.
*Evil Conjectures and Accusations* Your talk of Jesus possibly having been a homosexual is really quite stupid. Homosexual intercourse, which you say is not sex, is still called abominable by God and is punishable with death (Leviticus 20:13). That is what those who engage in this activity reap, regardless of whether corporeal punishment is meted out or not.
Now you are confirming that the Jewish law was not abolished, though most Christians believe it was, because you are citing as God’s will an item of a repealed legislation. Is the law repealed or not? If it is not repealed then your true God Paul was wrong to say it was, and every believing Christian male then, must be circumcised contrary to what you have preached somewhere above. The truth is that you are cherrypicking bits of the Jewish law that you like and rejecting the rest. You don’t mind calling for homosexuals to be murdered but think you might lose support if adulterous women were to be stoned.
The young man who fled naked from the garden of Gethsemane had his garment taken from him when men tried to apprehend him. To link the young man with Christ, and to further link him to homosexual activity is audaciously far fetched. The only thing revealed by this interpretation is the depravity of your own mind.
No! The mendacity of yours. “And one, a certain young man, was following Him, having thrown a linen cloth about his naked body. And the young men seized him. But forsaking the linen cloth, he fled from them naked", Mark 14:51-52. Where then is your explanation about the man being undressed by guards trying to apprehend him? You are an outright and unrepentant liar. The young man was following naked, and had covered himself with linen to hide his nakedness. It is impossible to discuss anything with people like you who blatantly change what is quite simple to verify merely by turning to the text. Anyone who will lie over the obvious will say anything at all about “unseen things” that no one can verify. Your reputation for honesty is shot through. You have none. Sociopath! Get a job with your fellow Christians Blair or Bush, they are sociopaths too, and probably make a habit of employing them.
Do I vilify homosexuals, as you accuse? My dictionary says “vilify” means “to spread negative information about,” which certainly does not describe what I am doing. Because I say murder is wrong, does not mean I vilify murderers. Because I agree with what the Bible says about homosexuality, as I do with all other sins such as greed, gluttony, fornication and blasphemy, does not mean I am spreading hateful talk about any persons at all. It is you who vilifies me by your false accusations.
You continue with your blatant lying. You have just cited, in your holy scriptures, a law allegedly of God requiring homosexuals to be murdered, and you say you are not vilifying them. I suppose you are not vilifying fornicators while accepting God’s rule that they should be stoned to death, or witches because God said they should not be suffered to live. My guess is that you cannot even understand your own beliefs, so your preaching them to the gullible is an act of the devil not God.
Another of those accusations is your insinuation that I am making it my personal business to find out if you are sodomizing your neighbor and to secure, as much as possible, your punishment. That is also an outrageous lie. You clearly have no evidence that I am doing any such thing and implying such things is to irresponsibly incite hatred against us in something you do not know.
How then do you propose to get evidence for acts that consenting adults do together in private? You are the liar, and your persistent attempts to call me one are so easy to refute, you must be desperate. And again you say I am inciting hatred when you are upholding barbaric ancient laws that even George Bush might not be able to bring himself to adopt.
You are a hypocrite to commend the notion that God is after civil order, because your incendiary statements foster the opposite. That is the blindness of your bitterness against God and Christ at work. Are you calling your conduct “love,” Mike? You cannot cease projecting your own faults on to me, but you are so unsubtle that even imbeciles can see it. You ask where Paul’s letter to the Romans condemns homosexuality. You say, sarcastically, “Keep trying. You’ll get there eventually.” The problem is that you are not trying at all, except to make your case and to deny the plain words of Scripture: “For this cause, God gave them up to dishonorable affections. For even their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another; males with males working out shamefulness, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was fitting for their error” (Romans 1:26-27 MKJV).
Well done! You did get there eventually, though it took you three months.
*Who is Obsessed with Sex?* You claim that Christians are obsessed with sex, and use as evidence my saying that Mark 10:9 refers to God- given marriages. Your response: “Again your utter misapprehension of Christ is painful.” Is it? Here is the context: Mark 10:2-9 MKJV. And tempting Him, the Pharisees came to Him and asked Him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? And He answered and said to them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses allowed a bill of divorce to be written, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said to them, He wrote you this precept because of the hardness of your hearts. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife. And the two of them shall be one flesh. So then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man put apart.> Sounds to me like the Lord was talking about marriage, not sex, which is what I told you. But what do I know next to your utter apprehension (I speak tongue in cheek) of Christ, the One you claim is a phantasm and ghost! It would seem to anyone reasonable that the one who sees sex where there is none is the one with the obsession.
Quite so, you! You have introduced sex here. I said, and you again can easily verify it by turning back to my earlier email, that this was a parable of the kingdom. God’s law, the law of Moses allowed divorce, so why should Christ, a stickler for the law, in fact, not Christian fancy, want to argue on very dodgy ground, something different? Genesis has nothing at all about male and female cleaving permanently togerther in marriage. It simply says that God created male and female. The parable pertains to a metaphorical meaning of God having a people. The people are Israel, personified as God’s betrothed or His spouse. The Jews had let the Romans rule them. Israel was unfaithful, but God was faithful to His spouse because they could not be torn asunder. Jesus objected to Roman rule over the Jews, and meant to do something about it, and so he did. That was why the Romans hanged him.
You contend that Christ was speaking covertly here, expressing His disapproval of the Romans coming between God and Israel. *Christ an Internal Savior, Not a Political One* There is an insurmountable problem with your theory, Mike. It is plain wrong. Not only textually and factually, but in spirit, too. God had sent the Romans into Israel, as He warned the children of Israel He would do and had done in the past, because of their disobedience (Deuteronomy 28). The Romans were sent to do, and did, what God had purposed for them, which is why Jesus never made them the issue. Neither did any of His apostles. There is not a stitch of evidence to support your theory, as is the case with so many of your foolish and desperate assertions.
Try reading my pages, as you must have done once to have started this correspondence.
The only thing that comes between God and His people is sin. That is why the onus is laid on Israel, not Rome.
Now look, are you a Jew or a Christian? Has the law been abrogated or not? The law is a Jewish law, for Jews, and your statement here implies that you accept that. Do you? Or are you confused, or hypocritical. Either way you keep changing your stance. If you are a Christian, then you accept that the law is abrogated, and, under the universal law of love, all human beings can sin, not just Jews. That makes your statement about the onus of the occupation of Judaea false. Romans can sin too, so Jews could not be solely to blame. You are incoherent and inconsistent as always. Nothing you say can be believed because it is a lie, or it does not hold together as sense. You are so confused, it seems, that you just do not know what you think yourself, because you have not worked it out, or worked out that it is nonsense. What is true is that Christ believed the parable you have cited, suggesting he was a member of a Jewish sect. Christ thought a man and his spouse were bonded forever, and, if human beings were, then God was even more so. God had committed Himself to Israel as a man ought to his spouse, even if she is unfaithful. So, in Christ’s view, and you Christians think he is God, God could not have abandoned the Jews any more than He abandoned the law.
That is why the onus is laid on you, not your circumstances. If there is a problem related to your sin, you are not the victim but the perpetrator. Jesus came to save perpetrators, not victims. Those looking for a physical deliverer from Rome were sorely disappointed, as they are to this very hour. The Deliverer has come firstly to deliver from the enemy within. We are called to confess and repent of our sins, not the sins of Rome or America or President Bush or false Christians. That is what you need to do, which is the point of my proving you to be in wrongness. It is not to show myself as right, but to point you away from yourself as the authority taking the place of God, which leads you into destruction through your bitterness and darkness. I point you to the One Who died for you in order to forgive and cleanse you from your sins. Contrary to your assessment of yourself as a stand up guy, you are a murderous liar according to Christ. How do I know this? You love lies and hate your brother.
Take a look in the mirror, vampire. You are projecting again.
The truth is that God is in union with His people who follow Him regardless of their station in life. Paul addressed this as follows: “Let each one remain in the same calling in which he was called. Were you called as a slave? Do not be concerned about it; but if you can be made free, rather make use of it. For he who is called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord’s free man. Likewise he who is called as a free man is Christ’s slave” (1 Corinthians 7:20-22 EMTV). Hail to our God, Paul! And, yes, no person should try to come between another and God. But they certainly cannot come between the believer kept by the faith of the true God: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For Your sake we are killed all the day long. We are counted as sheep of slaughter.’ But in all these things we more than conquer through Him Who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39 MKJV). Hail to our God, Paul! *Clarifications* You say of my interpretation regarding the verses about marriage: “You are not reading your bible, you are taking in a load of traditional interpretations, the very ones formulated by the Church of Rome, when it was the only church, and though you now bleat against it, you are following exactly what it taught in the first place. You are the sucker.” Because I may agree with the Catholic Church (depending on what they actually say) that Christ spoke of man and wife instead of about revolt against Rome, does that justify your conclusion that I am a dupe of Rome? Wow. That is like me calling you a Nazi because you are in agreement with Adolph Hitler that Germans make excellent rye bread. Such leaps of logic are fantastic in the true sense of the word!
Indeed they are. It is your mock leap. A Lie, in short. Apologist shepherds cannot argue the case, so always invent a straw man to knock over. Then they think they are intelligent, and the sheep “baa, baa” their appreciation. According to you, I am lost forever, and you are not. I have nothing therefore to lose. Truth or lie, I am lost, but you do have something to lose, and unless you are serving Satan, you have salvation to lose by lying. I tell the truth as I see it with no thought of gain, but you lie yourself silly in the delusion that God loves liars as long as they lie for the cause. Further proof that your God is Paul, for that was his outlook.
I certainly disagree that Paul the apostle had distaste for sexuality and passed that on to believers. He said that to be unmarried was better because a person could attend to the things of God without distraction. This has little or nothing to do with sex. Paul remained unmarried, rather than having a family, to better focus on, and serve the Lord, which he did with great zeal and with results commensurate with his faith. Who can argue? So what then is wrong with his stance? Who says he had a hang up regarding sex? Fibber Magee? This is simply another of your leaps of logic, all of which reflect your own personal hang ups.
The doctor is in! God created sex, didn’t He? Tell me then why He would want people not to be sexual. It is like the Christian distaste for the human brain, another large organ that strikes fear into them. They are not to use it to examine their faith. You stick to your idiotic book, but ignore the vast book before your eyes called Nature. We are finding out more about Nature and human nature, but no thanks to bigots like you. Equally we can figure out how morality connects to our human nature as social animals and can set rules and laws to curb atavistic behaviour. Your beliefs are atavistic, matey. Yours is a confidence trick, that no righteous society would permit to be taught to children, any more than gambling or astrology is. As with sex, if adults want to indulge in your shenanigans in private it is up to them, but publicly you are conning widows out of their mites. Christ could not have approved of it. He was not a Sadducee.
I also disagree that doctors should be forced against their consciences to perform abortions. Yes, it may be a terrible thing to bring unwanted children into the world, but the doctor was not the one impregnating the woman, so why do you blame him instead of those who created the situation in the first place? You say the only right thing to do to alleviate suffering is to abort. Apparently you have never dealt with women who have had abortions, many of whom suffer greatly even years later, if not to their deaths, for that hideous act. Who has made you God, that you can tally up all the suffering caused and alleviated by any course of action and make such sure pronouncements? You have no idea the evil and harm you promote with your “logic” and “love.”
I am not aware of blaming unwanted pregnancies on to doctors. Is that another of your lies? I think doctors should not be obliged to do anything contrary to the dictates of their conscience, but they are duty bound to treat patients and not to mistreat them by feeding them evangelical lectures and lessons. If any unfortunate women with an unwanted pregnancy went in error to a doctor with religious scruples then they ought to refer her to a doctor who does not have the same scruples. She is entitled to be treated. I have known several women who have had abortions and am not aware of any who are depressed by it. They have made their choice, and even women I know who are childless as a consequence, seem not to regret their decision. Mostly they have been able to pursue other goals in their lives than motherhood, and do not regret it. None of us can have our cake and eat it, despite you Christians thinking otherwise, so we all make choices, and sometimes regret them. It is what we have to put up with. People have died wishing they had not wasted their lives in pointless piety having converted to Christianity.
*The Sum of the Matter* I will tell you the one thing we do know from God: If you do the right thing it will work out the best no matter the suffering or cost involved in doing it.
Cost to whom? What about all those who died opposing Christian bigots? Servetus? Bruno? Myriads of people burned or imprisoned for life by the Inquisition and the witch hunts? If good came of any of this it is like the good that comes to you when you stop banging your head against a brick wall. The good was getting rid of the problem, and the problem was Christian bigotry. You want to reintroduce it.
On the converse side, if you do the wrong thing it will work out for the worst, no matter how much pain and trouble you think to save yourself and others by doing it.
Oh yes! Like all the vastly rich popes, bishops, monasteries, TV evangelists and Christian millionaire gambling casino owners—tricksters of every kind whose money sponsors people like you.
That is why God teaches us from His Law. But you are a law unto yourself, a work of man, and hence the mess you create and leave for others. While it is true that you are not a believer, you do engage in discourse on matters of faith and Christ as a critic of the Bible and those who wrote it. You are indeed pointing out the specks in others’ eyes, even when there are none. You have needed to be told that there is a beam in your own eye. How can you object when you have taken it upon yourself to be so critical of everyone else? Obviously you think criticism is a good thing, so why do you complain and call me names when I have given you something very good? You are quite wrong that, according to Paul, the saints will not judge you, because he also said this: “Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world will be judged by you [the saints], are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?” (1 Corinthians 6:2 EMTV)
Hail, Paul, and Halleluiah our God.
God, or Jesus Christ, said the same thing: “Let the saints exult in glory; let them sing for joy upon their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand; To execute vengeance upon the nations, and chastisements upon the peoples; To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; To execute upon them the judgment written; He is the glory of all His saints. Hallelujah” (Psalms 149:5-9 JPS). Very thankful that His Day has come.
“Saint” is a word that means the Perfectly Holy Ones. The ones who used it of themselves were the Essenes and then the Ebionites, the Jewish pre-Christian and contemporary precursors of Christianity. If you are serious about seeking the Christianity before Catholicism, you will have to drop your present God, Paul, because he started the Hellenization of Judaism that led to Orthodox and Catholic Christianity, and return to the local Christianity of Christ himself in the Ebionite writings, most of which have been destroyed. I doubt that you ever will.
Anyway, I have enjoyed much of this correspondence but I am tired of repeating myself with little in the way of gain in your comprehension, so I suggest that we draw it to a close. You have shown to me how utterly immovable you kooks are in your bigotry and rejection of reality. It is a lesson that should save me some time in future.
If you would like me to read and to consider your letter, then re-send it in such a condition where each text, mine and yours, is clearly discernible. I have spent a good deal of time cleaning up your previous letters, but no more. We have not disrespected you by sending you jumbled messes, but you have repeatedly done so with us. When you get down to it, that is precisely what God is all about, and it is what we have been telling you. It’s all right in front of your nose.
You wrote the appended mysterious message. What do you mean? Do you seriously think I am taking the trouble to reply to you then deliberately jumbling it? What would be my purpose in doing that, my friend?
What you have sent back to me (below) is not jumbled, but is perfectly discernable, just as it was sent, so must have been to you. According to the conventions in email software, each cited line is marked by a chevron, and the replies have none, but are simple text. If your email software does not show the chevrons then it is set up wrongly. Your God is not looking after you, it seems. You must pray harder.
To explain further, as I write these few sentences they are plain text and the text you sent to me beginning with “Hi Mike” below has a chevron (ie > ) to the left of each line. When you receive it and click the reply button, the whole of my letter should appear just as I describe, but in chevrons, with any previous citations successively marked with two, then three (and so on) chevrons, viz, > , >> , >>>, etc. waiting for you to reply in plain text. It is perfectly clear and standard practice, and it is what my mailer does, just as yours should.
Anyway, as I said at the end of my reply, I am not expecting any continuation of this correspondence because it seems to be getting too repetitive. If you think the odd specific is left in the air, then we can try to close them off, but endless citations from ancient books are tedious and irrelevant except in their own context.
Here begins what you sent to me with chevrons marking each line. When you click reply, it will have two chevrons ( >> ), because this text will have one ( > ). Get it?
> Hi Mike, …
Mike, of course I do not accuse you of purposely jumbling your replies. However, your system, wherever you got it, is not acceptable. The text is hardly distinguishable (the chevrons are not of much help) and is not friendly to work with in any way.
You are objecting to common, well established e-mail practice. I shall answer inline here as I always do, and you can see, perhaps, how it works. Since this is but a short message, you ought to be able to see more clearly how it works. As I write, this paragraph is new (ie the latest) and has no chevrons next to each line, but, having received this message, when you bring up for reply, it will have one chevron next to each line because now your reply will be free of any marking, being new.
In a reply to this, the passage immediately above written by you earlier will have two chevrons, whereas my replies have only one. It is because it is a citation of your reply to me. The point of the system is that it automatically cites the text to which you are replying. You say the chevrons are hardly distinguishable and I am jumbling the text, but I am replying to your missive “inline” as it is called, so that you know precisely what part of your letter I am replying to! What you take to be jumbling is good practice, and perfectly “friendly” unless you are determined to reject everything. You simply seem not to understand it, and typically of your general attitude to life, seem determined not to. There are lessons here for your general interpretation of the world.
As one can see from our replies, we make things clearly delineated, allowing one to easily read and distinguish who is saying what, and to easily scan through our letters with a sense of context rather than being disoriented in a homogenous blob, as with yours.
Since my sections and your sections are marked off with different numbers of chevrons, the blob is not homogeneous, and clearly delineating is precisely what I am doing by using the system built in to emailing software. Try learning it.
To us, this is not simply a casual conversation, take it or leave it. We know that we are addressing death with Life, so we attach commensurate importance to, not only our words, but also the presentation. You throw up a lot of slop, which is exactly what it looks like.
Well, as I already suggested, your response is analogous to your attitude to the world at large. You do not like things as they are, so you attempt to make up something different. The manufacturers of email software have devised a perfectly good system, but you either cannot stand it, or cannot learn it, so, for you, those of us who use it are wrong. Life ends at death in the real world. You do not like that either, so make up your own system, backed up by a figmentary God to save you from dying. Suit yourself, but the problems you think you see are entirely your own, and avoidable with a little knowledge.
You are right that you are not saying anything new here, and, since we have already answered your objections, and have told you the truth about yourself, we rest our case.
You ought to know, from your endessly quoted book, that there is nothing new under the sun—except, no doubt, everything you say—but all you can do is endlessly quote that ancient work, and you cannot even interpret it properly, so I am relieved that you have decided to rest your case. With a little basic training, akin to learning email conventions, your case will appear as pointless and obtuse to you as it does to anyone alive to reality.
Mike, are you dying from cancer?
