131 Age of Temptation

The Hardest Words in the Age of Temptation: "No, Thank You!"

They used to say that the hardest words to say in any language were “I’m sorry,” and that was certainly true during a time when relationships still played a more significant role in our society, and for a lot of people it may still be so.

But from the increasing incapability I’m observing in my fellowmen to hold or conduct a relationship successfully, or, in many cases to even show a glimpse of interest in having one, I’m beginning to suspect that the hardest words in this new age of Temptation, where the acquisition of possessions, position and diversion seem to play a much superior role than other human beings to deal with, perhaps the hardest words to say right now are: “No, thank you!”

We figure that we have to take anything that life offers us.

After all, coincidence has become our god, along with luck, since our whole existence is based on the theory that we’re one lucky shot in an innumerable amount of universes where life happened to find all its necessary ingredients, and so, if luck happens to hand us an opportunity, we tend to grab it without giving the consequences much thought.

Maybe it’s different in your part of the world, but that’s what I’m observing life to be like for much of the younger generation in Germany at the onset of the 21st century.
Of course, there are always those who seem to be a bit more mature and responsible than the majority of their peers, but I even observe it with some of us more mature ones, who ought to know better:

There seems to be that in-built mechanism in us that makes us tend to accept a tempting offer, rather than to decline, even if whatever it is we’re getting to enjoy may not all be that good for us in the long run, or the nature of the opportunity may turn out to be questionable.

Prudence has gone down the drain in this, our age, in which a large deal of our supposed enlightenment consists of advertisement. After all, you must be enlightened if you can come up with such sophisticated commercials full of high-tech trickery worth millions of dollars, as we do, just in order to sell other people our goods!

Well, I’ve already shared my thoughts on the difference between advertisement and genuine enlightenment, I think.

But it always seem to get back around to it.

We’re being offered so many things from so many different sides, we just about accept it our god-given duty to accept at least some of them.

That probably shows one difference in strategies between the original advertiser and the Guy he’s trying to imitate: the Original Creator. While God’s slogan is, “Quality, not quantity” (as in “many are called, but the chosen are few,”) His opponent goes by the opposite credo. He figures the more garbage he can dish out, the more of it we’re bound to swallow, ruining our taste for quality and rendering whatever discernment we once might have had for what’s the real thing and another cheap fake useless once and for all.

That’s because he’s getting ready to present us with the ultimate temptation of all, the greatest fake of all times, his plastic utopia and wonderful new world order, including its new, cashless economic order that all the big shots are crying for right now, with himself at the top, and a system definitely too perfect to be real, and from the looks of it, a lot of people are going to fall for it the way Eve did when he pulled his first stunt 6000 years ago…

We may not have evolved, but advertisement and propaganda have, and all for a good reason. We’re all being prepared for the hour of temptation, “which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth” (Revelation 3:10), and blessed will be those who have learned to say these hardest of all words, “No, thank you!”

130 Idolatry in the 21st Century?

Modern "Christianity"

One of the apparent differences between what Christianity during the first centuries of its existence had to deal with and the problems it faces in the twenty-first century is that during its beginnings, Christians were surrounded by a large majority of people who sincerely thought that practicing a religion was perfectly legitimately done by offering incense and sacrifices to carved images of what we now call Pagan deities, be it their Greek versions of Zeus, Apollos, Aphrodite, etc., or their Roman or Babylonian counterparts.
One of the debates that kept St. Paul and his brethren busy, for example, was whether it was alright to eat food that had been offered to idols, maybe similar to the way we would wonder whether we should allow our teenage son or daughter to attend a rock concert of a questionable act that has been known to promote sodomy or witchcraft…

While the carved images of bygone days have long been history, only to be found in museums, I can’t help but wonder sometimes whether we really made that hurdle to overcome idolatry the way we may think we did…

Christianity wasn’t always as enlightened as it is today. When Mohamed came along, he was so disgusted by Christians bowing down to their statues of Mary and the saints, he swore to wipe that bunch of idolaters from the face of the earth.
Centuries later Martin Luther felt much like he had to do the same thing, and that Christendom was anything but a compliment to its Founder, but was content to reform the church, instead of starting a revolution.

Half a millennium later the majority of practicing Christians seems to have gotten the point that we don’t need any visible, carved images of God or any of His earlier followers in order to worship Him, and idolatry finally seems to be a problem of the past.

Or at least we got the point that it’s pretty dull to worship stuff hewn out of rock.
No, we’ve become a lot more versatile than that.
Much more innovative.

We figure, we’ve really got the scoop on the ancient Babylonians, Greeks and Romans, who worshiped sun, moon and stars, or statues of made-up gods and goddesses, and look down on them for being so dumb and Pagan…

In a world of talking images remotely controlled by buttons on a magic little tablet in our right, some holy grail filled with Budweiser or our favorite drink in the other, idols have become a lot more sophisticated and entertaining than statues hewn out of rock from a time when that’s just what a lot of folks earned their living with (no wonder they called it the “Stone Age”?).
We’ve got dancing pop stars, athletes, movie demigods and politicians dishing out promises that sound as glorious as the Promises of God Himself; and if we’re not into standing on the sidelines of some other sucker’s parade, we’ve got a moving, roaring idol in the garage that we spend our weekends polishing, or some other great achievement and fruit of the sweat of our brow.

Of course, then there are the more pious ones among us, who would never attend a Rolling Stones concert, not even care for Taylor Swift, but devote our time to listening to the Christian versions of Pop or Rock music, or attend mass happenings with star preachers pacing from one end of the stage to the other with the same type of headsets we already adored on Madonna or the Jackson offspring, only in this case to chime in the Hallelujahs and Amens from the tens of thousands around us at the event… something we usually don’t say when we’re at the mall or in school or at work.
After all, there is a time and a place for everything, and the time and place to worship the Lord is Sunday mornings, or at that other big organized event, but we don’t want to trouble our neighbors with our belief and love for the Lord. It probably wouldn’t be the Christian thing to do. In the 21st century.

But sometimes – just sometimes, I’m tempted to wonder how Jesus would fit in to one of those mega churches with tens of thousands making all that racket about Him, the Good Shepherd Who left the 99 in the fold in order to find the one lost sheep…
Him, Who didn’t have a church to attend, only an occasional synagogue or temple He got kicked out of, threatened to be stoned to death by His brethren.
Him, Who didn’t have a place to lay His head, considering the foxes and birds more blessed in this aspect than Himself.
Him, Who urged His followers to forsake all their possessions if they wanted to be His disciples and to become fishers of men.

But you don’t become a fisher of men by assembling in huge gatherings to sing songs and listen to sermons in order to make yourself feel good.
The lost sheep are found on the highways and hedges of this world, and just like Mohamed of old, they’re not very impressed by people worshiping their own “Christian” versions of the very same things the world around them worships…
They may not be able to tell what the Real Thing is, but they sure know when it ain’t.

No, we don’t worship stony, graven images anymore, Hallelujah! But are we free from idolatry in this, our enlightened 21st century? You tell me!

129 No, My Wife Is NOT a Prostitute (and I’m NOT a Pimp)!

Pharisees - Then as now

When googling for “the Family International,” (which happens to be the faith community I’m a member of since 30 years) one comes across a great variety of pages from all sorts of sources and different corners of the market of New Religious Movements, along with opinions and statements aplenty, both from our brothers and sisters around the world presenting their window to the world via the web, as well as disgruntled ex-members, and a bunch of “experts” who will define our community for you in their own particular way, based on whatever input they have gleaned about us from their sources.
Some remain factual, while others tend to gravely exaggerate. Unfortunately, whenever the media scrape together information, they prefer the exaggerations over the factual report: After all, their job is to divert the public’s attention from the fact that their economy is history, and that they’ll soon have bigger problems than they ever before would have imagined, and there’s nothing like a nice juicy scandal in order to make people feel better about themselves and their System, especially a scandal about the most hated and despised groups of people of all: the “SEX CULTS.”
According to them, my wife is a prostitute, and I’m a pimp who sends her out to get money whenever we’re broke. That’s just the way we do things in the Family – according to the media. And that’s pretty much as certain as the fact that we descended from the monkeys or that a bunch of carpet-knife swinging Muslim extremists perpetrated 9/11, and the list of “facts” goes on and on, that makes up the modern Western world view of our society in the 21st century.
Unless you happen to pay a closer look at the details, instead of just swallowing whatever gossip you hear, or whatever mantras you’re being fed from the mainstream machinery of propaganda.
Facts, for example, like the one that it is an ex-communicable offense for full-time Family members to have any sexual contact with outsiders since around 1986. The problem is, how can you practice prostitution if you’re not allowed physical contact with anyone outside the narrow circle of the full-time membership of your congregation?

Granted, the beliefs of the Family are generally a little more open-minded and permissive regarding sexuality than the average church’s, some of which even deny their members the right to re-marry once they’ve been divorced. And there have been times we went a little wild on some of our liberties. But those days are long gone.
It’s also true that we have some “weird” beliefs other churches don’t share, like spirit helpers, etc., and we vehemently refuse to believe that God stopped speaking and revealing things to His people 2000 years ago when John the Disciple finished writing the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible.
But that still doesn’t make us a New Age cult, just because we might believe in some similar things some New Agers do. In fact our faith is probably more fundamentally based on the Bible than that of the average members of modern congregations and churches, including the Catholic Church.

While far from perfect, in my opinion, the Family is the closest thing in existence to the Early Church, the followers of Christ during the first 3 centuries before Christianity became an established religion: a time during which Christians were labeled a sect, suffered relentless persecution, lived communally, did not worship in any temples or church buildings, and basically taught as Jesus taught them, that in order to be a disciple, one had to renounce his earthly possessions and become a messenger for the Cause of Christ – pretty much all attributes that also apply to (full-time membership of) the Family.

Jesus said in His famous and often-cited so-called “sermon” on the mount (which wasn’t really a sermon, since it was only directed at His 12 disciples, having left the multitude behind), “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake” (Matth.5:11).
When was the last time you or your church experienced the “blessing” of persecution and of people saying all sorts of things about you that weren’t true? When was the last time you lived a godly life in Christ Jesus the only way Paul said this was possible – by suffering persecution?
When was the last time you were in the arena along with the rest of the true believers, facing the lions, instead of up in the grandstands, along with the mob?

Let me give you a little lesson from something we usually never learn from: history.

The religious authorities who persecuted Jesus suffered a similar fate as the one they had imposed on Him 40 years after they had crucified Him at the hands of the Romans when Jerusalem was besieged and the temple destroyed.
The kind of persecution and slander you’re perpetrating against us today is only a little foretaste of what you will experience yourselves in due time when the world will be so tired of the hypocrisy that Christianity today stands for, that it will practically demand of its coming leader to “wage war against the saints” during the greatest Tribulation this world has ever known (and no, the “saints” it talks about here are not the Jews, since the only way a person can become a “saint” is through the blood of Jesus Christ; and no, Jesus will not come before that Tribulation!).

Maybe we’re strange, weird, and definitely a little different than you. But try to imagine how the Early Church must have looked to the by-standers on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit first fell on them, and they all started speaking in different languages, languages they had never learned! That certainly must have had a “New Age” slant to it!
Communal living in a more radical form than any Communists ever achieved! No wonder the authorities felt like they had to stamp out that dangerous sect, and tried to do so for 300 years.
Would you have been among the persecuted, or the persecutors?

That choice is up to you, today, and depends on who you’re going to believe. Just remember Jesus’ advice not to judge, because by the same standard with which you will measure others, you will also be weighed.

Time will do the talking, as to whether we’re the Real Thing or just another bunch of weirdoes that will sink into oblivion like so many others before.
But before you’re going to believe any lies about us (and alas, there are many), get your own picture.
Don’t worry. We’re not going to try to seduce you or lure you or hypnotize you. We’ve got our own problems and challenges to deal with and don’t really need any more.
But we’ve also found the Answer how to deal with those problems and challenges in Jesus, and that’s the one Thing we can share, just as it was for the Early Church.
Jesus is just as alive and kicking as He was in the Book of Acts. He hasn’t stopped talking. The Holy Spirit is not on vacation. And if you’ve had extra-marital sex in your life, cheer up! There’s hope! That’s doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to hell, contrary to what many others will try to make us believe.
On the other hand, if it’s the loaves and fishes you’re looking for, that some claim we’re offering, you might be a little disappointed. We’re not the Sex Cult we’re made out to be, just another bunch of radical, sold-out Jesus Freaks, much to the chagrin of the god of this world, whose time is going to be up soon.
We don’t have a nice big church to offer, with comfortable pews and big entertainment, just the truth: God is alive and still doing the same miracles He did before, and greater ones to come.

128 Let the Dead Bury Their Dead

A lot of people are dying these days, and there have been quite a handful of deaths of people we’ve known recently. It’s almost as if they’re sensing that times are going to be harder, and they want to be spared from having to go through that. Or even, if they weren’t aware of what’s coming, God in His mercy spared them from the worst…

Having to deal with death brings up certain questions, because it inevitably causes confrontation between the differing attitudes toward death of believers and unbelievers. Those who don’t believe in a life after death or in a just God of love Who simply knows best when it’s time for a person to go, become bitter toward Him (no matter how vehemently they claim not to believe in Him), and they cling to their own (self-)righteousness and oppose those who claim that God is fair and just and knows what He’s doing.

It explains why in the world Jesus could have ever have said something as outrageously politically incorrect as “Let the dead bury their dead, and come thou, follow Me.” He didn’t have anything to do with their rituals and games, nor their temporal little positions of individual power in a temprary little life that culminates in a bunch of people standing and sobbing around a coffin’ singing “It’s all over now.”

He was working for a Cause precisely destined to put an end to that type of game, namely to free people from the fear of death, and to pluck out that sting of death, that seems so threatening, but becomes ridiculous in the Presence of the Son of God Who is the resurrection and the life, and whoever believes in Him will never die.

Now, either Jesus was a lunatic for ever having said such a thing, or it was the truth. And if it was the truth, then why do we mourn? Except, of course, for our own momentary loss of that person’s physical presence. But if we really believe, then why not act on it and show that we can’t be fooled into thinking that this life is all there ever was and will be.

Of course, some Christians don’t make it exactly easy on others to believe in a life after death, either. They preach “eternal insecurity,” where you’re saved only for so long as you remain a sinless saint, which is probably the most perverted variety of the Christian faith the Devil ever concocted. Because if it were possible to either get or remain saved by our own behavior and actions, then Jesus could have saved Himself His trip to Golgatha and just stayed on His throne, applauding all those incredible heroes of goodness.

So, if you’re not sure whether your loved one’s in Heaven or Hell, go on and mourn about your own insecurity, or get some security by reading the Bible. According to Jesus, if you really believe, you can even determine yourself where that person is going, and the best thing you can do for them is pray, not weep.

So, why did Jesus have to say that dreadful thing: “Let the dead bury their dead”?

Because people who believe that this life is all there is, and all they ever work for is their momentary position of power and wealth in this temporary life, are as good as dead, as far as the aspects of Eternity – His aspects – are concerned. If you live for the here and now, and it all just culminates in your burial, buddy, then you’ve been dead all along, and what it should say on your gravestone is “Died at 30, buried at 70.”

Those who follow and trust the living God, however, are living in the land of the living, and are so convinced of the truth in Jesus’ words that “Whosoever lives and believes in Me shall never die,” that death is really only a promotion to second grade that shouldn’t be mourned but celebrated, no matter how many hellfire-and-brimstone preachers try to make you believe that “Hell’s Best Kept Secret” is that Jesus was only kidding when He said that.

Other dreadful things Jesus said: Matt.10:34-37, 12:48-50, 18:6

127 Divine Physics

Alternative views on the week that rocked the world into being

There are basically only three kinds of people when it comes to exploring the mysteries of our origins: those who believe that the Clock-Maker made the clockwork, those who believe that a coincidental explosion made the clock-work, and those who are not sure which of the other two are right.

The difference between the first two is that Coincidental Explosion (CE) proponents are the guys with all the money, the support and the time to elaborate so extensively on their studies of how exactly coincidence exploded into such a brilliant clock-work, that the few who dare to defy them and insist that behind the clock-work of the universe has to be a Maker just the same way as it was with any Rolex, look rather ridiculous in comparison, and a substantial amount of the third group join in the laughter of the CE proponents, even if they may not have the faintest clue what they’re laughing about.

They see the other, big, rich and mean guys laugh, and so they laugh along. Call it peer pressure, monkey-see-monkey-do, copy-cat-ism, you get the point.

Far from being the lunatics, religious fanatics and scum of the earth the CE media make their counterparts out to be, some of the Clock-Worker’s defenders actually do have a brain, well-functioning ones at that, and are even – occasionally – blessed with time to investigate the possible veracity of the blueprint of our origins the Clock-Maker left us.

From the CE side of the fence, the claim that the first chapter of the Bible may have anything to say about where the universe came from sounds totally ridiculous. After all: you see the universe expanding, press the “reverse” button and you get the picture of the Big Bang. Only idiots would deny that.

Possibly. At first glance, perhaps.

But then all the decades and gazillions of dollars poured into a substantial proof for “how it happened” only got the CE camp close to the ever-elusive break-through, always near the edge, but never quite there.

If only a fraction of the funds and efforts would have gone into investigating whether possibly something might be true about the creation account in Genesis, I personally believe, we’d all know a lot more by now.

One of the brave few who has wracked his brain in such a comparatively lone attempt, is D.Russell Humphreys, Ph.D., author of the 1994 book “Starlight and Time – Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe” which to my shame I must admit I only took off my shelf now, after 2 years or so of buying it.

While Humphreys may not have it all figured out to a tee (and I’m not familiar with any updates on his theories), he makes at least as much sense to me as the much appraised Stephen Hawking and his distinguished colleagues from the “Anything-but-the-Clock-Maker-Tale” camp. I may be Bible-biased, but in the same manner, they are definitely coincidence-biased, and since coincidence has proven to be a rather poor clock-maker in real life, I stick to my conviction that you must be a fool if you persistently refuse to see that fact.

What’s really nice about Humphreys is that he has the guts to take the Bible literally literal. Even more so than the average creationist, which is already the standard of downright lunacy as far the hounds of the CE Gestapo are concerned. In other words, more literal than I did. While most creationists traditionally contend that the “expansion” Genesis describes as the “firmament” or “heaven” that separated the waters on earth from waters above it that were supposed to have soaked the earth during Noah’s flood, the literal description of that expansion would actually make it the stellar universe.

I had heard that claim once during the 80s and quickly dismissed it, but Humphreys’ argumentation gives me new reasons to have the guts to take the Bible as literally as he does.

It turns out that the supposed “knowledge” the CE crew came up with and bombards us with daily has had a stronger impact on all of us than we sometimes realize, even if we know that all that really upholds it is the money poured into it, and even if some of them are honest enough to declare that they are not able to make cosmological models without some admixture of ideology.

Some people are just fine without ever finding out how our planet and its neighborhood came into being. I personally am more inclined to be the more curious type, and I’d like to be able to tell people that what my camp has to say on the issue is potentially just as valid as the mainstream, anti-God efforts.

So, I’m profoundly grateful to Russell Humphreys for his work, even if it may not be quite the perfect explanation of everything yet, but merely a theory, but we can’t even say more than that about some of Einstein’s work, either.

If one really is bold enough to accept the Bible for what it is and says, it drives home the point that God must be even more awesomely greater than we previously tried to fathom, and also, that size and distance are perfectly irrelevant to Him.

If everything in our physical home world is an illustration of a greater truth concerning the world we don’t know (which I strongly believe), then take the atom for example:

If the atom’s core were the size of a marble, then the radius in which the electrons spin around it would be two miles.

According to Humphreys, the vast universe we perceive through our increasingly powerful telescopes is only an expansion within a larger heaven, which the Bible calls “Heaven of heavens,” and even that’s not yet the end of it, since it also talks about a third heaven.

So, as vast as the universe may be, and as tiny as we may be in comparison to the rest of it, it’s not our size that matters to God, evidently. He seems to be at least just as concerned about us as some of those scientists are about subatomic particles.

Or, as I have put it in the much simpler terms of one of my songs: “He’s greater than everything, but small enough to fit inside your heart…”

It’s probably impossible to figure that out with our current brain capacity, but things still make more sense accepting it.

126 Let’s Get Physical

Is the universe based on a system of 1s and 0s like your PC?

Smart people can be really dumb sometimes.

I’ve been doing some catching up on the current state of physics lately, since the subject had utterly failed to grasp my interest in school, and I was pleased to see that folks seem to be getting a little bit closer to the real thing, as far as my gut feeling tells me. At least they’re now almost ready to accept other, additional dimensions, aside from the ones they can see and perceive with their physical senses.

It’s not as if they would have done it voluntarily, but they were practically forced to broaden their scope in order for their equations to make sense and get General Relativity to match with Quantum Mechanics.

So, they’re coming up with all sorts of fancy, big names for their fancy, big theories of the origin of everything: The “Final Theory,” “Super-String Theory,” “M-Theory,” about which no one can tell you what the “M” is supposed to stand for, but one possible interpretation was “Matrix” theory, which I, of course, particularly like. So, they’re practically ready to accept that there’s a “matrix” of some sort, but then go to such lengths and painstaking efforts, spending decades of their lives and trillions of dollars (as long as they’re still worth anything) on equipment and tests that are supposed to come with proof for a theory that’s going to make sense of everything, feverishly making sure that if they ever find it, it will still make sense leaving out the most important and always remaining (whether they like it or not) Factor: God. As in, the Dude Who constructed the matrix.

The only way they get around Him, of course, is by proposing that in order to get the jack pot universe we live in that provides just all the necessary fine-tuned settings to make life possible at all, there are (possibly) countless other universes, most of which, by sheer mathematical probability, didn’t turn out as lucky. That is, of course, where I – and, thankfully, other believers – dare to differ, since you don’t have to come up with such ridiculous hypotheses once you’re willing to accept that just as behind every other shred of information that ever came into being there was an author, so it also happens to be the case with that giga machine we call the universe, and the infinite amount of information, planning and intelligence it requires to function.

Although God created us in our image, He’s not a crazy scientist that needs endless trial & error runs to see if His “experiment” is going to work out. Unlike our earthly, human scientists, He knows what He’s doing, thank God! We’re in good hands. As long as we don’t try to make the bill without Him and insist on locking Him out of His own game; because He cannot save us from our own stupidity as long as we refuse to be saved.

So, it all boils back down to the theme of my previous post: faith. It’s either faith in, and acceptance of the fact that there is, of course, an Author behind the slew of information and genius that slapped the universe (= literally: “single spoken sentence”) together, or in the one gross exception, the mysterious “singularity,” which claims that contrary to everything we ever have observed, and in defiance of all the voices in creation that constantly scream the opposite, from the tiniest cell to the most complex galaxy, it all simply “happened” by itself.

Back to the additional dimensions. The fathers of M-Theory have come up with the number 10 (plus time), otherwise their equations wouldn’t figure. What a “coincidence” that the structure of the universe should be based on the same system that has been tried and proven down on yer-ol’-blue-planet (including its own solars system and the outer extremities of its prominent inhabitants, etc.)!

What a coincidence that everything might just consist of tiny, either open-ended or looped “strings,” (1s and 0s?), as if Somebody was trying to get everybody’s attention: “Hello!? Anybody listening?”

Then on the other hand we’ve got fundamental Christians who refuse to accept the possibility of 10+1 dimensions, because they’re not mentioned in the Bible. Well, neither are telephones or microwave ovens, but they probably use them anyway.

So, on one hand we’ve got the believers who claim that God stopped communicating and passing on any additional information to His crowning creation 2000 years ago, and on the other, scientists who refuse to accept the image of such an astute-but-mute God, and it’s almost like, “Well, can you blame’em?”

I get kicks out of imagining the surprises either might get upon their arrival in that extra dimension to which our spirit inevitably passes the moment our physical bodies cease to function (a dimension of which the Bible has spoken for millennia, by the way): “Oh, so You DO exist, after all, do Ya!?” And the other guys, “Y…Y…You m…m…mean, You can actually t…t…talk??? And I thought….”

Well, that’s what ya get for thinking.

I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that believing is in many ways better than thinking.

Just have the guts to believe what everybody else says is impossible: There IS a God, He loves you, and He’s got something to say! – To YOU!

125 What Do We Really Know At All? (Or: The Evolution of Politics)

From Heads of Gold to Feet of Clay: The Evolution of Politics according to God

One more aspect in which we seem to be living in a scenario comparable to the one portrayed in the Matrix movie trilogy, turns out to be history, and especially our recent history, if one happens to stumble across issues as those revolving around the controversial British historian David Irving.

It’s pretty obvious that some of the claims made by the Soviets at the Nuremberg trials were false, and yet there seems to be no area in our present scope of political thought where light shed on potential facts which might alter our current view and knowledge on these things is more ardently and vehemently resisted.

While scientists, journalists and educators may lose their jobs for even lending an ear to alternative views of the ancient history of our planet (as in what exactly happened “billions of years ago,” instead of the gazillions of beneficial mutations that are supposed to have brought forth the human race, whales crawling out on land and back into the water, etc.), such as the number of scientists who developed the school of thought of “Intelligent Design” had the nerve to do; and while guesswork and theories on physics are the only goodies teachers can sell their pupils in schools for facts, far from an ultimate theory that explains it all, without one law of nature contradicting another; when it comes to history, it becomes even more prickly, since people who are interested in finding out what really happened as recently as 60-some years ago, might not only risk their jobs, or their students’ enthusiasm, but their very freedom, health or lives.

It seems that our oh-so-enlightened Western democracies aren’t that much of a Wonderland of the Free, after all, as which our modern politicians try to sell us our current system. Speaking of which. According to God’s views, as laid down in His much disputed account of such (nevertheless found to be absolutely reliable by those who have the guts to believe it), the Bible, the evolution of politics over the past 2500 years isn’t quite as flattering as we may see our own current state.

The prophet Daniel (in an interpretation of the king of Babylon’s dream, given to him by God) pictures the world’s empires from Babylon to Rome as deteriorating. While Babylon is symbolized by a head of gold, the subsequent empire, Medo-Persia, becomes silver, Alexander the Great and his Grecian empire turn out with a bronze medal, and Rome is devaluated to mere iron, only to wind up in a useless mixture of clay and iron good for nothing but to be replaced by God’s eternal kingdom toward the end end of the world as we know it.

So, while we look back at ancient rulers and systems as primitive, from our high and lofty democratic pedestal, God, evidently, has a perfectly different view of things.

We don’t even have to go as far back as Babylon or Rome to note drastic differences.

While we know by now that neither Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, FDR or even JFK were flawless, yet they all seem to have had a residue of nobility and honor that perfectly eludes our 21st century statesmen.

And while some of us may still live in the illusion that the current administration is an improvement on the stock, compared to the former, as shocking as it may be for all of us, judging by the Wall-Street nature of that administration, it would be a very big surprise indeed, if that illusion will not turn out to be just such.

20th century statesmen at least attempted to speak the truth every now and then, and when they made promises, they made somewhat of an effort to keep them, which is more than you can expect from the puppet position that a presidency has become in Century 21.

“You never know when the sky will fall. What do we really know at all?” the “Rembrandts” from California once sang, and they must have been on to something.

What do we really know at all?

What of all that which we call “knowledge” could really be called such? Isn’t it much more often simply faith in the portrayal of the picture by a certain group of people, the “winners,” those who have the money and the propaganda machinery?

So, why not be honest and reduce the preposterous claim of “knowledge” to that which it really is, namely faith?

After all, it has served true believers good and well for thousands of years, all throughout history, where empires and emperors have come and gone.

Maybe St. John was really on to something when he claimed that our faith is the victory that would overcome the world.

Maybe we know something they don’t. Maybe we really know something. Even if it’s just a fact as simple as the one that says “There is a God, and He loves you,” along with His Promises that someday soon He’ll save us out of the mess all those big shots are getting us into in the name of illumination.

Oh, and along with the promise that we’ll know then, even as we are known.

You really want to know what happened? Just hang on a little longer.

124 Christianity Now and in 30 A.D. – The Differences!

Moving from the arenas to the grandstands: Christianity now & then

I’ve expounded before on the tragic abyss between what Christianity has become and once used to be, (and in my opinion ought to be), due to the fact that fundamental teachings of Christ Himself and His early spokesmen are purposely being ignored by His modern supposed followers, resulting in the constant discomfort of having to apologize to the rest of the world for pertaining to a group of people, which, originally, truly was a ray of hope for anyone who believed in the depth of his heart that there had to be something else besides the usual games people play, with their rules of acquisition of power, fame, fortune and temporal glory.

As a Christian, I see it as part of my duty to rectify that the crimes Christianity has been found guilty of for the past 16 centuries (and unfortunately, during the current one more than ever), were not at all in its Founder’s intention.

Somewhere around the 4th century, after having failed to wipe out the church (meaning “ecclesia,” Greek for “the called out ones”) through persecution, Satan finally changed his attitude toward Christianity into “If you can’t lick’em, join‘em.” The result is the sad picture of what Christendom has become since.

But what was it like before that? What were the differences, and which was the way the early followers of Christ lived that are such a stark contrast to what may be labeled “Christianity” today, but really, only amounts to not much more than Churchianity?

One blatant contrast that jumps in my face time and time again, is the materialistic attitude that has taken hold of probably the vast part of Christendom throughout the past millennium and a half, as totally opposed to what Jesus Himself, and His most ardent representative of the 1st century, the apostle Paul of Tarsus (aka St. Paul) had to say on such subjects as money, wealth, and one’s dedication to the acquisition of such.

Most Christians are apparently totally oblivious to the fact that the Early Christians lived in a totally unique style which could perhaps be termed “total, holy Communism.” In fact, it was the prototype of communism, and the only type that ever worked, since it’s impossible to achieve it by leaving out the main Factor, which happens to be God and His supernatural love.

The reason most people are totally ignorant of this, is because they either simply don’t read their Bibles, or they only read and remember the parts they like.

Apparently none of those Sunday morning assemblers who proudly present their attire and vehicles in those pompous palaces they named after the assembly of those who died as martyrs in Christ’s footsteps, after having lived their lives in modesty, has ever seriously pondered the statements we find in the Book of Acts on how Christians lived back then.

It doesn’t say there, “And all that believed assembled once a week in the temple to sing, pray and listen to the preacher for an hour, and then drove home, each in their car and to their own houses, spending the rest of the week in the pursuit of their happiness, aka financial stability.”

What it does say, is, “And all that believed were together and had all things common. And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. …Neither said any of them that any of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.” (Acts 2:44, 45, 4:32).

You can only imagine the average Christian’s head-shaking attitude toward such a radical life-style, of people living together and sharing all things…

When it boils down to it, neither Jesus, nor Paul, John or James had much good to say about money, or rich people.

The next vast gap between Christianity now and then – which I have repeatedly addressed in my blogs, because i just can’t do the subject justice – is the current “Christian” attitude towards war, their silent consent to their nations’ government sending their own sons (and daughters) off to foreign countries under often more than shady and questionable pretexts, to kill and maim their often totally innocent citizens by the hundreds of thousands.

It is unthinkable that Christians during the first 3 centuries would have given their consent, had the Romans called upon them to join the empire in one of its military actions against other countries.

Of course, all that changed with the crusades. But whether you can rectify having the audacity of calling that “Christianity,” you have to decide for yourself, especially in the light of all Jesus had to say on the subject.

Christians in the first 3 centuries were a persecuted minority, not – as has been the case since fake Christendom became a world power – a persecuting majority and ruthless authority. It is really no wonder that some people think that the world would be better off without the scourge of Christianity falsely so-called, and if you ask me, that’s where the future of “Christendom” is headed: elimination by the same tactics it has applied on the inhabitants of much of the world for centuries. Luckily, this will separate the true sheep from the goats and expose who was really “in it” for the right and wrong reasons…

In the final analysis, it seems that Christianity was certainly better off in its original state, and from the looks of it, we’re going to have to face the fact that that’s where Christianity is headed again: back to the ranks of the persecuted minorities, instead of those of the ruthless oppressors, even if it will be the latter that will bring the persecution upon themselves, (and even if most of them probably won’t see the writing on the wall before it’s too late).

What Christians worldwide ought to do is get “Back to the Basics,” “trim the fat” and return to its humble origins, instead of trying to play the rulers in a world that is currently run by Christ’s enemies. They’d do a whole lot better to heed the Words of their Founder, instead of the false prophets’ tales of peace when there is no peace, and of prosperity gained by the exploitation of the poor of the world, which God simply cannot bless.

As long as Christians chime, “God bless America, no matter what,” they show that they put themselves above the very laws of God, and thus become an abomination to Him, and will only reap the consequences accordingly.

They should seek their God for the kind of courage that their spiritual forefathers many centuries ago had, who were willing to be despised and persecuted as members of that obscure sect that followed a Leader Who had challenged all the existing values of the world.

Unfortunately, not many of us seem to be nearly as strong as Jesus was when the Devil tempts us with the riches of this world. Most of us give him a warm welcome, throw our arm around his neck and say to Jesus, “See ya on Sunday!”

123 Great Depression Vol.2 – Where’ve Ya Been?

Predicting another Depression since 1970: "The MO-Letters"

Religious lunatics all have certain qualities in common: they drive you insane, irritate you, make you hate them, want to wipe them off the face of the earth, strangle them, persecute them, exterminate them…

But the deadliest of all their qualities is that sometimes they just happen to be so painfully right about some of their predictions.

When the Jewish prophet Jeremiah predicted that his country was going to be conquered by the Babylonians, his distinguished colleagues dared to differ by the hundreds. So vehemently in fact, that they threw him in some hole in the ground. But it was shortly thereafter that Jeremiah was pulled out of the hole on behalf of the Babylonians who had conquered Judea regardless of contrary predictions of peace and prosperity made by hundreds of false, though respected, prophets.

Three days before His crucifixion, Jesus announced – when His disciples marveled at the architectural structure of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem – that it was going to be destroyed. In fact, that not one stone was going to be left upon the other.

The Jews – as usual – dared to differ, and continued to rebel against Rome until Jerusalem was besieged in 70.A.D., precisely 40 years after Jesus’ prediction. When the citizens of Jerusalem barricaded themselves inside the temple, the Romans set fire to it, causing the gold in the temple to melt. In order to get a hold of it, the Romans virtually pulled every brick off another.

No wonder Jesus still doesn’t have many friends in the Mideast – regardless of how much money Christians keep pouring into it. (After all, they want to be on good terms with the “chosen people.” Except that they missed some details about why Jesus had to die in the first place.)

The truth simply isn’t very popular. Nor were the predictions made by David Berg in the 70s about impending doom and destruction for America, whom he identified with “Babylon, the Great Whore” in the Book of Revelation, chapters 17 and 18, whose riches – so says the Bible – would come to naught within one hour.

Most American Christians like to interpret those chapters differently, just like they do the rest of the Bible, and the culprit “Babylon,” in their version, is the city of Rome, the capital of poor old Italy in Europe… But that’s another story I’m not going to get off on again.

Mr. Berg (also known as “Moses David” during the 70s), also predicted that an economic crash would precede the apocalyptic destruction the Bible heralded, an economic crisis, similar to the Great Depression of the 1930s, only much worse, which would usher in a New World Order, eventually spear headed by the notorious Antichrist, who would solve the World’s financial woes by a new cashless monetary system, in which cash would be replaced by a “mark,” – a computer chip or digital imprint – in each world citizen’s hand or forehead, as also predicted by St. John the Revelator.

While it yet remains to be told whether our current crisis is indeed that dreaded one which is to usher in the End of the World as we know it, the number of those who draw the connection between now and the Great Depression increases daily, and not just among religious freaks.

And whether it will result in the introduction of the Antichrist and his “mark of the Beast” also remains to be seen, but what we have got already is Henry Kissinger telling the American public on television that Barrack Obama would be the man to seize the golden opportunity within that crisis, to sell the world the New World Order.

I have stated before why I don’t believe that the Antichrist will be American, and I, like everyone else, would hope that we all still live many happy years in a prosperous world. IF I hadn’t seen what excessive prosperity and ease can do to people…

I also wouldn’t want to come across as some wise guy who rejoices in the plight and ill fate of others just so he can say “Told you so.” But I also know from experience and the things we never learn from history, that time will do the talkin’ about who were the “lunatics” and who were the false prophets.

It took the Great Depression about 5 years until it finally hit the last wealthy family in Suburbia. Years that gave rise to a man in whom many see the epitome of Antichrist.

Mrs. Angela Merkel recently said that “the worst is already over.” I will be as bold to label her one of the false prophets of our time.
(After all, no leader of government could ever earn my respect by hauling away a 15 year old from her home with 16 cops for being home-schooled.)

I will be so bold as to proclaim that if you think Hitler and the Great Depression were bad, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

I hate to be another party-pooper and religious lunatic. Of course, I’d much prefer to be popular, like everyone else does. I’d love to close my eyes to any impending evil and say, “Hey, but we don’t deserve this! We’ve all been good boys and girls.” I would, if I’d stand a chance in a million that my face would not turn tomato red and my nose wouldn’t sprout twigs and leaves like Pinocchio’s, after saying so.

122 The War On Christ

One of the trademarks of the infamous Antichrist as foretold in the Bible, is that he will wage war against “the saints*.”

In the language of our times that spells persecution. Persecution of all those that God deems righteous.

The only qualification to meet that criteria is having accepted the sacrifice of the Righteous One, Whom the Western World refers to as Jesus the Christ, and whom His original Mideastern followers have called Yashua, the Messiah.

If the Devil is a reality (and if you look around, you can’t deny the evidence), and all that is written about him in the Scripture is a reality, then those Scriptures that prophesy his incarnation in one final world ruler at the end of the world as we know it must also be a reality.

All that I have observed over the past 4 decades has gradually built up a perception of that reality, which by now – as unfortunately as it may be considered by some – has become unshakable.

The “war against the saints” has begun a while ago, even if it may have been duped different things.

If there was ever a period in which it seemed as if all those Bible prophecies were false, and Christianity was actually becoming more and more popular and recognized by society, I think that period has just about come to an end.

Satan’s had his heroes in his war against Christ since the beginning of time, and probably some of his greatest progress in the past decade has been achieved by the Bush administration. Just the fact that this most un-popular of all presidencies posed as “Christian,” (and by now there has emerged sufficient evidence that it was not genuinely so), was a genius strategic act of the anti-christ forces that have cost Christendom at least 8 points on a popularity scale from 1 to 10 (and it wasn’t at 10 when the count started).

It’s not as if the tactic was entirely new. After all, kingdoms and empires and those who ruled them – nowadays we call them politicians – have often posed as “Christians” while pursuing their true goals of power by means of eliminating the other side (not seldom the true believers), which is what Jesus referred to when He prophesied, “The time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service” (John 16:22). Some of them must have genuinely thought that they fought on the right side, but they were genuinely and sincerely wrong.

As James Taylor sang, “You just can’t kill for Jesus.”

Now with Obama”in power” (or at least filling the puppet post of pretense of power) the rest of the world is heaving a sigh of relief that America has come back to her senses, away from all that Christian fanaticism that surely must have been the root of all evils and woes in this world.

A new age of reason has been ushered in, soon to enlighten those who wish to be “enlightened” and to eliminate those who refuse to be.

You can make your own guess on which side of that war your government is fighting, your country’s school system or the scientific community, the mainstream media, or such day-to-day conveniences as Google, for that matter.

And while you’re at it… your employers?… Yourself?

Unfortunately, many of those supposedly fighting for the side of Christ in this battle aren’t actively participating, because they believe that Christ will whisk them away from the battle field before the battle even starts. The battle will come over them unexpectedly and virtually catch them with their pants down, unprepared, unexperienced in wielding the spiritual weaponry of faith and the Word of God, and weakened by countless temptations and distractions brought on them by the gods in whose temples they actually spent most of their time: Mammon (god of wealth), Mars (god of war), Bacchus (god of addictions) and the likes.

Instead of helping to strengthen and arm their brothers and sisters around the world, a lot of supposed “soldiers of the cross” seek to enrich themselves by fleecing the sheep instead of feeding them, as Ezekiel prophesied.

What would Jesus do if He came into the modern temples of today? Would He act any differently than He did when He chased out those who had made a market hall of His Father’s house?

So, where are the true shepherds, Whom the Lord will find feeding His sheep when He comes?

May God have mercy and replace the love of money in our hearts with love for the lost.

No physical wall you will have erected around yourself will protect you from the war on the saints when it will break loose, only real faith. It’s the only currency that will survive the purging fires that are going to sweep across the world.

*Scriptures on “The War Against the Saints”: Dan.7:21, Dan.8:24, 25; Rev.13:7, 17:12-14, 19:19