AW! Epistles
From P Cohen of Harvest Haven 2
Abstract
Abstract
Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are obvious fabrications and cannot be compared to an actual person Who lived and was seen by over 500 people after He was resurrected from the dead. Furthermore, these people had nothing personal to gain by declaring His resurrection, and much to lose. Many, in fact, lost their lives preaching Christ and testifying of what they had seen and heard from Him. After Jesus ascended to Heaven, He also returned, as further testified by these witnesses, on the Jewish Feast of Pentecost, and filled them with His Spirit, to be with us forever. No one ever claimed to have been filled with the spirit of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, and no one would care if they did. The history of the world does not center on either, but it does center on Jesus Christ.
Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are obvious fabrications and cannot be compared to an actual person Who lived and was seen by over 500 people after He was resurrected from the dead. Furthermore, these people had nothing personal to gain by declaring His resurrection, and much to lose. Many, in fact, lost their lives preaching Christ and testifying of what they had seen and heard from Him. After Jesus ascended to Heaven, He also returned, as further testified by these witnesses, on the Jewish Feast of Pentecost, and filled them with His Spirit, to be with us forever. No one ever claimed to have been filled with the spirit of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, and no one would care if they did. The history of the world does not center on either, but it does center on Jesus Christ.
Yes, what links Jesus Christ to Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy is that they all of them are purely imaginary bringers of gifts for good children. Whether a man who became known as Jesus Christ lived is immaterial to your belief about him. You boast that you believe, and that is what saves you, not that Jesus is a proven being in history. Or are you changing your tune, because it suits you temporarily? The evidence for this man does not differ from the evidence for Santa Claus. He lived too, according to some sources, probably more reliable than a fairy tale written, and it admits it, so that people will believe. If the stories in the New Testament are fiction, then why should anyone believe any of it, and where are these 500 witnesses you speak of. Why are gospels not written by the saints who rose from the dead? They really would have a tale to tell, wouldn’t they? Did Luke interview any of them? Did Matthew interview any of the soldiers on guard by the tomb, he tells us about? The fact that someone could write a story is not evidence, except for people with terminal gullibility.
As popular as Christmas is, where do you find a book thousands of years old, written in blood by over 40 authors, each in agreement with all others, a book preserved by nations, predicting and describing Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, defended and preached by countless numbers, having laid down their lives to do so?
Try the Avesta, parts of which precede the New Testament by 1000 years, scholars say. As to 40 authors writing in blood, was the blood human? It is a disgusting thought meant to impress infants just like the notion of human cannibalism behind the Christian eucharist. If you were to sick up that wafer and find it had come up as blood and flesh, then you would be wise to seek medical attention.
Why are you so incensed by the testimony of Jesus Christ? Why do you ridicule the One Who laid down His life for you?
Jesus Christ wrote no testimonies, a bit suspiciously, you might imagine since he was supposed to be God. Nor has he laid down his life for me, has he? because only Christians get saved, I am led to believe, and I am not one.
The answer is that you hate God and would not have Him rule over you. You perceive no threat from Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, but you are threatened by the One Who bought you with His blood, and you resist Him to your destruction as the son of darkness that you are. How foolish to mock the One Who died for you in order to deliver you from your wretched state, listing Him among the asinine creations of men!
First, I repeat I cannot hate what does not exist. Second, you just said this Christ had laid down his life for me, but now, in the next paragraph, you say he is threatening me, bought me with his blood as if I were a slave, and I will be destroyed for not accepting his bloody purchase. Aren’t you just a bit confused?
Yet you say: “I have approached Christianity coolly and rationally. I have looked into it over a long period, taking everything into account, but using what modern scholarship has revealed to us…” Don’t flatter yourself. Your ability to process and assess the things of God is less than worthless. Men cannot know God in their own wisdom, no matter how cool or rational they think themselves to be (though you are neither):
For the Word of the cross is foolishness to those being lost, but to us being saved, it is the power of God. For it has been written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will set aside the understanding of the understanding ones.’ Where is the wise? Where the scribe? Where the lawyer of this world? Did God not make the wisdom of this world foolish? For since in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom did not know God, God was pleased through the foolishness of preaching to save the ones believing (1 Corinthians 1:18-21 LITV).
Well, I have dealt with this. Paul wants you to be idiots so that you will believe his nonsense, and Lo! you choose to be idiots. If I were to believe in the bible as the word of God, I would have to believe God gave me this brain, as I have already said numerous times, and anyone who believes they are created by God should believe nothing less. God need not have given us brains at all, then we could not have sinned and could not have been wise, and everything would have been simple. If you are right, and there is a God, then He made us with brains, and He must have had a purpose in doing it. The only one that makes any sense is to stop people being fooled by charlatans like Paul of Tarsus, but your pride in being idiots lets you fall right into his trap, and all you have left is a foolish conviction you will be saved for doing what defies God, not what He desires.
The result of your “rational” analysis is that you list Jesus Christ with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Need we say more? To further illustrate how far removed from rationality and reality you are, I present your next quote: “I say nothing about your personal testimonies because I pointed out they were too tedious to read. I spoke about the “essentially identical ones” I HAVE read, and they are the ones whose characteristics I outline.” Either your language is so sloppy as to be virtually useless, or you are a compulsive liar, or both. Here is what you actually did say about our testimonies: “As for your testimonies, as far as I read, which was not far because they were terribly tedious, they are quite as valueless as all the other essentially identical ones that I have read. You begin by believing because that is the way you were brought up, go through periods of doubt and angst and end up converted. Did you ever consider the psychology of it?” How can you say something you did not read is “essentially identical” to something you did? How can you apply your conclusions about something you have red and outlined to our testimonies, which you have obviously not red (we did not start out as believers, for example)?
You take it that I mean “you” personally when I mean “you” Christians generally, and that is pretty obvious from the context, though there is room for ambiguity for a careless reader.
Have you ever considered the psychology of your slipshod and twisted thinking? How can you, when you are deranged? You exhibit all those things of which you accuse us and others:
Projection, my friend.
“You want to brag that your are different, well fine, but even if it is true, the outcome sounds to be the same bigoted, intolerant, know-nothings that born again Christians particularly show themselves to be.” Yes, it only “sounds to be the same” in the malfunctioning mind of one who is intolerant and bigoted by his ungodly religion of atheism that centers on his corrupt powers of observation (truly, obfuscation). You have made a straw man out of man-made religious organizations formed under the banner of Christ, and apply your criticisms and condemnations of God and Christ to that. You write:
“I repeat that those who are not brought up as “believers” rarely convert.” And I repeat, what you are referring to is a man-made religious creed and system. It is not the experience of authentic faith and a new nature in God through Jesus Christ. All of our posted testimonies (now eight) are of this latter kind, and not the former that you criticize as if solely representative of Christ. Our testimonies stand as a firm rebuttal to your condemnation, and in turn condemn you for speaking when you do not even know what it is that you are condemning.
That remains your delusion. Who would write a testimony of their pride in their conversion unless they believed it to be authentic? Every Christian convert believes it to be so. That is why they convert. And the statistical fact remains, despite your own cases, if true, most people are simply converting to something they have long ago accepted, often as children, sometimes out of peer influence, and sometimes out of a psychological hallucination, often called a mystical experience that usually has the symptoms of mental disorder. Your every paragraph betrays your bigotry, and so proves that you are not any different from your so-called “inauthentic faith”. All of it is faith in nothing, yet this nothing makes you all think you are God.
Representative of your irresponsible habit of conjecturing, your statements are peppered with words that indicate your uncertainty. You say to me: “You sound as if you are rather desperately trying to convince yourself and offer these testimonies in evidence. It does not stop you from sounding like a “basket case” in this correspondence.” I may “sound” that way to you, but my point is that I do not sound that way to others who know me better and who are far more closely aligned with your beliefs than mine. Your conclusions are strictly your own, with no corroboration or even agreement from those you would consider credible.
There is nothing uncertain about using the word “sound”. I have to draw conclusions based on what you say, whence the word “sound”. No doubt all your friends have a different view because they agree with the sounds that you utter. I do not, and, if I were to actually hear the sound of them, I still would not, as long as I am not in an asylum.
You are chockfull of irreconcilable contradictions. Here are more: “To spell it out, some people can seem to be sane when they are mad. In my opinion, anyone aho believes in invisible buddies are insane, but they can seem as sane as anyone else when they keep it to themselves.” Why should it be strange that the Creator is a Spirit by Whom all things consist? Where do you think life came from and is sustained? What brilliant explanation do you have for the existence of this physical world and realm? It just came from nowhere? A big bang out of nothingness, like the things you write?
At present no one knows how this world got here. Why do you think it is made by an artificer? Why was it not born of a Goddess? Why has it not been here for eternity, and not made or born at all? You have no knowledge at all in saying a Creator made it. It is your empty belief based on what ancient people believed 3000 years ago. What prevents you from coming up with a better conjecture? Why are we stuck with your particular one? The reason is that your guess is tied in with a threat that obliges you to believe it, the threat that you have been making to me already in this exchange. Do not believe in this guess and you will be roasted forever in a boiling lake of sulphur. That you believe a good god can actually reserve a punishment like that shows your debased and irrational mentality. And are you saying that something actually existed that God used to make the universe? He did not actually make it out of nothingness? As I understand it, Christians believe God made the universe out of nothingness. How does that differ, especially as God is nothingness Himself? Genesis 1 mentions a formless void. Is that nothing? Then we find that there is water about which is divided to form the heavens. And the waters under the vault of the heavens are drawn together into a mass to be the earth. These explanations mean that God did not make the world out of nothing, but out of water. The bible is itself confused or ambiguous, yet it is God’s word, you think. Well, I prefer what science suggests based on what we can see and test in the world we actually live in, as opposed to fantasy land.
After I explained to you how God has proven Himself in my life by His complete sovereignty over all things in every detail, you respond: “Isn’t that what they all say?” My very next words, already sitting there in front of you, appropriately answer your question: “You make absolute statements that are unprovable, which makes them inadmissible and useless.” While you make unsubstantiated statements about us, your statements are demonstrably wrong. You create one straw man after another, using them to attack the Truth, the Lord Jesus Christ, and those that walk in His faith, but we tear them all to little pieces with substance. As I continue responding to your letter, there will be other such examples with corrections of your Bible explanations.
Well, if my statement is meant to be unproveable, it is only because you refuse to accept any proof at all. All Christians say God has come into their lives. They are obliged to say it to convince God that they deserve saving. There are what seem to be a million web pages saying the same thing. It is terrible confession of the fragility of human reason that people will convince themselves that they are dead unless they believe in something that does not exist except as a psychological feeling or illusion.
You deny that mankind needs salvation as spoken of in Scripture: “Believing in a rabbit’s foot to bring you good luck is a false belief, and believing in an invisible buddy to make you good or bring you some unnecessary salvation is no different, arguably worse because you are believing in nothing. That is why belief in God is such a good scam.” In our testimonies we list some of the sins from which we have been delivered. How can you argue with that? We have been delivered from the darkness that kept us from realizing we were in sin - the darkness in which you presently reside and boast. There is nothing imaginary at all about what has happened in our lives, as is well documented. How is it a scam that we are no longer unthankful, fearful and selfish, instead having peace, joy, and useful purpose in our lives? Since when has a rabbit’s foot done anything like that?
Try believing in it in the same way, and it will. If you have been involved in criminal activities before you were converted, then you can feel yourself blessed that you are not now doing them, if you are not. You have been saved from your own criminal tendencies. A lot more people do not need any such salvation because they are not criminals but were good citizens all along. If anyone ought to be saved, then they are the ones who should be.
Just because some use God as a cover to do what they want, which is a scam (and we don’t call it good), does not negate the expression of holiness of those doing what is good and right in Jesus Christ. The authors of the Bible testify of these things from first hand experience, while those who make church organizations such as the Catholic and Anglican churches are the ones perpetrating the scam.
It is strange that you all judge yourselves to be holy but the rest are not. That is what I have been saying. You decide that you are holy, when even on the basis of your own bible, God Himself is the judge, and you depend even then on His grace because God, being God can do as He likes and cannot be obliged to save anyone or He is not almighty. You take on the role of God in declaring yourselves blessed, holy, saved or whatever the appropriate jargon word is. You think you are God. Face the facts, that is not humble, and it is unlikely to impress any almighty being that has the role of God. But you all convince yourselves, notwithstanding the pious citation you began all this with, that God is an idiot, easily fooled by appropriate play acting.
You, in your perverse way, empower the false ones by giving them credit for the things of God. You acknowledge them in place of the True, which you deny exists. The True is the source of the Bible, while the false use the Bible to usurp the authority of God. In a perverse way you agree with the usurpers; that which consumes you rules you.
There you go again. “I am right, and the Catholics, the Episcopalians, atheists, everybody else are wrong!” You know what is true, and no one else does.
You go on about the scam: “The Christian scam is that you must believe a figure exactly as realistic as Santa Claus to live forever.” The perverse notion you have of Christianity is no doubt influenced by your worship of false religion. The obviously sarcastic and stupid comparison you make between Jesus Christ and Santa Claus illuminates the nature of the error you have been taught and your gullibility born of intense bitterness, a hallmark of atheists. You wrongly perceive eternal life solely as quantity, when it is a matter of quality, which is not transferable to our corrupt natures. You erroneously see eternal life as something under our control by mental assent or agreement, rather than a change of nature by grace beyond our attainment. These are things you have been taught by false religion, known as Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.
For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts”.Isaiah 55:8-9 KJV
This was your citation, and it clearly says that human beings just cannot be God, yet here you are declaring with all the authority of a Devil what God thinks. How do you know, especially as God has just desparaged human knowledge compared with His? God gave a law to the Jews. It seems a sensible thing to do, if you are a god, but he then abrogated it, because Paul and the Christians had a better idea. You can be saved just by having faith. That is Christian belief, and that is the scam. A law makes sense to regulate human society, but faith that you are saved and no one else is leads to brutality and criminal torture. Today is no better proof of it when pious fools like Bush and Blair can murder myriads of women and children in the name of God.
Knowing Jesus Christ is eternal life, not doctrine or mental belief. This reality comes by revelation and change of nature, something with which you are entirely unfamiliar. All you can do is deny what you have not experienced, and say it does not exist.
Here is the scam of Christianity. I have not had any need to change my nature. I am a normal human being living in a normal human society, relatively free until recently of much pressure to believe any of these scams. I have not mugged old ladies, buggered kids or raped women, and take a dim view of those who do, often Christians, or they claim to be Christians when they are caught. Nothing abnormal in my make up makes me need to feel saved from anything. If I understand you correctly, you began abnormal and remain abnormal, except that you now make a virtue out of it.
“God… was responsible for all the wickedness of the Jewish scriptures that Christians purloined as their own and called the Old Testament.” You have not red as carefully as you brag you have. The Old Testament is a record of man’s wickedness. Do you think you are exempt?
I am a man, so, if this is true, then I plainly am not exempt, but God, in the Jewish scriptures, instructed people, men like you and me, to do appalling things. The most appalling, in my view was his instruction to the Israelites that they could keep the young women, the girls, for themselves. Just what did that mean, O Mind of God? But there were plenty of conventionally wicked instructions like sacrificing animals and humans, murdering, genocide and so on, no doubt possible for your God but not for any that I would choose.
And did Christians purloin the Jewish Scriptures? The Christians who recorded the New Testament were Jews, except for Luke. True Christians, regardless of physical birth, are true Jews (Romans 2:29). Jesus Christ, as recorded by Pilate, is King of the Jews. It is all the record of God, to those who believe. To those like you who do not believe, nothing is pure, and even your mind and conscience is defiled (Titus 1:15). That is why you falsely accuse:
“Your gospel argument is called sophistry.” “Sophistry: a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone.” You are trying to divine our motives, which means you “perceive intuitively or through some inexplicable perceptive powers.” You are operating in the realm of the unseen and that which is unverifiable by scientific method. You do believe in the spiritual realm after all, though you condemn us for speaking from it!
So Jews are not Jews because they were circumcised but because they felt circumcized in their hearts. and for centuries before that, following God’s own instructions, Jews had believed they were Jews because they were circumcized. No doubt you will say, Paul’s revision of God’s own direct words takes precedent because it is later, but that again means you want to believe God is an idiot and not a bit almighty. God said circumcision was necessary to be saved then changed His mind. 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. He was careful to try to impress upon Jews that He alone was the saviour, and that any prophet who prophesied what did not happen was false. Here was God Himself then, you say, coming along dressed up as a man to break His own rules, and appear as a prophet who says the world will end in a generation, and it is still here 80 generations later, obviously false yet elevated to be God Himself by Christians. You pick out the bits of scripture that suit you utterly indiscriminately, and claim it is coherent. Jews did not believe it, as you know, but you do. Congratulations. Another convert to the Truth.
So who is the one practicing sophistry here? You say God is imaginary, yet you tell me you understand better than I do what He is saying, because you believe His plain words. How can you believe them when you do not even believe He exists? Are you not the one displaying deceitful ingenuity? This is consistent with your hypocrisy, calling me on the things you do.
You are right, it is not sophistry, it is chicanery. I did not say I understood what God is saying. You said that. I said I can read the words in the gospels, they are plain enough and my reading of them is as good as yours. That is deceitful ingenuity illustrated in the paragraph in which you mention it. You are not just a hypocrite but a rogue, like all of your kind.
“The first will be last and the last first” was what Christ meant by being humble. You think you are first!” More opinion and attempts at divination. You are batting zero, Mike. Because I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and speak on His authority does not mean I am making myself first. It means I have been granted to make Him first. But if by being last, I was made first, what is that to you? How do you know what He meant if He is fictitious?
Fiction is written in words, or had you not noticed, and the words of the fiction called Christ are written down in novels called the gospels. Maybe you have forgotten that, even supposing Christ existed, they did not have tape recorders in those days, and these words were written down by all scholarly opinion, even Christian opinion, 40 or more years after your Christ had been crucified. Whether Christ was historical or purely invented, his words are made up by the authors of Mark and John. So you are not following “the Lord Jesus Christ” at all but whatever the men who wrote it down wanted you to believe. They are written down as if this Christ said them but they are not what he said but what these “witnesses” thought he said or wanted him to have said. Some of these words were the ones I cited to you, and they plainly have a message, and it is the message repeated elsewhere that Christians have to be humble. You do not get it. OK. It does not bother me, but it ought to bother you.
Your very words and attitude label the Bible as an unreliable display of arrogance, written by men who recorded the words of God spoken by men! Knowing what one is talking about is not arrogance. Not knowing and presenting opinion as worthy or credible, as you do, is arrogance.
Opinion is a view not based on fact or evidence. The only evidence you have is ancient opinion written down in ancient books with no corroborating evidence. They are a genre called Hellenistic novels, not history. What are they if not the words of men written by men? Even if they are what God thought, they are written down by men with all the fallibility it involves. God does not speak, so they are vague feelings and impressions, and these vague feelings have to be written down as fiction, because they are not based on any fact. That is what you believe, and as you admit such opinion presented as worthy or credible is arrogance.
You do bring up some worthwhile questions. You ask: “If men cannot be humble then why would God expect them to be humble. Is God asking what is impossible?” Yes; He is; of which Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. When His incredulous disciples responded, “Who then can be saved?” He said, “With men these things are impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
So you say. It is an obvious interpolation into the original story. The author of these books realized that a camel could not go through the eye of a needle, and it meant what it plainly was meant to mean. Rich people could never get to heaven. But the first gentile Christians impressed some gullible rich people in Asia and Italy and did not want to stop them being Christians and milkable. Now Christianity is full of crooks and shysters, and you are proud to add yourself to them. How do we know that the phrase you highlight was added. It is because Christ condemns riches and exalts the poor in several places, not just there, although nothing could be more obvious. It shows that Christians began changing the holy word before it was even written down, and this is what you believe.
We did fail at being humble and at keeping the Law of God perfectly, as He requires. But that is not a problem for God: “Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and exalt and honor the King of Heaven, all Whose works are truth and His ways judgment. And those who walk in pride He is able to humble” (Daniel 4:37 MKJV). It is the grace of God that He humbles one. It was not by our strength or righteousness, of which we had neither, that we were made right with God, but by His through Jesus Christ.
I concur that this says God can humble you, but why did you need to cite Daniel, a known forgery written 400 (four hundred!) years after it pretends rather than the passage I offered to you, I do not know. The passage tells you that, according to the Christ of the gospels, those who are not humble will be humbled. You are not humble.
How does this apply to you? When God has humbled you to the point where you say, “It is true; I have been a fool, speaking in defense of lawlessness and sin because rejecting the One Who laid down His life for me,” then you will be at a starting point to begin to hear the Truth. Then you will begin to be emptied of yourself and vain philosophies and speculation, learning to live by every Word of God. As Jesus said, “It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4 MKJV). Which means you are not alive, Mike. You will find that there is no good thing in you, and what you cannot and could not do, He empowers you to do, as you look to Him. That is salvation, the great purpose of God in His appearing in Christ.
Except that I am alive, and have led an average life with little in the way of crime and obnoxiousness, and a lot of tolerance and regard for other people, but you despise everyone who will not accept your own brand of lunacy. And, if God did not want us to live except by words coming out of His imaginary mouth, why did He not create a real mouth that could speak for Him, clearly and for all time? He is an Almighty God isn’t he? If Christ is it, why invent a half baked scheme that broke all the rules he had already said mankind should follow? And if Christ is God’s living mouth, why do you ignore much of what the mouth says? And if God did not want us to live with or without these mysterious words emanating from an imaginary mouth, why did He breath life into us in the first place? Is God omniscient? He is? Then why bother with a life for sinners at all. He knows what they will do, and He knows what His judgement on them will be, so why bother? Another mystery of the idiot God, I suppose.
And how can these things happen to you unless you hear the Truth? So we are sent to preach for your sake. The Truth will stop your lies and, eventually, the liar who tells them. Lies such as this:
Truth pertains to fact or reality not the inchoate emotions of unstable mentalities. Your truth is transparently false. It bears no relationship to fact or reality.
“Well this same man you call Christ, God and the Son of God, denied as plainly as possible that he was God, but you still say he is. He denied fairly plainly that he was the son of David but you cannot understand that, and go around saying he was (or is).” Jesus Christ never denied He was God. He affirmed it. You show us where He plainly denied He was God, and we will show you were He plainly affirmed it. Let’s start with His questioning the religious on how the Christ could be called David’s son, something to which you refer:
So, if he plainly denied it in one place and affirmed it in another, what is the truth? God told you repeatedly in Isaiah and elsewhere that He alone was the saviour. He told you how to distinguish true prophecy from false prophecy, as I said above, but you only want to read what Paul said, not what the man you imagine was God said.
“What do you think of Christ? Whose Son is He? They say to Him, David’s. He said to them, How then does David by the Spirit call Him Lord, saying, ‘The LORD said to my Lord, Sit on My right until I make Your enemies Your footstool for Your feet?’ If David then calls Him Lord, how is He his son?” (Matthew 22:42-45 MKJV). Jesus says that the Christ is much more than a son of man, though He was that too. The main point is that He is the Lord our God, just as Thomas said: “And Thomas answered and said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” (John 20:28 EMTV) Jesus did not correct Thomas, as you claim He did or would. So where are you getting your information, Mike?
From the bible, my friend. It is the best way to argue with Christian, although it makes no difference because you all just pick and choose the bits you like, and just forget the rest. David (Psalms are assumed to be by David) addresses God speaking of his Lord, but the son of David could not be his Lord out of Jewish custom because a son calls his father Lord and not the reverse. As for Jesus not correcting Thomas, you depend on the author faithfully recording what was said. Was this author present and could he remember it as a true witness? You have already denied that he could, so he was recording hearsay, and even if he was trying to be honest, maybe the importance of the denial evaded him, or he was not told of it. Of course, you will not accept any such thoughts, because you believe that God could make something perfect on earth, first the perfect man, even though it was really Himself God, and then the perfect book accurately recording every truth you care to imagine. Jews, as you know, did not believe anything in the earth could be perfect, because the earth was imperfect itself, and made everything in it imperfect. Neither Christ, nor the bible, nor the Virgin Mary could be perfect if they were on earth. If God could have made it so for them, then he could have made it so for everyone. Why didn’t He? Because He is the idiot God of the Christians?
But Jesus did say this about Who He was: “Therefore I said to you that you shall die in your sins, for if you do not believe that I AM, you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24 MKJV). Call Him whatever you will, the fact remains that if you do not believe on Him you are dead in your sins and will remain so until that changes.
Maybe, if I were obliged to believe a book written almost a century after this supposed messiah lived, and by a man who must have been in his dotage if he really were a witness to everything that went on, but few Christian scholars believe it was the same John. After such a length of time, the churches were writing down what they wanted people to believe, just as Luke admitted, and by then they wanted Christians to think that this Jewish martyr was a crucified God, like the other popular dying and rising gods of the Greeks and the Syrians.
You ask an interesting series of questions: “Is the bible your God? Is the bible inerrant? Can anything in this imperfect world be perfect? You believe the bible is true and so you believe in Christ and God and therefore you believe the bible. Clever, eh?” That is the approach of the false Christians and believers made by men, those who worship the Bible, not God. It is not cleverness so much as laboring under deceit. To such Jesus said: “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and these are they which testify about Me. But you are unwilling to come to Me, so that you may have life” (John 5:39-40 EMTV).
It is that same John, writing in the first century about what happened almost ten decades earlier. Did you ever wonder how different the Christ of John is from the Christ of Mark, and even Matthew and Luke? I do not imagine you ever did?
We believe the Bible is true, containing the Essence of Truth, because we believe in Christ. This is called having “the horse in front of the cart.”
Is it true or does it merely have the essence of truth. The essence of truth is not sufficient because you do not know how true the essence of truth is. Nothing on earth, Jesus believed, as a Jew, could be perfect, and he did not think he was God in the synoptic gospels, and even denied it.
You say: “More and more of the bible is being exposed as false, but you will not accept it. You cannot. Your beliefs depend on it.” My beliefs come from God, not a book. You could get rid of every Bible in existence, but unless you can get rid of Him, you cannot destroy my faith or knowledge of Him one iota.
So where did your faith in Him come from? Was it that revelation you had, and, if it was, how did you know what the angel was talking about? Your belief comes from the book, and depends entirely on the book.
But you are also mistaken about the Bible; it is not being exposed as false at all. At every turn it is proven to be true. We challenge you to specifically show us otherwise. Again, give us substance. You need to expand your reading beyond that of ignorant, bigoted and bitter atheists, who carry a chip on their shoulders and look for any way to reject the Ultimate Authority, our Lord and Creator, propagating silly nonsense like evolution.
Hang on! You accept that in John’s gospel the assumption is that Jesus is God and he even uses the expression “I am” repeatedly as an echo of the name of God. Yet he plainly denies he is God in the synoptic gospels (Mt 19:17). One of these gospels must be false! How can something and its opposite both be true? There are many such examples, but you ignore them all for the sake of your faith, and that is fine for you, no doubt, but it is dishonest in the real world. You teach lies and dishonesty. For my part, Matthew was written earlier by several decades than John, and is the more trustworthy, if we are to suppose a historical Jesus, and ignore the travesty of an inept ghost of inspiration. The Jesus of the synoptics did not pretend to be God, and no respectable Jew could have done, except maybe the Essenes, who considered their teacher a potential messiah. As for the Old Testament, most of it is forged, and nothing in it before Omri is confirmable as history. Just why does God want us to believe in myths as history? I put it to you that no almighty God could want us to do it, but dishonest rogues who want to make money and get power over people out of religion—that is priests, prophets, pastors and politicians—will readily do whatever gullible dolts will accept, and so they have done throughout history. There is the old adage that no one ever lost money by underestimating the IQ of the people. It must have been invented by the Jewish temple priesthood.
And don’t tell us you do not get incensed when your postulations and theories are questioned, much less debunked. It is on account of your rage that you are a mad man, making outlandish and foolish statements and going so far as to even publish them on the net.
I sincerely hope you never actually met anyone angry. It will scare you. You do not seem to understand what rage is. By all accounts, I mean the bible again, God gets enraged, and it is usually with his best friends, not devils and demons.
Here is an example where you lump genuine faith with superstition and angel/devil worship: “All that false believe in angels and demons left us bereft of proper investigation into Nature for over a millennium and when people suffered misery despite their prayers.” We are not angel worshipers, but worshipers of God. He is the Creator, having power over all realms and things. While the institutionalized false church has sought control over people for its own ends, bringing misery to many, true believers have brought truth and freedom to many. If not for such you would still be living under the hard thumb of the Catholic Church, if not other tyrants. Not appreciating what freedoms you have had by the hand of God’s servants, the Muslims are even now coming your way, to show you what real repression is all about.
Was Calvin one of your true believers? Was Servetus? What was the difference between them, and why did Calvin have Servetus burnt to death? Neither of them were Catholics. History proves you speak rubbish. You do the same with your heroes as you do with the bible, pick and choose. You demonize the Catholic Church even though all your beliefs come to us through the first centuries of Catholicism. The Church Fathers were Catholics. The Saints are Catholics. Protestants like Calvin were monsters, and Protestants burnt as many Catholics as witches as the Catholics burnt Protestants, all in the name of God. It is not a question of true faith or false faith, it is a question of whether Christianity is Satanic or not, and Satanic can mean supernaturally evil, or simply just naturally savage and immoral, whichever you like. As for angels and demons, I did not suggest that you worship them, but merely said you believe in them. You do, don’t you? 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.
In your willful ignorance you rant at the Hand that has fed you: “You are arrogant to propound failed nostrums. I accept what anyone intelligent today accepts—biology, mathematics, physics, medicine, and so on. You stick to mythology, if you like but keep it to yourself.” All true knowledge is based on what God has made and revealed to men. Many scientists who plainly confess this are also ones you have accepted as “intelligent.” Why do you throw the baby out with the bathwater?
You are talking dribble. In thousands of years of biblical belief, the bible has not recorded anything revealed by God that has benefited mankind. Quite the opposite, God turned Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden as a punishment, him to toil by the sweat of his brow and her to suffer the pangs of childbirth. Nice loving, forgiving God. Then he 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. What does work is our studying how Nature works, with no reference to God at all. If God made Nature, He left it working of its own accord, and now there is no reason to think He did. Nature works fine. It is like those Startrek episodes where a world is found run by a computer, the inventers of it all long ago dead, but the computer faithfully going on repairing itself forever. There is no sign of God, but the computer is doing just fine, Maybe there never was a God! The computer called Nature is God.
There are also many scientists who have no idea what they are talking about, like evolutionists, whose “theories” are utter madness, unsupported by one single solitary fact, let alone many, though they look high and low for proof. They find none because there is none. Read Theories of Evolution—The Vain Imaginations of Fools.
No you read the millions of scientific papers on every aspect of evolution you can imagine, not just your Discovery Institute insanities and falsehoods, but pages and uncountable pages of science. You would not recognize a fact if it hit you on the nose. You cannot stand facts. Anyone who does not accept scientific discoveries ought to stop spouting and start living honest lives with ancient ploughs, ancient medicines, and reject everything that science has given you. Evolution is part of it. It is not just a weird offshoot, as anyone genuinely good must be of mainstream Christianity, it is intimately part of it. You will, naturally be joining the Christian Science Church and refuse any medical care at all. Stem cells must be hellish to you, so you will carry a card saying “do not use any stem cells or anything to do with DNA or evolution to try to save me, if I am found dying”. You really do talk through your hat. If you have all that false courage given to you by your false beliefs then you should take them to the logical conclusion. Cure illness by exorcism. That is what your hero did, and he is The Truth.
Where would you be without the contributions of all those who have believed in God? And you call them arrogant in their belief? Just what great contribution to scientific understanding for the benefit of humanity have you made lately? You are a pipsqueak - a small, foolish man with a loud mouth who can do nothing but criticize without giving anyone anything of value. That is pathetic.
Well, you abandoned Judaism, but where would Christianity be without the Jews. Presumably you think it is better than Judaism, and whatever Jews believed became irrelevant when Jesus supposedly denied the law (something he did not do, but the Pauline Church did). The same is true of all those who believed in Christianity, once it became clear that God was a delusion. In any case, many, if not most of them believed in Christianity because they had no choice, or rather the choice of professing an insincere belief or being cruelly murdered, or left destitute to die slowly, at the very best. Many were English country parsons who used the church as a comfortable sinecure that gave them time to study. The monk, Mendel, who discovered the science of genetic variations, chose to be a monk for the same reason, so that he had time to study in his garden. When are you going to give up science as a Satanic distraction? You would never dream of it, and, if you did, you would never survive. Still, that should suit you because life is a wart on a tumescence on God’s posterior, to you. If I am a pipsqueak, it is my own failures that caused it. I do not thank God or blame him, and pipsqueak or not, I need no false belief in salvation. I shall be content to die a pipsqueak and be humble enough to accept that I am not God’s best chum.
What do you know or understand about nature, anyway? And what do the establishments of men that you idolize understand, truly? Johann Grander, an Austrian naturalist/scientist/inventor has discovered principles of water that the institutes of “higher learning” have not yet understood or acknowledged though observing them undeniable in results. They pooh-pooh his inventions while they are proven to work at many established businesses, like BMW or the Chinese railway system. Why do your scientist heroes “debunk” what works? Because they are also in darkness, just like you, protecting their knowledge at the cost of Truth.
Why don’t you people with a direct line to God make the most amazing discoveries by revelation every minute of the day. You have never done it, and you cannot. All you can ever get are useless personal revelations. “There, there, Paul. Don’t fret that you are a pipsqueak. I’ll stand by you. Mike Magee will accept that he is a pipsqueak to make you feel better. There, there, little dolt, er, sorry, darling”. If this wonderful Herr Grander has discovered sunbeams in icicles, then the corporate bosses of the world, many Christians, will be buying the rights so as to make moolah. Science is not a question of opinion, a fact that you cannot understand because everything you know is opinion. Science is public knowledge and can be publicly tested by anyone for its truth. If Herr Grander’s discovery is any good, then it will be found to be. You are telling me it has been found to be crap. Scientists habitually try to debunk eveything. That is how science works. When things cannot be debunked then they do work. Get it? No holy word, no revelation, just practical testing.
Grander, not a religious man, credits God with his inventions. He says he has been led by God to discover what he has, so he can take no credit for what God has freely given to him.
And he is not religious? You really are gullible.
Has Santa Claus led anyone to discover or employ the secrets of nature?
Has Jesus Christ?
You posed this question in your previous letter: “It seems to a lot of us who do not share your delusions that Christianity is Satanic. How can you demonstrate conclusively to me that it is not?” After I answered, you indignantly declared: “Did I say I believed in Satan?” Did you not say, “Christianity is Satanic”? If you do not believe in the existence of Satan, why are you talking about him and attributing his characteristics to what we believe? If God and the devil are imaginary, they why do you argue about them at all? What is up with belligerently throwing out statements like this and then backing off, saying you do not believe in that which you brought up? Do you also argue with people who believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy? Mike, are there more obvious manifestations of a damned fool?
You must be right, as ever. I argue about your cherished beliefs, but apparently in the Christian world that is being dastardly. I have to believe what you believe to argue with you. Well, when I use the word satanic myself, I use it to mean something cruelly terrible and immoral. I do not have to believe in Satan any more than I have to believe in Hercules to say, “The blues put in an Herculean effort but failed”. I am using mythical qualities to describe something real. Why do I argue about God and Satan if they are imaginary? If this is a serious question, it shows that you are out of touch with reality. God is imaginary but awfully satanic things are done in His name and have been for at least the last 2000 years. God is not doing it, and neither is Satan because neither exist, but when madmen believe they do exist, and only they have access to these gods, then the rest of us have to watch out. That is the plain and simple answer to a question that even a third grader would consider unnecessary. So far in history, believers in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus have caused no such trouble, maybe because mainly they are third graders. The trouble will start when adults with a third grade mentality believe in them. And you know what? They do! They just call them God and Jesus.
However, as I have told you, much of what you call Christianity is satanic, and has no more belief in God than you do. For them it is make-believe. You say we make God out to be “the Idiot, because [He] is supposed to be almighty but he is not mighty enough to realize that you are not doing what he came down to earth to tell you.” What are you talking about? He is Almighty. He knows everything, and isn’t surprised mankind is not obeying Him. Pigs will sprout wings and fly before that happens. And He also knows you cannot be as He is. He is only waiting for you to find this out. You will find it out when you are brought into conviction by the Law of God, that it is good, but you are not. All of this is determined by Him. The one who is a fool is the one who does not believe God is in control.
Well, the New Testament has a lot of stuff that God incarnate is supposed to have told you to do. I mean you Christians because we grown ups do not need to be told it. It is what we do to keep civilized. Among the things he said are to be poor and humble. You do not want to be humble as you have repeatedly shown, and neither do you want to be poor, despite the fact that you will find it harder to get into heaven than a camel getting through the eye of a needle. You rest happy that God has no choice but to get you through that tiny eye, somehow or other. You are not humble enough to realise that it is God who will decide not you. This is according to your own beliefs, I hastily add, as Christians, but the bits you reject because it is too hard. Tough. You think God is an idiot and will not notice, but I am not a Christian and can see that you are deluded in your own belief. This incarnated God of yours never said it would be a simple matter of believing that would save you. He repeatedly said it was hard. The gate was narrow, the gate to hell was broad. Many would seek but few would find. Would seek, mind you. Not many would not seek and would not find, but even many of those who sought would not find. The Jewish God gave Jews a law, so that they knew whether they were righteous or not. They just checked off against the law what they wanted to do, and didn’t do it, if it was not allowed. The teachings and deeds of Christ, are plainly meant to do the same thing for Christians. They abrogated the law, I repeat not Jesus, but then had to make it plain what was right and what was wrong, and the gospels supplied that need. Even Paul, who abrogated most things except faith, had to give out rules left, right and center, because the first Hellenized Jews and gentiles were doing as they liked. You refuse to do what he told you to do, not what Paul told you to do, but the man you say you consider to be God! You want to be saved without the trouble. That is why you treat your own God as an idiot. You hope He will not notice.
You say, “You have the sin of pride because you are sure you are ‘saved’. Sorry chum. It is not that easy. Read your bible. And who is it that you are raised up in to make your so proud? Are you sure that Christ of yours is the God your think?” There is no pride in being saved, exactly the opposite because it is entirely His work in Jesus Christ (though many thinking to be saved, yet are not, are proud and boast of it). The glory is His. As for being easy, the testimonies and postings on our website promote no such idea. We testify of nothing other than what the Lord promised, that all need to strive to enter in the narrow gate, and as Paul taught, that one can only enter the Kingdom of God through much tribulation. Finding all His words to be true, and having experienced His faithfulness in keeping His promises through His omnipotent power, I am entirely sure that Christ is God and have staked my life on it.
So you do as he 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 can do just as you wish, but you all have this evangelical urge to spread your bogus nostrums to others, and in doing it 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? Answer—it does not, but you are to do what I say, not what I do, in your brand of Christianity. If you have to love your neighbours, how can you be saved by faith and no love?
You read very carelessly, Mike. You think I called you Catholic but I never said anything of the sort. I only said that your attitude is no different than the popes, who also issue many proclamations that have no basis in reality, yet expect to be believed and cannot be reasoned into forsaking their lies and errors. While you do not claim to be infallible, you act that way, so what is the difference? You offer your views, which you say others can take or leave, but what about you changing your views when you are shown to be wrong?
If it were not so pathetic, it would be funny. I read carelessly? I did not think you called me a Catholic, I refuted your allegation that I was like a pope by pointing out that I had none of the powers a pope has, so your analogy was somewhat flawed. I do not claim infallibility, but I put forward my views based on what I have read and understood from various sources of evidence. It is not just opinion, or what is worse, revelation, based on nothing except some mental abberation. You and the readers can take it or leave it, but I maintain my evidence is sounder than your revelation. So far you have not shown me to be wrong on these matters of belief, and as long as reason demands evidence, you cannot. You have none, other than your psychological problem.
You read the Bible very carelessly. You say: “I have read what the Christian God said and did in His incarnation, and that should be your own personal standard. As soon as you start judging others, you have had it. The Greeks said, “Know thyself”. It is precisely what Christians never know.” Christ said to take the beam out of your own eye, and then you could remove the speck from your brother’s. In other words, people like you who see huge problems with others, those falsely professing God, for example, need to get right before you could be of help to any of them (or are you at all interested in helping anyone? We say, “no”). The reason the specks in their eyes look so large to you is because of the huge beam in your own. You can only know yourself by first being judged and removing that beam. God’s judgment is here in the things we make known of you.
You illustrate perfectly your arrogance, and your predilection for psychological projection. You should read carefully yourself before you accuse others, but then that would be too humble for a Christian, especially one who is not a pipsqueak. The passage you speak of is not referring to infidels like me not removing beams from their eye before removing motes from their brothers’. In both the passages where this happens, the sermon on the mount in Matthew and in Luke’s sermon on the plain, Jesus is addressing his followers and disciples. They are the brothers, not other people. They are the ones who have not to be hypocrites by offering up cures when they have not bothered to cure themselves. It seems that you are so engrossed in your own superiority that you are utterly incapable of understanding your own God. The reason is that you are not actually trying to learn anything from the gospels. You are like all modern day Christians, you already know you are saved, so you just look for citations to help you prove it. The trouble is that, by all the criteria, Christ offered, you are not saved, but you are too up yourself to realize it.
Your problems and criticisms of Paul’s teachings are all easily refuted and corrected. Your statements, as follows: “Paul said we should be submissive and obedient to authorities (eg Titus 3:1), but God in his incarnation overturned tables in the temple courtyard in defiance of the authorities. If Christ had obeyed Paul, he could not have done it.” There is no authority but of God, and He (Christ) is the Ultimate Authority, therefore authorized to do what He deems necessary. The reason Christ overturned the tables was precisely because those who set up shop there had no authority to make the house of God a “house of merchandising”.
Where is your authority for saying this? The “merchants” were quite lawfully and rightfully in the courts because they exhanged the money brought by pilgrims from over the world for sacrificial animals and vice versa. What was illegal about this business? The temple depended on it, and it had gone on since the temple was established. In any case, if the “merchants” had no authority in Christ’s opinion, but according to the authorities of the country, they had, are we to assume that Christians who dislike something can do as they like? Christ was demonstrating that the Christian can take the law into his own hands. That is what he must have done, and one reason why he was guilty of treason.
