AW! Epistles
From P Cohen of Harvest Haven 3
Abstract
Abstract
You and every other Christian I have ever read have got this absolutely wrong, and you are just too indoctrinated to get it. We are to believe that Jesus willingly puts Caesar on a par with God in matters Judaean. It is rubbish. Jesus will have thought Caesar was as subject to God as anyone else. You think about what he is saying. He is looking at a coin, with Caesar’s head on it, a Judaean coin! Judaean! Judah is God’s land and God’s people lived in it. God was the rightful ruler of Judah, the land of His Chosen people, the Jews. Yet the coin showed Caesar as the ruler of Judaea. Do you get it? I doubt it, but Jesus was defying Caesar as not the rightful ruler of God’s land.
Jesus did indeed teach to obey those who are rightfully in authority. For example, He said: “Therefore render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and to God the things which are God’s” (Luke 20:25 MKJV).
You and every other Christian I have ever read have got this absolutely wrong, and you are just too indoctrinated to get it. We are to believe that Jesus willingly puts Caesar on a par with God in matters Judaean. It is rubbish. Jesus will have thought Caesar was as subject to God as anyone else. You think about what he is saying. He is looking at a coin, with Caesar’s head on it, a Judaean coin! Judaean! Judah is God’s land and God’s people lived in it. God was the rightful ruler of Judah, the land of His Chosen people, the Jews. Yet the coin showed Caesar as the ruler of Judaea. Do you get it? I doubt it, but Jesus was defying Caesar as not the rightful ruler of God’s land. When he says render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, he plainly meant all the lands that Caesar rightfully ruled, but Judah was not among them. Judah was God’s. You will always believe what you like, but this saying which is one of the ones that must have struck a chord from the beginning as important, could obviously not be ignored by Roman Christians, and they did what they have been doing ever since. They devised a clever way out of the obvious meaning. It is not an excuse that would have convinced any native Jews, but the gentiles of the empire did not get the inference, and so it has remained since. Jesus was hanged for defying Caesar, and that is what he was doing in this innocent looking remark. By turning over the tables in the Temple court, he actually took the law into his own hands, and committed treason, in Roman eyes. He actively defied Roman authority, defied Caesar. That is why he was crucified.
Of those who abused their authority, such as the Pharisees and scribes that Jesus rebuked, He said: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat. Therefore whatever they may say to you to observe, observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do” (Matthew 23:2-3 EMTV).
It seems to me that Jesus tells his followers to do what the Pharisees say, but not to do what they do. You Christians are the perfect parallel in modern times. You profess to follow Christ but you do not. You are exactly the same sort of hypocrites.
After Christ descended upon the apostles in Spirit, He made sure to let the religious authorities know that their mandate came from God, and that their allegiance was to Him rather than to those who tried to prohibit the preaching of God in His Name: “But answering, Peter and the apostles said, It is right to obey God rather than man” (Acts 5:29 LITV).
Now, Peter tells them to defy the authorities again, in line with what Christ said about the coin with Caesar’s image. But are these religious authorities the same as the Pharisees that they were told to obey. What was the message? It is plain that the early church has messed around with it to suit themselves, but they were unable to get rid of the already famous passage about Caesar.
“Paul utterly falsely told Christians they would be saved from future judgment. That is not at all what Christ taught. He was so dramatic about it that he said it was preferable to tear out an eye lest you sin by it.” There is nothing false about what Paul said (you never provide quotes), and it was not contradictory to what Christ said. Not knowing or understanding either, it is only natural that one led by an evil and faultfinding disposition would be so mistaken. Paul taught that those who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and were reconciled to God through Him were delivered from wrath, present and future: “Much more then, having been justified now by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” (Romans 5:9-10 EMTV).
Jesus taught the same. He said: “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26 EMTV). The reason Paul preached the same thing as the Lord Jesus Christ is because Paul was His servant and brother, filled with His Holy Spirit.
Look, you are the Christian, not me. You ought to know your bible. Any number of Christian sects and weird churches, in the US particularly, preach what they call “faith alone” based on Paul’s teaching, and since the epistle of James seems to refute it, it must have been a serious argument at the start of Pauline Christianity. I accept that Paul is even more confused or confusing than the rest of the old book, but that is admitted by him as being because he taught whatever suited him and his audience at the time. Galatian 2:16 seems to say faith alone as succinctly as you will get, but doubtless there are other places. The argument was whether Jews had to obey the law, and Paul claimed the answer was no, because faith alone was sufficient, and he cited Abraham who had no law but retained his faith. Even so, he had to be circumcized and Paul opposed that too. Now, it is true that, as I have said, and you have cited to me long ago in this discussion, that Paul abrogated the law but still expected his Christian faith-led followers to obey the many rules that he laid down in its place. Above all, he says faith required love, and effectively he argues that love replaced the law. Not many Christians seem to know this, certainly not the “faith alone” bunch because they hate people more than any devil could, and you do not seem dissimilar. Your citations say that just believing in Christ will save you. James who knew Jesus as his brother said that faith without works was empty. That ought to be plain because the whole point of religion is to keep people civilized, and moral in society. If this moralizing principle is abandoned then the religion becomes useless in keeping people social and pleasant. That is just what has happened to Christians. They are intolerant of others and unpleasant to them.
“You lot think you are walking across a broad and wide bridge, contrary to what God taught, just because Paul assured you merely professing Christianity was enough. Too bad, again. God incarnate did not advocate faith alone, and if he did, he had no need to come to earth because Paul could have brought the message.” You give a very Catholic argument to a false Protestant notion of “sola fide.” And once again, you refer to what Paul or Jesus said but do not provide the exact quotes. You assume you know what they were saying and that we should take your word for it. However, we find you wrong every time. 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.
Sophistry again. The citation you gave above is just what I am saying, so you cannot deny it. 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? Faith in Christ is Christianity, at least for most people in the world, Christians or not. You obviously see a difference that will save you and condemn everyone else to the boiling sulphur.
Paul also did not teach that faith void of godliness would save anyone. The faith he talked about led to obedience and the upholding of the Law. As one of multitudinous examples, he said to the Romans: “Do we then make the Law void through faith? Let it not be! But we establish the Law” (Romans 3:31 MKJV).
In what way? He abrogated the law, so how did faith replace it. How do you remain righteous unless you have a standard of righteouness? What is the point of righteousness, if faith saves? I can see quite well that love can replace the whole of the law, but Christians do not love but hate. Look at some of your own words, and if you cannot see it there, turn to a few discussions on the web between atheists and Christians so-called, like yourself. And these intolerant hate dripping nutters think they are saved by the god of love. Delusion is hardly the right word for them.
Your problem is that you do not know this faith and the obedience that comes of it (not unlike so many who do profess faith). Here is Paul’s teaching on the faith of Christ: “But the righteousness of faith says this: ‘Do not say in your heart, Who shall ascend into Heaven?’ that is, to bring Christ down; or ‘Who shall descend into the deep?’; that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead. But what does it say? ‘The Word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart’; that is, the Word of Faith which we proclaim; because if you confess the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved” (Romans 10:6-9 MKJV).
It sounds terrific, but means nothing. Anyone, you included, can say, “I believe in my heart", but the question remains of how anyone is to know that you really do believe in your heart. Paul is quite explicit in Romans 13:8-10 that love is the same as the law, and love means doing the law, he even mentions the commandments, which is the cipher for the law of God in Christianity. Faith therefore requires love and hate is the opposite of love. Manifestations of hate, it follows, deprive the Christian of salvation. That is why James was quite strict that faith requires works. Works is often read as technically the law of Moses, but it means being righteous, the law only being the measure of it, just as love is. No one who sets out to bomb into fragments whole human populations can be saved can they? whatever degree of faith they have. Have you thought of spending long hours trying to convert Bush or Blair from their conviction that they are more godly according to how many Arab women and children, maybe even with the odd terrorist among them, they kill. You would do more good to direct all your effort to these Christian monsters, than to little old pipsqueak me.
It is evident that this faith is not a matter of Law-keeping, but of believing on Him Who saves us, which means we are made to be like Him, keeping the Law according to His ways and standards.
There you go again. The law is His ways and standards, n’est ce pas? But you have to do it, whether you measure it by the law or by loving your neighbours.
“But now the revelation of Jesus Christ is made manifest, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith” (Romans 16:26 KJV). So, Paul did not preach justification by belief in doctrine, but by the active faith of Christ operating in those who believe. He knew that Christ did not come to teach doctrine, as men think and do. He came to lay down His life for our sins, and to take it up again for our justification. Without the forgiveness that comes by His sacrifice, and the receiving of His Spirit that comes by His resurrection from the dead, none of us would know or understand anything of God. We would not be able to keep His commandments by faith. We would all be dead in our sins, like you.
So what is it that you have spent all this time telling me? You are expounding a doctrine. It might differ minisculely from that of other Christian sects, but it is a doctrine, and you do not realize it. You are seriously kookie.
“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins!” (1 Corinthians 15:17 EMTV)
And on you go, giving citations you asked me for. It is easy to see how dimwitted Christians, eager to feel saved even though they are serial killers, rapists or pedophiles, go for the faith alone doctrine. 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 significance of Christ being God is that His authority is absolute but all of you Pauline Christians mainly ignore Christ.” It is amazing that you candidly confess that you are not infallible, but then make absolute statements that imply you have omniscient knowledge. Our website, however, proves you wrong, though you cannot see it. Nevertheless it is still up to you to prove what you say, which you cannot, because it is not true.
Let me recap then. “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Do you remember this? God said it from his own mouth, at least the man you say is God, but happily ignore, called Christ. It is not the rich who have the kingdom or even those with a spirit of hatred, or faith, or anything else. You get the kingdom if you have a spirit of poverty. It means being content with very little, so that you do not exploit others, and do not spoil the land. The land, in those days before mechanized agriculture, was especially precious and could easily be overworked. Jews considered their land was God’s land, not Caesar’s, you will remember. I know Christ valued poverty and hated riches because he says so several times, and I know the land was precious to Jews, and still is which is why they felt able to steal if from people who had lived in it for the thousand years, or more, they were not much bothered about it. Moreover, it is common sense when the land is rather impoverished limestone outcrops, easily destroyed. Poverty helps us to live without making life miserable for others. How many Christians think they must be poor to be saved. Maybe a few monks and nuns. No one who is born again.
“A young man asked what he had to do to inherit the kingdom of heaven. Did Christ say just have faith? Read it. It is in the bible. It is God’s own prescription for salvation, if Christ is God.” You imply that Paul would have told the young man that since he believed in Christ he was saved, and there was nothing more to do. A couple major things are wrong with your picture. First, what Jesus said to the young man was not a generic prescription for salvation. He told this person in particular what he lacked. When another rich man, Zacchaeus, sought out the Lord, not a word was said about selling all his goods. And when Zacchaeus said he would give away half his goods to the poor, which the Lord did not ask him to do, Jesus said that salvation had come to his house “this day.” Selling all he had was not required.
Sophistry. You have different answers for the different situations when it is plain that Christ could not have had any such confusing message, and in any case, the prescription still did not include having faith in him. So tell me, how do you know that this prescription given to the young man was just for him, and if it was, then why is it in God’s word when it is of no further use to anyone, the young man having been dead for 2000 years. And this Zacchaeus story was meant to be taken seriously, when he had told another story just after the story of the rich young man, to illustrate his point, saying it was impossible for a rich man to enter heaven. Again it is an early Christian interpolation because Christians wanted to get rich Romans involved rather than just the poor! The Church wanted to do what Christ did not want, to convert rich people. Surely that matches your general hatred of Catholicism, after all, those early Churches became the Catholic Church. Christianity as taught by Christ was a church for poor people, and only poor people were saved. The message is plain enough when Christ says you need to get treasure in heaven, and when he tells other stories, Lazarus, the poor man at the gate, and the rich man who wanted to get treasure on earth but was destined to die and reap nothing in heaven despite his full barns here. It cannot be denied, but, you know what, nearly all Christians do deny it. They prefer self delusion.
Second, Paul also dealt with people as individuals, with different needs, and led them as the Lord gave him. So Paul would have done the very same thing as Jesus did with that individual, because it was Christ leading Paul, not Paul leading himself. Paul also did not give people free passes because they believed or said they believed. He required they behave responsibly and be worthy of the calling of faith in Christ. For example, of widows being taken care of by the believers, he said: “Let a widow be enrolled having become not less than sixty years, the wife of one man, being witnessed by good works, if she has brought up children, if she has lodged strangers, if she has washed the saints’ feet, if she has relieved the afflicted, if she has diligently followed every good work” (1 Timothy 5:9-10 EMTV). That doesn’t sound at all like your depiction of Paul as one preaching, “Just believe and you are fine, forget having to be responsible in any way to the commandments of God or for the sake of others.”
You are quite right, it does not, and that is why Paul is an hypocrite for preaching faith alone elsewhere. He gives rules and conditions and then says faith is sufficient. So, what actually is sufficient? You have said yourself that it is “believing on Him Who saves us” and salvation is “by the active faith of Christ operating in those who believe”. That means to me that what matters is faith, and many millions of Christians evidently read it the same way inasmuch as it came from Paul. As I have noted, and you too, Paul actually sets other conditions in fact, but places no salvific necessity on them, whereas the instructions of Christ to the young rich man were quite specific. Christ is God, and Paul is all things to all men. Who am I likely to believe, if I claim to believe in God? When there is a contradiction or something unclear, surely I would appeal to God and not to Paul, yet you Paulist Christians ignore God and follow what Paul says even when it is manifestly not God’s will, if that is what Christ expressed. Hypocrites, hypocrites, Christ’s own words. You do not do as God says but what you prefer to do because it is a lot easier. Let us come back to our earlier exchange on Satan and Satanic. If Christ spoke God’s words, and Paul told you to believe something else, then what is Paul in the Christian mythos? So as not to have to wait for another long tedious reply, I’ll tell you. God’s opponent traditionally is Satan, and even in the Jewish scriptures which make God responsible for all evil, he is God’s chief prosecutor of humanity, the angel set up to tempt us. Either way, Paul is acting for Satan, according to your own sacred beliefs.
You are making things up as you go along to suit and support your God-denial. You find it convenient to do so by denouncing His servant, Paul the apostle, whom I wrote taught by personal revelation knowledge of Christ. You replied: “It is a revelation Paul claimed, by claiming he had received a vision. Any rogue or madman could make any such claim. Why is it necessary, when you have God’s own words bound in the same book?” Many rogues do make claims, like Joseph Smith, for example. However, Paul’s revelation of Christ was supported from many aspects, and was far more than a single experience. What happened on the road to Damascus was only the beginning, not the extent of his experience of God. The preaching and teachings encompassing his full revelation came many years later. What transpired after God stopped Paul on his way to persecute the saints only proved that God had indeed apprehended him. A madman having hallucinations does not produce fruits such as Paul has. Multitudes have been changed for the better (with us among them), as has the world, by the gospel he preached in Christ.
And multitudes have been incinerated while tied to a stake, and untold numbers have suffered deaths like being cooked alive in a sealed iron pan. People who did such monstrous things condemn the whole of the religion. They were not done just by one madman, but by the whole community of them. You will just blame it on to the Catholic Church, but the whole trouble with Christianity is that the same awful troubles keep arising, generation after generation. We are lucky to have lived for several centuries with the church relatively impotent, but cracked pots like you, and sixty million other fundamentalists in the USA being manipulated by neocons are putting the world in danger. And, as usual you are far too self-centeredly absorbed in your own salvation, whatever it means, making you blind to reality. Already tens of thousands have died in Iraq, out of Christian revenge for an attack by the madmen of another patriarchal religion. One madman, Paul has been followed by millions, and not just dipsticks sitting on poles like Indian fakirs. Quite frankly, Christianity is probably a symptom of insanity or neurosis at the least. That is what Freud thought.
For example, whose lives are being changed for the better by your teachings and who is talking about your thoughts, which, as you say, people can take or leave? But here we are talking about what Paul recorded for our sakes, things that bring life to those who believe, through the knowledge of God in Christ. The reason it has been necessary to have and preach this revelation of God in Christ is so that people will know God. A book is not enough, even a true Book inspired by God. All must know God firsthand to have life, just as Paul did.
Listen again. Isn’t God an almighty being? If He had an important message why wouldn’t He send it in a way that would impress upon people that this is God speaking, and not via a series of lunatics? God could create the universe and send a three mile deep flood, you seem to think, but the only people He sends as prophets are people like you, self appointed saints, who ought to be tied in a straitjacket in a psychiatrist’s chair. I say this because you decide that you are sent, just as Paul decided he was sent, and your evidence is your personal vision. This is insanity, not prophecy.
You operate under the mistaken premise that Jesus Christ came to give us a creed and certain knowledge by which we could attain to godliness. Neither He nor Paul nor we teach that though many without understanding do. If having people believe the Bible was sufficient for salvation, then we would be living in a very different and far better world, given the great number of people who claim to do so. But many of those who believe in the Bible are only trusting in themselves, not in God. Jesus rebuked those who thought to find life in the Bible while rejecting God’s coming in the flesh, in human beings: “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).
Paul and John, that is all we get from you people. As I have said, John is the gospel most quoted by you Christians, and the reason is simple. I have already told you. It was written at least seventy and probably nearer a hundred years after the death of the man you call God. The church had time enough to depict Jesus as a madman himself, perpetually identifying himself with God, something blasphemous among Jews but which Jesus readily did all the time in John. Yet he did not in the earlier gospels. He was an entirely different man, not arrogant and full of himself as God almighty, albeit writ little, but humble and self effacing to such an extent that he would not use the word “I” at all, but referred to himself as “this son of man", a son of man being, would you believe, just a man! You say that Jesus is not a fairy tale character like Snow White or whatever, but you read the gospels as if they were fairy tales. If your religion is truly historical, based on real history, then you have to understand it in history and not in silken fairy tale cocoons. The church, in real time, wrote a novel and attributed it to John the apostle, a man who was probably long ago dead, and, if alive, had allegedly managed to survive being cooked in a barrel of boiling oil, and live on until he was a hundred.
As we read on, you reverse your first opinion that Paul preached salvation by faith without works to now saying that he taught salvation by works. You imply that the problem is Paul’s, but it is your opinion that keeps shifting and creating problems for you because you do not know what you are talking about. You write: “Can we clarify something here? Is salvation by faith alone, or by obeying the catalogues of laws or rules that Paul lays down here and all over the place? I thought Paul abrogated the law of God, but then he makes up a whole lot of new ones while at the same time telling Christians they are saved by faith. I expect you can explain it away, but for anyone rational it is incoherent.” Who says you are rational? That is only your opinion. The facts demonstrated here speak otherwise. That is because you are, as one who denies his Creator, a fool.
Many thanks. You should know.
I do not explain this matter away, but give a valid explanation that only does away with what is wrong and problematic in the first place. It reconciles what only appears contradictory to those who do not see the whole picture. Paul preached salvation by faith in Christ, a state of grace that upholds the Law of God rather than violates it. Salvation is by the faith of Christ alone, but that faith is the very power by which Christ raised Himself from the dead, which does the same thing in those who believe, raising them from their dead state towards God’s righteousness to produce works according to His Character and Laws. Otherwise, what is called “faith” is not His faith at work. Paul taught these things, no different than Jesus, Who said that He came not to do away with, but to fulfill, the Law (Matthew 5:17). Jesus taught that the requirements of the Law were much higher than those of religious legalists, who knew the Bible, but did not know Him. Only by the Spirit of God in Christ indwelling us can we know and fulfill the Law. Thus the need for His faith and grace. The presence or absence of the fruits of faith is the way we can tell the true Christian from the false professor.
That is a lot of grand waffle, which amounts to this: 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. And what is the sign of righteousness? For several hundred years, since Ezra brought the Law of Moses to the Jews, righteousness was measured by the law. Thereafter, according to Christ, who is also God, it was to be measured by whether you loved your fellow human beings. If you did not love them, and especially, if you did the opposite but harmed them, then you were not saved. The criterion of salvation is how you treat other people. It is a social criterion, because we are social beings, and destruction of society destroys our humanity. That is quite simple to understand, needs no law, or mystical faith and bodies of Christ, and all the rest of the waffle. It is perfectly simple, and for those who find it hard to follow, we have reinvented law to enforce it. So, faith in resurrected dead men is totally irrelevant. You have to be sociable to people, and not harm them, and if you do, then the law will punish you not God. He might want to punish you too, if you believe in Him, but for the rest of us, the dead and alive saviour and the law of Moses, Sharia law and the rest of the holy legislation is unnecessary. We have moved beyond it. You prefer to remain in the 2000 year old past.
As for Paul making up new laws, show us one. There is no such thing. He only explained and taught how the eternal Law of God applies to our lives. Returning to your obsession with sex, you continue trying to pawn off on Paul your own problem: “Anyway, Paul does repeatedly prescribe explicit rules and sexual matter are high among them, even though sexual matters are private ones. Paul had a thorn in his side, and was excessively prudish sexually. It seems quite possible that he had doubts about his own sexuality, and that would explain his unnatural concern with what should not concern him.” What “explicit rules” do you have a problem with? Do you think you should be able to have sexual intercourse with your father’s wife? Or do you prefer using a man’s rectum, out of which he defecates, to simulate that, or to take a penis in your mouth? Paul wasn’t stopping you. He wasn’t judging the heathen in how they lived their lives, only those who believed, who were delivered from their sins by Jesus Christ.
You have been pouring forth for many paragraphs the absolute understanding that you have of what God thinks, even though you started by citing a passage that tells you that you have and can have no idea how God thinks. You believe in this God, cite what purports to be His words everywhere then ignore them utterly. You are fond of calling me a fool, so what are you? You accuse me of making things up as I go along, but that is what you Christians always do, and with the conviction that anything you say, however absurd, or demonstratively false, is the truth because you said it, and Christ promised you that anything you said would be the wisdom of God. Such beliefs can only prove you are cracked. Here you know that Jesus disapproves of incest, puffs and cocksuckers, but you have only your belief that he was not one of these himself. We know of no marriage, so he was a single man, travelled around with a gang of men, yet there was a woman among them, allegedly a prostitute. Naturally, the novels written by the church for gentiles would not have matters like incest, homsexuality and adultery among them because even Romans were generally opposed to them. However debased you might consider Romans to have been, they gave rise to the basis of the law in most European countries, and Roman matrons were no more keen on adultery than any woman would be in societies where they were insecure without a husband. Roman men, unlike the earlier Greeks were not fond of homosexuality. But we have no idea what the practises were in Judaism. We know the law of Moses, but we also know that many people did not accept the law, and some sects were able to read the law in ways different from the Pharisees. Thus sex was a punishment for the disobedience of the primeval pair in the Garden of Eden, and particularly good men, like Jesus would eschew it. They identified with angels who were not sexual creatures, as Jesus explained. But the question is, did they count what you so graphically describe, as sex. As it was only between members of one sex, males, it was not sex. Sex was for procreation, but men could not procreate, whatever they did together in the absence of women. So, it is quite impossible to say whether Jesus was sincerely good, but still was a homosexual, in our terms. And an old manuscript has been found that implies he was. What for example, even in the bible, was a young man doing fleeing naked from the Garden of Gethsemane? So you spout on and on with your God given infinite knowledge, but all it amounts to is your own prejudices. If God thinks that homosexuality is a childish distraction and not a terrible crime, then you might not be so saved as you think for villifying people who do it. I repeat that what consenting people do in private is no concern for others, and no God could have made it a concern for others, when His main concern is keeping society civilized.
But do you think that you and others are not paying a high price for your fornications, sodomy and adultery? Think again! That is why you are called to repentance, as all are, for your own good. Not repenting, you destroy yourselves.
Why not try it, yourself. You talk like an old bigot.
Your characterization of Paul is absurd, sheer speculation. You have no proof for any of it. It is just more of your evil surmisings and popish statements. You falsely accuse one who exposes your sinfulness, manufacturing evidence against him where none exists, just like your Catholic cousins and other religious have done throughout the ages with the saints of God. You think your thoughts so important and worthy that you build a site to proudly broadcast them, not realizing how transparent you are in your jealousy and bad temper, which makes you irrational. You have no just cause to angrily dismiss Jesus Christ, the Lord God Almighty. All of that comes out in this dialogue, which is why we will post it on our site, with all of your words intact. Here, for example, is a prime example of your illogical, illegitimate declarations: “Paul made a big thing of fornication which is defined as unlawful sexual intercourse, meaning for a Christian that you are not married. Well, at the time most people were not Christians and so could hardly avoid fornicating.” You do not have to be a Christian to have a lawful marriage. God is God of all people. Those He brings together in marriage are in legitimate union, no matter what they believe. “What God has joined together let no man tear asunder.”
You take every sexual inference you can find because of the Christian obsession with sex, but do not take them in context. Again your utter misapprehension of Christ is painful. This saying was said as a parable. It was a parable of the joining together of God and his people the Jews who were depicted as God’s betrothed, or His spouse, but often adulterous. The Jews had committed adultery by abandoning the rule of God and accepting Roman rule. Christ is saying very directly using Genesis as his metaphor of marriage, that no humans, even Romans, could separate what God has joined together. 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.
Whether lawful or not, though, Paul was not trying to police those who did not believe: “Now, what I meant was that you should not associate with people who call themselves brothers or sisters in the Christian faith but live in sexual sin, are greedy, worship false gods, use abusive language, get drunk, or are dishonest. Don’t eat with such people. After all, do I have any business judging those who are outside the Christian faith? Isn’t it your business to judge those who are inside? God will judge those who are outside. Remove that wicked man from among you” (1 Corinthians 5:11-13 GW).
It is amazing how you cite these passages, suitably chosen from various translations presumably to suit your argument, yet you cannot understand what you cite. You are too unselfcritical for that. You are wasting your time on me, someone outside the church that Paul tells you you have no right judging, yet you will not plainly and openly condemn people like G W Bush, the most powerful Christian, so-called, in the world, and a man who is getting Christianity hated for being a cruel, immoral, self-serving branch of the Republican party. If you want to follow Paul, and insist he is right, then why don’t you do as he says. Condemn Bush. Condemn Blair. And do it loud enough for people to hear, then you might impress. It is because you still pick and choose what suits you, even when your real God, Paul, speaks.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you were teachable, Mike, and could admit to being wrong? But you prefer death, and death is what you have and sow. “Sex was supposed to be His punishment to Adam and Eve, so why would he want to stop it? Only Christians are bothered because they all of them use Christianity to reflect their personal distaste for sexuality. It is psychology again.” Nowhere is it said that God punished Adam and Eve with sex. Do you punish your children by making them eat ice cream? Why do you say such stupid things? It is not that your brain is deficient in ability to know these things, but your atheistic doctrine has made you stupid. It has made you say things like Christians have “personal distaste for sexuality.” I personally don’t know any Christians for which that can be said. You plainly do not know what you are talking about. You are living in a world that exists only inside your head.
“He said to the woman, I will greatly increase your sorrow and your conception; you shall bear sons in sorrow, and your desire shall be toward your husband; and he shall rule over you. Gen 3:16 LITV” Then he sent them out of Eden. It sounds like a punishment to me, but then I do not have God’s brain in my head as you do. As for personal distaste for sexuality, I cannot believe what I am reading. Paul is quite clear that virginity is the preferred state. He does not exclude marriage if people had the urge, but to remain unmarried was better. Paul, like Jesus, remained unmarried as far as we know, and he certainly had a thorn in his flesh, and admitted it. And when he asked God to take it away from him, the answer was: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” Did you ever think God’s power was perfected in weakness, boastful one? Obviously not because you persist in attacking the weak, and kow-towing to the rich and powerful.
In it you are the wisest of men. That is why I told you this truth that applies to you: “The LORD knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are useless” (1 Corinthians 3:20 EMTV). You responded: “So, ‘The Lord knows the thoughts of morons to be useful’ and you are attending to every word of an accepted moron. To praise foolishness is hardly something that God could do, is it?” God does not praise your brand of foolishness, which you call wisdom. That is the precise point of the saying. Here is the rest of the context: “Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool, that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, ‘He catches the wise in their craftiness’; and again, ‘The LORD knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are useless’” (1 Corinthians 3:18-20 EMTV). Have you not been caught in your own trap? Yes, but you cannot admit it because that is the pride of your wisdom, and the downfall of your foolishness. You fault “Christians” as if they are morons and you are so smart. Yet time and time again you are the one who is found to be making alarmingly stupid remarks, like this: “Christians think their brains are given by the Devil because they are obviously not supposed to use it, and Paul says so several times, knowing that they were indeed morons, and so they have remained. Try defying Satan and using your head.” Paul said that all those in Christ have been given sound minds (2 Timothy 1:7). He said that we have the mind of God (1 Corinthians 2:16). He also talked about those such as yourself, whose minds have been blinded by the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4). So where are you getting your ideas? Satan, the god of this world, is very intelligent, the most cunning of all God’s creation (Genesis 3:1). Did you really think that you could outthink him?
Plainly we are getting nowhere on this one. You are convinced God wants you to be an idiot, and you treat God as one to prove it. Yet there is no getting away from the fact that you believe God gave you a brain because we were made in His image, and God is wise, yet you boast incessantly that Paul tells you not to use it, to become idiots for God. My reading of it is still that Paul is the agent of Satan, and you think God is, since He gave you the awful thinking organ in your head you are forbidden by Paul to use. And there you go projecting again, for Paul as Satan is greatly outthinking you lot.
“As for homosexuals, that too seems to be natural, and in early human societies homosexual men will have had functions without being a threat to the dominant males. I know you will hate any such suggestion, but what consenting men or women do together in private is none of your concern or mine. The trouble is that you have a thoroughly unnatural concern in what others are up to, to the exclusion of your own salvation.” Here is the description given by God of the natural dispositions of all men: “Just as it is written: There is none righteous, no not one, There is none who understands; there is none who seeks God. All have turned aside; together they became unprofitable; there is not one doing kindness, there is not so much as one. Their throat is an opened grave; with their tongues they deceived; the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; Ruin and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace they did not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:10-18 EMTV).
I thought you disapproved of Catholicism. This is original sin, isn’t it? But I see no mention of queerdom. Did you miss it out by accident?
Homosexuality is just one more fruit of mankind’s perversity and crookedness that has led him to reject the goodness of God, and to be heedless of His Law and Person as recounted in Romans 1: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven upon all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Because that which is known of God is manifest among them, for God has shown it to them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things made, both His eternal power and Divinity, so that they are without excuse. Because, having known God, they did not glorify Him as God, or give thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for a likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and reptiles. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of the own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is blessed forever. Amen” (Romans 1:18-25 EMTV).
Where does it condemn hoomosexuality? Keep trying. You’ll get there eventually. Citations are presumably Paul’s substitute for a brain, meant to ensure you remain fools, according to his prescription. A lot more has been written since Paul’s letters, you know, and a lot of it is interesting. A shame you missed it, but that’s what it is when you become a tin man for God. How about a toy watch?
And is this a matter of no concern? To the fools of Sodom who are destroyed, it is not. Those who love God and their neighbors do not wish such destruction on others. “You get more pathetic as you go on, Mr Cohen. Cohen by name, cohen by nature, eh?” If there is no God, then how is it you are disparaging of His people, the Jews, who are distinctive from others because He has chosen them? What is a Jew, according to you, but another human being that evolved from the slime and has no more significance than any other? Why do you then hate them and what they have brought to the world? Has not God proved Himself in the Jew? Have I not correctly likened you to Hitler?
Unfortunately you are too dim to understand my allusion, or you are no Jew. Cohen is the Hebrew word for a priest not a Jew. I am referring to your predilection for the lies that traditionally go with priestcraft, your chosen calling, but you truly are a fool for God.
“Morals are a set of standards that people are encouraged to adopt because they are necessary for society to function. God has nothing to do with them, nor has elitist ideologies whether Nazi or Christian. Historically, it is hard to distinguish them.” You claim that God does not exist, so, according to you, He has nothing to do with anything. Are we just supposed to take your word for these things, as we are expected to with your close cousin, the pope? “The Christian God advocated equality through the spirit of poorness. It was the poor who were blessed not the rich…There was no room in God’s kingdom for a rich man.” The poor whom Jesus said are blessed are the “poor in spirit.” How are they poor in spirit? They do not trust in themselves, their intellects, knowledge, powers and wealth of all kinds. Those who trust in any of these riches cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.
This is plain baloney. You are again doing what you accuse me of doing in your perpetually projecting manner of argument, you are making it up to suit yourself, something that you Christians alway have done, and have to do. This expression “Poor in Spirit”, is not without any context in the gospels. I have said before and it is as plain as day to any child, but not to you lot, that Christ valued the spiritual value of poverty. That is the meaning of poor in spirit, and it is a phrase met elsewhere in ancient works now that the Dead Sea Scrolls have been read. They also spoke of the poor in spirit, and they also called themselves “The Poor Ones”, and they also, like the Apostles of Acts, had no personal possessions except a few necessities. Your whole argument is a deluded personal justification of your own bigoted position. You have no wish and make no attempt to read the bible and learn from it. For you, it is a compilation of citations to be rolled out to replace thinking.
Only those who look to God alone are poor enough to enter His Kingdom. That explains how Zacchaeus, a rich man, was said by Jesus to have been visited by the salvation of God “this day.” It explains how other saints were rich in material things, such as Abraham, the father of all those in faith. Paul did not speak against wealth, only against trusting in wealth: “Charge the rich in the present age not to be high-minded, nor to set hope on the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, the One offering to us richly all things for enjoyment” (1 Timothy 6:17 LITV).
Well, bugger Paul. Read what your God said, dunce. Christ, the one you think is God actually speaking from his own mouth was clear enough about it. You desperately turn back to Abraham, a man who in your mythology lived 2000 years BC, and was justified by faith in not having the law. Well, then he was justified by faith in not knowing that God actually condemned riches when He eventually turned up on earth, according to you. When He did that remarkable trick, He condemned riches in no uncertain words, and even the obvious interpolations of the Catholic church fathers do not detract from the message. The sermon on the mount begins with a catalogue of people who were blessed and it is obviously a list of the poor, meek and downtrodden. It mentions riches nowhere in these beatitudes, and you have pointed out that he said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven. You fob it off with everything being possible for God, and that means that rich men can get into heaven, “thank God!” Well look at it again. It is possible for a magician like God, sure enough, but you are taking God’s grace a bit far to expect Him to shrink you small enough to get through that “needle’s eye” into heaven. The grace of God is God’s grace, not yours or Paul’s in Jewish and Christian core belief. God cannot be coerced, and He is saying here that a rich man will not get into heaven without God having an impossibly gracious day. Only self-serving fools can read it any other way.
Which also nullifies your lame claim that Paul and other true Christians preach against the lawful enjoyment of those things God has created, such as the sexual union of man and wife. “The reason is evident. No one can get rich without someone else being deprived of the same amount of wealth.” This is plain, socialistic, sour grapes nonsense and many in the world know it. Building riches is not a zero sum gain. Many innovations enrich the larger world, a net gain rather than a loss for society. Not only that, those who lose, like the buggy whip makers in the days of the advent of automobiles, also gain by the new opportunities and possibilities presented. You sound like a sore loser, one who does not contribute anything to the welfare of his community, yet expects to be honored anyway. You take for granted the many things others have worked hard to provide you with, even disdaining them in your bitterness.
You were born a tad late to live in your ideal utopia—atheistic, communistic Soviet Union in its heyday. And now it seems the only thing physically sustaining a miserable Russia is the wealth of oil.
And you sound like a man rewriting God’s Word. Suddenly you are reciting modern knowledge when you will not hear of evolution or scientific discoveries, but socialism, liberalism, economics, suddenly words God had to look into the future for are spouting out of your deceitful mouth. You might hate socialism, but I repeat that Christ held all his goods in common, and the man who held the purse was Judas. That is not just socialism, it is communism. “My God, that just will not do.” God was a communist. Now you really expose your rightwing credentials. You want God to be a fascist like you. No doubt that is why you left Judaism.
“The rich were exploiters of humanity’s efforts, and they took to themself unnatural amounts of power. That is why Christ overturned tables. God was not rewarding the rich but the poor. The rich were rewarding themselves. Now, if you have not read this in your bible, whatever EMTV means, then I suggest you read a more conventional one.” So Christ is not a myth and the Bible is a legitimate basis for authority after all? Just because you can read does not mean you can comprehend what men have written. How much less can you comprehend what God is saying through men, inspired by His Spirit!
You can understand nothing much, my friend. The Christian Christ is obviously a fairy tale for the simple minded, but I do not doubt that it is based on a real figure in history. The trouble is that the real figure has been swamped by the Christian myth, and you are absolute proof of it. You just cannot comprehend it as history, and as you cannot, you cannot read it properly. You always read it with your inbuilt prejudices. It is a shame because the real story looks far more interesting than the fantastic Christian one, especially for a Jew, if that is what you are, or were.
Jesus Christ said why He overturned the tables and it does not agree with your communistic agenda. It did not have to do with commerce, but with what kind and where it was practiced; those who sought personal advantage used God to exploit others, bringing shame to His Name. He said to those whom He drove from the Temple of God: “It is written, ’My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of thieves” (Luke 19:46 EMTV).
You have already admitted that Luke was not a Jew and was not about at the time. He was not and could not have been a witness to the events, so the words he gives to Jesus 60 years later are meaningless. Indeed, they are probably the words that suit the incipient Catholic Church you Christian lovies seem to hate.
No doubt there are others who exploit people in various ways not good, and each receives a just recompense for their ways. That is the Law of God. You say, “Moses is a myth.” You think to explain what Jesus meant by the things He said, and how we have it all wrong, following Paul rather than Jesus, but, according to you, Jesus Christ believed in myths and propagated them, and even He was a myth, like the Tooth Fairy. So why do you bother telling us what He meant? You are totally confused and confounded.
Projection. I do not believe in fantasies but try to keep myself confined to what can be shown to be true. It does not stop me from using your own beliefs in discussing them with you, does it? Of course not, except for mindless dolts.
There is no doubt that Moses was real, because otherwise Christ would not have spoken of him to those that presumed to follow him: “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you--Moses, in whom you have hoped. For if you believed Moses, you would have believed Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (John 5:45-47 EMTV) Not only is Moses not a myth, but he is presently alive, as seen with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9:30), because all the saints are alive in Him: “But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ’I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:31-32 EMTV).
Well all this citing of ancient beliefs is no different from someone citing King Arthur, or the Greek myths. Your opinion of what Christ or Moses believed is not evidence, it is merely delusion. In history, a century of looking has found no evidence of Moses, even though he left Egypt with two million Jews and a large number of animals and goods and wandered in Sinai, settling in one place for almost forty years, according to his myth. Where has all that human and animal debris and detritus gone? It has gone nowhere because it was never there in the first place. Moses is a Jewish Aeneas. A founding myth written about 300 BC when Jerusalem was ruled by the Egyptian Greek kings. If Jesus believed Moses was real, then it is proof he was not God but was a human being who could believe false knowledge.
“You implied above that I was the one who had the sexual problem, now you admit you had it, and think you are rid of it. Perhaps you get rid of it by attacking all those who are still enjoying it.” “Perhaps” is another way of admitting you are only guessing. But there is no “perhaps” here because you are wrong. I was not set free from fornication by pointing the finger at others, but by having it pointed at me, rightfully so. Praise God, He meant it for my good. Your accusations are baseless lies coming from evil motives. At least you now admit you have a sexual problem. As for enjoying it, people enjoy many things that are destructive. The knife and fork, for example, are known instruments of death for many. What about alcohol and cigarettes? So what that you enjoy something? You need ears to hear the truth, a heart to do what is right, and a mind from God to know the difference between good and evil. Otherwise, you go on destroying yourself in your sin.
Funny, I didn’t notice I had admitted having a sexual problem, but you seem to be the doctor in these matters, so I had better bow to your God given wisdom.
“Abortions that are not medically necessary, are the irresponsibility of people like Christians who force young women to hide their condition until it is too late.” Where are you living? I don’t see anyone forced to hide anything. If one does not go out enough to see it live, it can be watched on “reality” TV. The problem is not that people are ashamed and afraid to do evil, it is that there is no shame in doing evil. You keep on trucking, though, building your straw men and knocking them down, the hero Don Quixote playing to his imaginary audience.
Well, I’m not keen on reality TV, and I am surprised you are, since you are so fond of unreality in every other respect. What I see on news items snd documentaries, though, are young women who are denied abortions by Christian doctors, and have to bear an unwanted child instead. Christian morality on this is among the worst there is. If you are a Christian, teach your children what you like, but when it comes to others suffering, you ought, according to your professed morality of love, want to help. Very often you do the opposite. You are hypocrites as ever.
“Most unwanted pregnancies can be ended as soon as they are noticed. It is hardly an abortion. What always astonishes me about you hypocrits is that you whine on about foetuses scarcely big enough to see, but happily murder people by the tens of thousand in your pseudo-religious crusades, like Bush’s so-called war on terror. You are the Nazis, not me.” The bigger the straw men you build, the harder they fall. You say you have red our site. How much did you find there about abortion, or pumping up the public for “pseudo-religious crusades” in Iraq or elsewhere? What have we said about the war on terror? You are a blithering fool and liar, totally irresponsible with your mouth. That which you abuse shall surely be taken from you.
Do you comprehend words? I have said I have not read your testimonies because they are too boring to take in. I read enough to realize what it was, and read no more. I have read it before, in not quite the same word order. And I have already explained that when I use the word “you", I am referring to you Christians, not you personally because I have not read your personal testimony. If you are among the minority of Christians who have actually stood out against the war, then I am happy to credit you with that, but actually I have read very little to presuade me that any Christians have done much at all against it. The fellow you hate, the pope, has been mildly critical, and so has the archbishop of Canterbury, but whispered condemnations are hardly what is needed against Bush and his 60 million Christian morlocks. Incidentally, if I am wrong to link you with the morlocks, it is not because I am a liar. How could I be lying about you when I have not read whatever you had to say? But then reason and the meaning of words are particular difficulties of yours.
The reason we do not harp on such issues is because the issue is repentance for all from all of your sins, the main one being independence from God, whether the wrapper says “Atheist” or “Christian.” You are a hypocrite for condemning false Christians while doing all the things for which you condemn them and more. You also hate the true brethren of God, which makes you a murderer, and your ungodly rantings are poison to all who ingest them.
So, you do not condemn Bush after all. I should have known! Maybe you are right. I must be a fool. Anyway, we’ll wait and see how many people get poisoned by my ungodly readings. We can already see how many people have been poisoned by Christianity.
While some protest abortion in the Name of Christ, you protest their protest in your own name, but do not see the hypocrisy of your ways. So are the ways of the proud hypocrite who is rich in himself, the very kind of person Jesus rebuked, as we do here.
Not so, vacant friend. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees, the Christians of the day, the believers in orthodox Judaism who considered themselves particularly godly. People just like you, poor dimwit.
A final note from Victor: Let it be clear that to us, this dialogue with you is not about power or cleverness. To us, right is might, and not the other way around, as with you. It is not about a smart aleck competition to see who argues better. We have offered you rational thought and expression, not limited to our opinion but backed with substance of logic, reason, knowledge, and a sound use of the Scriptures, quoting specifically. Thus far, all you have done is come up with inane opinion and reasonings, unable to substantiate them, or give any justification whatsoever.
Unfortunately, Victor, you do not differ a jot from your colleague. You continue to project your own faults on to me, a man you do not know, and who has done nothing more than to write you a few letters contradicting what you say. Where does “might” come into it. As for rational thought, etc, that is precisely what you have not offered. What you offer are 2000 year old citations pertinent to the Roman empire, not to what is happening today. You ignore that intervening 2000 years. The only time your friend got aroused to speak in modern terms was to condemn socialism, even though the apostles and Christ among them had been communists, as even the bible admits, and in fact, Peter even killed a couple of converts who had welched on putting all their money into the common pool. I am happy to imagine it was actually a metaphorical death by excommunication. But they took their socialism seriously, even though you now, because it suits your own bigotry, will deny God’s Inerrant Word.
Having said that, while we have been blunt and strong with you, our purpose has not been to overcome or to humiliate you, but rather to expose the darkness that has overcome you, and which holds you in evident destruction and misery. Take it personally because you have personally embraced your foolishness, making you a fool (which, believe us, we have all been), but separate yourself, personally, from your personal darkness and we (indeed, God) will personally “dis-identify” you from your foolishness, for you will be no more a fool. You will have heeded wisdom; you will be pardoned and ready to enjoy life for the first time in your existence. And we will be right there rejoicing with you, thankful that darkness has not forever maintained its merciless power grip on you, wasting your entire sojourn here on earth, whether by false religion, false philosophy, irrationality, spiritual and psychological wounds and influences of the past, or any other thing. Satan’s death grip will have been broken. We won’t be the only ones rejoicing over and with you, Mike. As Jesus Christ, the One and Only Savior of all mankind, said: “Even so, I say to you, There is joy among the angels of God, when one sinner is turned away from his wrongdoing” (Luke 15:10 BBE).
Ah well! I shall have to decline your generous offers because this darkness I live in is bright enough for me, but oddly enough, your alternative looks as dark and gloomy as a foggy London night in the blitz. So I decline the offer to be dis-identified, though I am sure you mean it well. I mildly object to being called a sinner, but I assume you simply mean the same as the word atheist by it, that I do not accept your salvation. If you mean other than that then you are making false judgements, something your incarnated God warned you about, but needless to say, you ignore. From the partial confessions of your colleague, I conclude I have no need of special treatment so far, having been an almost exemplary citizen. I am no lost sheep, but have been pretty well confined to the sheep pen, if that is what society is. That is what I would ask of other people. That is what the purpose of love is—to be helpful to others in society to fit in properly and make the most of it. It is for our benefit. Would that you Christians would realize it, and stop setting yourself above the rest as an elite, or elect, if that is your preferred word. The purpose of Christ’s lesson of blessing the Poor in Spirit, is that society is made up mainly of the poor. They suffer in earth, not the rich. God is on their side.
Meanwhile, all we can agree upon is that Nature is too good to spoil.
