ROLE OF SACRIFICE IN CHRISTIANITY

I know that I have said this before so I will keep it short but I just wanted to share these thoughts while I can:

Animal Sacrifice is only called for by Moses in Leviticus and Deuteronomy as a way of persuading the Hebrews to abandon the religion of the Egyptians. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD the Jews abandoned the use of Animal Sacrifice and finally listened to the pleadings of the Prophets.

It seems strange to me that Christians have held on to the inherent acceptability of Human Sacrifice and Vicarious Atonement, which were forbidden under Jewish Law and would have been anathema to our dear Lord?

Below are some pictures of Egyptian Gods so you can see why Mosses advocated killing them – politically adroit if not an animal lover that he was.

Can you imagine what the scene inside the temple would have been like - thousands of animals having their throat cut - blood and shit all over the floor - the stink of piss and shit everywhere - priests covered in arterial blood. Buckets of blood being thrown over the Altar - an abattoir! 

This was the scene that confronted our Lord when he threw the people out of the temple. It was because he told them to stop this practice and turn their temple back into a house of prayer that they killed him - wouldn't it have been a bit strange for him to be concerned about Jews getting short changed and everybody reacting in astonishment? They reacted in astonishment because they hadn't been told off for sacrificing animals for 500 years - since the Prophet Hosea.

I really wish people would think before they say that "Christ died for their sins" - Christ came to save us from our sins - his blood is the last thing we need.

God Bless 

John Sobieski

John Calvin and the rise of Moral Bankruptcy.

How did the Church of Christ become so blind to natural morality? Our dear Lord said that we should know a man by his actions. It is totally pointless quoting endless texts from the Bible if your basic premise is immoral. That Islam is not full of homicidal maniacs is a miracle given the example that the prophet set – personally killing thousands, abusing children. So how is it that as Christians, with the example of our gentle Lord we seem to have lost the plot, morally?

God gave us a conscience, if you or I find something morally repugnant there is a pretty good chance that God does too. So how is it that most Churches in America think that we are all depraved and helpless in our sin? Christ didn’t teach that?

There has been much work done over the last thirty years on innate morality in primates as well as most other mammals and it has been shown that we all share a common sense of empathy and caring. Depravity is not a natural state, which is why nature seems to abhor it.

“Decades of experimentation have repeatedly suggested moral or altruistic qualities in non-human primates, and have also provided support for the idea that human morality is innate.

For example, a 1964 study found that rhesus monkeys who could pull on a chain to acquire food would refuse to pull for days if doing so delivered a shock to another monkey; they were “literally starving themselves to avoid inflicting pain upon another” (de Waal 2006:29).

Chimpanzees, unable to swim, have drowned in risky attempts to save the lives of their companions (Goodall 1990:213). Human children as young as just over one year old have been observed as comforting others; this study also unexpectedly found that household pets respond to distress by attempting to comfort people (de Waal 2006:28).”

If we look at the history of our societies, whenever we have strayed too far from this social datum some catastrophe has usually occurred to our civilization. For example: the Jews introduced Animal Sacrifice in order to wean the people from the Egyptian Gods and were wiped out of Judea, Aztecs were wiped out by the Conquistadors, a decadent Rome was wiped out by the Visigoths.

Man’s arrogance prompts each one of them to boast of monopoly on salvation but that is like a child standing on top of a hay wane waving a wooden sword. If God is True and if Christ is true then he is there for all beings not just those who call themselves “the Elect”

So if the Calvinists wish us to take their claims to “Holiness” seriously, let us look at their prophet, John Calvin:

Michael Servetus was a Christian living in the 1500's who incurred the wrath of John Calvin and was murdered by him and his cronies for illegitimate reasons. He was accused of heresy and railroaded through a mock trial and put to death being burned alive at the stake. Yet such an atrocity was praised by even well-known Calvinists as Bullinger and others for generations.

A couple of quotes from John Calvin himself:

7 years before the incident:

"If he [Servetus] comes [to Geneva], I shall never let him go out alive if my authority has weight."

Written by John Calvin in a letter to Farel Feb. 13, 1546

During the incident

Again Calvin writes Farel in a letter dated Aug 20th 1553 where he has Servetus arrested.

"We have now new business in hand with Servetus. He intended perhaps passing through this city; for it is not yet known with what design he came. But after he had been recognized, I thought that he should be detained. My friend Nicolas summoned him on a capital charge. ... I hope that sentence of death will at least be passed upon him"

After the incident: 
"Many people have accused me of such ferocious cruelty that (they allege) I would like to kill again the man I have destroyed. Not only am I indifferent to their comments, but I rejoice in the fact that they spit in my face."

 "Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt.

The strongest recorded statement from Calvin on the Servetus affair is a 1561 letter from Calvin to the Marquis Paet, high chamberlain to the King of Navarre, in which he says intolerantly:

"Honour, glory, and riches shall be the reward of your pains; but above all, do not fail to rid the country of those scoundrels, who stir up the people to revolt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus the Spaniard."

Servetus' final words while being burned alive tied to a stake:

•                "Jesu, thou Son of the eternal God, have compassion upon me!"

Yet a heartless modern day Calvinist comments on this saying "This phrase epitomizes the essence of his Trinitarian error" for he said "Son of the eternal God" rather than "eternal Son of God"

Anyone who is half literate can look at the passages the Calvinists use to justify their poison and see that they have taken words out of context and twisted meanings to legitimize their perversions. I would recommend reading the Greek Original and staying away from the King James Version. That being said we shall ignore the scriptural justifications and look at the moral implications – would it be wise for people to depend for their scriptural interpretation on the word of a confessed murderer?

If we are “Living in Christ” we should not have to speak of it – it should be obvious to anyone who knows us. I have met many Christians in all Churches and they shine with a truth and kindess but I have also met and watched too many that were like a dark cloud of evil lost to themselves and God.

Today on Twitter some Calvinist Christian posted this:

“A joyful heart does not prove Christianity, but an empty tomb does. Gerstner looks at confirming Christ by experience.”

This is the kind of thinking that is a symptom of the moral disease of Christianity. Why can we not see that Christ’s teaching is just as Earth shatteringly important without his death, without his resurrection?

Before everyone has a cow – yes I do believe in his death and resurrection but his teaching doesn’t depend on it.

People wander around sprouting such asinine sayings as “Christ died for my sins” or “I am washed in the blood of the lamb” as if they had tourettes. Have you stopped to think what your saying? Have you seen anyone executed? Have you seen a sacrifice?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHJxI5V9j88 - warning offensive content - made me feel ill!!

If I had raped your wife or mother and was sentenced to Death, do you think it would be morally acceptable if I allowed my wife to be killed in my place? Well if you don’t think its morally acceptable – I can tell you now, neither does God! How is it that nobody sees the Moral problem with this? God states time and again in the OT that Human Sacrifice is a sin and vicarious atonement is forbidden so why do we keep talking of Christ’s death as though it were a good idea.

Too many Christians that I have spoken to seem to be unable to answer the most basic of moral questions that their natural “God given” conscience should be able to answer.

The Catholic Church thought that it would be a great idea to let the Turks destroy Constantinople and rid them of a theological rival. A few hundred years later they support the Nazis and the Muslims in massacring Orthodox Christians in Serbia and they would have us believe that their word is the word of God and their version of the Bible is Inerrant?

Just for the record, in my opinion, “no one can pay for your sins but you” and you will be tempted everyday and everyday you must fight to do the right thing” If you pray real hard, Christ will help you and the truth of Christ is that you are not alone. He is there listening to you but no one can tell you that – you have to find it for yourself.

Another point where I believe the Church has lost its moral authority is in altering and destroying Gospels. If you could burn or alter the Words of Christ – you are not a Christian.

God Bless

John Sobieski

THE SOUL AND THE NATURE OF EVIL

Rather than bore you with endless quotes of Biblical references, as if they ever really prove anything, I will simply ask you, dear reader, to reflect on what I say and see if it has the ring of truth to it and if it bears up to your own personal experience.

I was a Zen Buddhist for nearly 30 years so please forgive me for an empirical based approach.

Do we have a Soul or are we just a physical machine? – anyone who has ever seen dead people can tell you that a dead body is just a shell. It is so obvious that the person it held has left, you will find it the most common comment that people make on viewing a dead relative. Nor do we truly know how to create life, we are close to making the conditions for it to happen occur but still we can’t give the breath of life.

We are more than a body – for example, if you were to loose your arms and legs you would still be you. Ask yourself, what bit could you loose and the loss of yourself would be obvious? Is it the brain – what part? Many cultures believe that the identity resides in the heart but we have transplanted hearts and the recipients have remained themselves. Soon we may be able to transplant brains – will we still be ourselves? We have managed to Clone living animals and have found that they may have the genetic age of the clone donor but remain individual thus we can deduce that we can create the conditions for life but we cannot create a soul – this is the missing x in the equation.

Jesus said in John 6:63: "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life."

The Jewish word for Soul is Nephesh and is related to breath. All religions have a description of the soul or what we really are. If you can learn to stop thinking and listen to the silence inside yourself you will find a direct experience of yourself beyond duality.

The Jewish Tradition also has the following:

“A fundamental Jewish belief about human beings is that they are created in the image of God. This does not mean that we look like God, for God is incorporeal. The general rabbinical interpretation of this concept is that humans have the ability to reason.

When Genesis 2:7 says "God formed man," it uses the Hebrew word vayyitzer ("formed"). The Talmud finds special meaning in the unique spelling of the word in this context, with two yods instead of one. The two yods, the rabbis explain, stand for the two impulses found in humans: the yetzer tov and the yetzer ra.

According to this view, the yetzer tov is the moral conscience that reminds a person of God's law when one considers a specific action or choice. The yetzer ra is the impulse to satisfy one's own needs and desires. There is nothing intrinsically evil about the yetzer ra, as it was created by God and is natural to humankind. It is also what drives us to good things such as eating, drinking, having a family, and making a living. However, it can easily lead to sin when not kept in check by the yetzer tov.

The idea of human free will is fundamental to Judaism. The concept of original sin is rejected, and every person has the ability to choose good or evil.”

Those that tried to subvert Christ’s teaching have tried to argue that due to Adam’s sin we are all condemned to be depraved but anyone who looks within will attest that our nature is not evil: it is love - not depravity. Children are as close to God as you can get and abusing Children makes monsters, as we have all seen. Divorce is so damaging on children for the simple reason that they always blame themselves and it is this self-condemnation that warps the soul.

If the Calvinist view were true, then once I accept Christ as my savoir there should be some fundamental change in my internal life but there is not – Christians have the same capacity for Evil as the rest of the population. Was there a fundamental change after Christ’s execution? No – Man post 33AD is as capable of Evil as man pre 33AD.

I digress a little but forgive me –

The story of Genesis speaks of God forming the world from nothing therefore all matter is from God and taking the clay (matter) he breathed life (Nephesh) into it and made man in his image (as above) so we can see that we are Spirit that enters into this dimension through the vehicle of Flesh. The problem arises with “Self-Awareness” which is the translation of the Serpent in Genesis.

“Serpent is the term used to translate a variety of words in the Hebrew bible, the most common being Hebrew: ‫נחש‬‎, (nahash), the generic word for "snake". (close to Spirit but not quite)

The most famous Biblical serpent is the talking snake in the Garden of Eden who tempts Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and denies that death will be a result. The Serpent has the ability to speak and to reason, and is identified with the wisdom of this world: "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made" (Genesis 3:1)”

You can imagine this self-awareness as a mirror with which we are intoxicated or as a fog through which we struggle to see clearly.

This is where we come to the nature of Evil – have you ever come across a man that loves a thing so much that he ends up destroying it. What about the man that loves his family but in a moment of madness sleeps with a whore and looses everything – this is evil. It is there with us every second of every day waiting for us to choose the illusion of the image of ourselves over what is true - To reject God and to choose ourselves. Thus the fall in the Garden of Eden is happening every second of everyday for every one of us. This story is allegorical and must be read in context of the Kabbalah.

To think that the story of Genesis is literal and that God would condemn us for the failing of one man is ridiculous and is contrary to the word of Christ.

"IF anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me! For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it!" (Lk. 9:23-24)

Your heart is what requires change, "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries & immoral behavior!" Mt l5:19 "From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks!" Mt 13:34 People can have the 'appearance' of drawing near to God with their mouth, but their hearts are FAR away, Mk7:9

“Jesus answered: Verily, verily, I say to thee, Unless a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of the heavens.

6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

7 Wonder not that I said to thee: You must be born again.

Calvinists would say that we are depraved and only by being born again can we be saved and that is half right. We must decide to turn from the Illusion of the Image of self-awareness and turn back to God, which is our inherent nature. That is not to say that we were Evil before - just in a fog. It is the being born of water and spirit that speaks of this new beginning but that does not mean that you have a free ticket to heaven. Having glimpsed through the fog and seen the spirit of God we must fight even harder.

Romans 8: is also used to justify this perversion:

“There is, therefore, now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus”

In Romans Paul is talking about the nature of the Law. He postulates that you could say that before we make the law there is no good or evil and it is only God’s law that makes evil. He denies this and explains the Jewish law above – we are both Spirit and Flesh. We tend to do what we know is wrong despite ourselves and bring down suffering on ourselves and everyone else. Until now!

Now Christ has given us a way to be purified and to live in the light. (and the implication is that it is by taking up the Cross)

Rather than boring you here – refer to this link: http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscript.aspx?book=37&chapter=8&lid=en&side=r&zoomSlider=0

This is entirely contrary to the spin that Augustine and Calvin put on this passage. There is no free ticket!

This is the prayer we must hold to our hearts everyday from 1 Timothy 1: 15 –

“Faithful is the word and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief”

I offer this in humility and hope it may help – if anyone would like to comment in good faith I am delighted to debate these points.

God Bless

John Sobieski

THE WELL OF JACOB: Calvinists, Pharisees and the destruction of “The ...

THE WELL OF JACOB: Calvinists, Pharisees and the destruction of “The ...: "The Church of Christ is invisible, it is made up of all those who have heard and listened to the quiet voice of Christ within. Luke 17: 21 T..."

Calvinists, Pharisees and the destruction of “The Way”

The Church of Christ is invisible, it is made up of all those who have heard and listened to the quiet voice of Christ within. Luke 17: 21

There are those among us that would count themselves as Christians but in fact are Augustinians. You can tell who they are as they don’t want you to question, they don’t want you to listen to the voice of Christ. You must listen to only one voice – THEIRS! You must SUBMIT your God given intellect to them because they have all the answers.

You can have a free ticket to heaven, you can avoid condemnation but you can only get it through them! Does that sound familiar? You are a sinner, you are depraved, you have no freewill, it is all ordained by God. He says who is a sinner and who is saved, you don’t have to do anything because you CAN’T do anything – all you have to do is believe.

This crap is not logical and it certainly is not Christianity. It is Manichaeism, a pagan philosophy, introduced into the Church by Augustine and rediscovered by Jean Cauvin better know as Calvin. For perverts like Augustine this rubbish really is a gift from God (excuse the pun) they can blame their own weakness on someone else.

After the Resurrection of Christ and the teaching of the Apostles, the “Way” spread around the empire like wild fire and a lot of self-motivated people started to get in on the act. The owners of this new franchise tried to make sense of Christ’s death and resurrection. They could not; as Christ’s teaching was so nuanced and spiritual it did not lend itself to easy answers so they improvised and introduced Pagan philosophy – human sacrifice, vicarious atonement, one life, physical resurrection and the big one – Original Sin. All of these ideas are un-biblical and contrary to what Christ taught and contrary to the Jewish faith, which is why; there have been so few converts from Judaism to Christianity over two thousand years.

This cancerous view of sin has led all major churches to nurture evil within its walls in the name of maintaining the reputation of the Church itself.

“A US Jesuit order has agreed to pay $166 million (£103 million) to compensate nearly 500 victims of decades-long "horrific" sexual and psychological abuse by priests in five US states, lawyers said on Friday.”

"But then even more shockingly, the Catholic Church had known before they ordained him about his propensity to abuse, that they had received countless complaints over the period of time that he was abusing and they'd done nothing about it. That they'd covered it up."

I won’t go into the detail of why the doctrine of Original Sin is un-Christian and a cancer on the body of the Church as Mike DeSario has done a better job than I could hope to do:

http://www.matthew548.com/Mikes.html

Watch this series of lectures:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBY4SeslAqA

The evil that has been done directly by the Catholic Church within living memory on members of the Orthodox Church is unbelievable and strips all churches of any singular moral authority. Only Christ can help us now and we are going to have to start thinking for ourselves:

During the Second World War in Yugoslavia, Catholic priests and Muslim clerics were willing accomplices in the genocide of the nations Serbian, Jewish and Roma population. From 1941 until 1945, the Nazi-installed regime of Ante Pavelic in Croatia carried out some of the most horrific crimes of the Holocaust (known as the Porajmos by the Roma), killing over 800,000 Yugoslav citizens - 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 26,000 Roma. In these crimes, the Croatian Ustasha and Muslim fundamentalists were openly supported by the Vatican, the Archbishop of Zagreb Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac (1898-1960), and the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Many of the victims of the Pavelic regime in Croatia were killed in the war's third largest death camp - Jasenovac, where over 200,000 people - mainly Orthodox Serbs met their deaths. Some 240,000 were "rebaptized" into the Catholic faith by fundamentalist Clerics in "the Catholic Kingdom of Croatia" as part of the policy to "kill a third, deport a third, convert a third" of Yugoslavia's Serbs, Jews and Roma in wartime Bosnia and Croatia (The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican, Vladimar Dedijer, Anriman-Verlag, Freiburg, Germany, 1988).

As a footnote: examination of the history of the Catholic Church in the Balkans is illuminating as it explains why the main churches are more comfortable with the Evil of Islam than they are their own people and do nothing and say nothing as Islam moves to enslave us all in Europe under the black cloud of Sharia law.

So the question I found myself asking was this: was Christ’s teaching deficient in any way? Why is it that the Churches all seem to agree that we can only be saved through them and by believing that Christ died for our sins? Was his Ministry wasted? Was he just kicking his heels for two years, waiting to die – waiting for the real event?

Was his teaching incomplete that only by his resurrection his life had meaning?

My investigations led me to believe that Christ was perfected and that his teaching was perfect. The Church has systematically tried to keep his teaching from the people and has discouraged any investigation of his actual teaching.

The Gospels have all been tweaked to give a spin that agrees with Augustine:

http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/what-are-the-errors-in-king-james-version-bible.html

The greatest of the early Church Fathers, for me, is Origen Adamantius 185AD – he kept as true to Christ’s teaching as he could. True to Jewish Teaching, he taught the pre-existence of the Soul and that the soul comes from God and Returns to God in its journey to perfection. As soon as the Augustinians enforced the doctrine of one life and physical resurrection the Church finds that it cannot explain life’s injustice and has to start inventing all kinds of bullshit. The idea of physical resurrection is Zoroastrian and not Christian and, frankly, ridiculous. The Didache was removed from circulation as it is a clear direction for all Christians to follow in order to come to Christ – this weakened the power of the Bishops and was suppressed. The Gospel of Barnabas and the Sheppard of Hermas were removed and Origen declared Anathema. The Gospels of Thomas was destroyed were ever it was found - Ownership could get you killed.

Using my own human conscience - It occurred to me that no one can forgive your sins! If I raped a girl and then found God – it is not for God to forgive me – the only person that could forgive me would be the girl in question but could I ever truly forgive myself? This voice inside that cannot so easily forgive – this is the voice of God not the Bishops. This is the uncomfortable voice that says of every second of your life – Choose!

If we look quietly inside ourselves - and I agree with the Orthodox Church that only through daily prayer and self-discipline can we achieve this and there is no better than the Jesus prayer to start with – if we look inside, we will see that far from all being evil and depraved that all actions are done through love but all evil is done through distorted love. Thus the Mass Murders of Jews were committed by a perverted love of German nationalism. The Devil gets us through the things we love which is why constant Prayer and self-examination are our only defence against his wiles.

Gospel of Thomas: 16 – “Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace on the Earth? They do not know that I have come to cast strife upon the Earth: Fire, Sword and War.”

In the context, it is obvious that the Lord was trying to shock the minds of his students into directly seeing the truth. And to show them how hard the path of the Way is.

By way of conclusion:

Gospel of Thomas 5: - “If your leaders say to you, ‘look, the Kingdom of God is in heaven’, then the birds will precede you, ‘it is in the sea’, then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom of God is inside you and outside you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father.”

This is the teaching that the “Church” has killed to keep from you. It is this truth that you must fight to make your own. Please do not take what I have said verbatim – research and pray on these points and find what, for you, is the truth.

If we go to the leaders in the Church and they cannot give us moral answers then we are forced to find Christ for ourselves. That is not to say that there are not good men within the Church – there are and whilst they would probably not agree with me they have still been great inspirations to me and I thank them humbly.

In my next blog I will examine the nature of the Soul and the Devil.

God Bless

John Sobieski