Posted on 11/09/2002 6:46:06 PM PST by GoldenEagles
I guess I have to respectfully disagree with you. I think the problem is the denial of the soverignty of God.
That is how some professing Christians are able to approve of a legal system in which we approve of mothers murdering unborn children. If we accept the proposition that God is Supreme; we then look to His word where He tells us that we shall not kill; and so we then would proceed, as a Godly Country, seeking His blessings, to make it unlawful for mothers to murder unborn children (as well as anyone else).
Its ok to deny God's commandments to "give the woman control over her own body"? That is what it amounts to. Reason I think God is going to punish America is because as a nation, we have approved a system of laws, one of which flies directly in the face of His direction which we have done for reasons that seem sufficient to the political establishment to reject God's authority.
The essence of the problem is that while God in fact tells us that if His people who are called by His name will return to him and ask His foregiveness, He is there waiting to foregive us and return our blessings--problem is we are asking Him to return our blessings alright; but we are not ready to stop denying His authority as expressed in His Word. Really in many ways, not just with respect to mother's murdering their unborn children.
In fact, the way we got where we are on the issue of abortion is somewhat aberational as a proposition of secular law. The constitution provided and still provides that "No person shall be deprived of . . . life . . . without due process of law." Roe v. Wade was decided on a factual record that the fetus was not life; the science now is clearly to the contrary. Roe does not get reversed because you can't get the justices to agree to hear argument on the issue as a result of political considerations.
The way you force the polity to address the issue is to force abortion supporters to propose a constitutional amendment modifying the prohibition of murder to except mothers' of unborn children--a specific constitutional amendment authorizing such murders. I do not believe you could get a majority at any level for that proposition--in fact, the political debate would demonstrate that a majority is opposed to such murders which would in turn set in motion the constitutional process to overturn Roe v. Wade.
You obviously haven't studied the purely economic motivation for the founding of Jamestown by the British and New Amsterdam (later New York)by the Dutch. These early colonies had nothing to do with religious liberty, but were attempts by their respective governments to establish economically viable colonies.
In fact, I think that I probably erred in the construction of that sentence. The abortion problem, actually represents the apex of alienation from God ...
What I was getting at, was the idea, that as the Children of God become increasingly alienated from Him, that their behavior becomes increasingly abhorrent in his sight. In other words, their behavior becomes increasingly out of alignment with His Will. In their walk away from God, their behavior will represent at first, no more than a minor offense here, and a minor offense there. But as they walk further into the darkness, their offenses become increasingly grotesque. From misdemeanors, their behavior finally achieves the stature of a criminal act. The act of abortion then, represents a condition of nearly maximum alienation from God. It represents the behavior of an individual who has no idea what God wants or desires. It represents behavior of an individual who has traveled a million miles away from any sense of affection for His Divine Plan, and the role that every child of God is supposed to play in that divine plan.
Then, as the Children of God are turned around from that condition of maximum alienation, and are slowly brought back to a remembrance of their own divinity, again as Children of God the first thing that they recognize, is the enormity of the crime that has been committed against God in the act of abortion. Therefore, as a first step in their reconciliation with God, they will undo the greatest crime. And that act of course represents a certain emerging sense of value for the sovereignty of God our Father.
As the Children of God return to a sense of God's sovereignty, the first sign of that will be their desire to undo the greatest crime that is being committed against that sovereignty. And the greatest crime being committed against God's sovereignty, is abortion.
People who are ruled by the desire for material gain alone, are more often than not cowards.
No, I think that the core factor for the establishment of the American colonies, was the desire to create a new land where they could exercise their religious beliefs in freedom and peace, something that was completely unknown in the old world. And, in the establishment of such a new land, economics played a very important role.
Jim Robinson's house, Jim Robinson's rules.
Those of us who get our posts regularly banished to the religious forum are a bit insensitive when it comes to those which remain on the more active "News" forum, but have the same characteristics as ours.
Fine. Live in your little mythological dream world. But when you want to find out how the American colonies were actually settled and why I recommend you read a book like Alan Taylor's recent work: American Colonies
Let us all unite, and quickly, around the realization of what an enormous and auspicious opportunity we have before us to move towards the adoption of a Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And this goes way beyond the fact that the Republicans control the White House, and both houses of Congress. Please take a few moments to engage your mind in a serious and sober contemplation of the various factors that, when taken together, present the Pro Life movement, with the greatest opportunity for victory that they have ever known before, and perhaps, will ever know again.
What kind of mumbo-jumbo are you spreading? You can't take the Word of God and fit it to the politically-correct worldview. You seek to garner God's protection on our country by outlawing abortion (which is a good idea), yet you refer to God the Father as a Mother?
You either believe it as God spoke it, or you don't believe it at all. Regardless, it does you no good to lead others astray by changing the Word of God.
Now, as I have alreadly pointed out on more than one occasion, and I am certainly grateful for yet another opportunity to speak about the truth again, that when we talk about the "Word of God" as it is revealed through Holy Scripture, there are some very important factors to take into consideration. Though I will not reinvent the wheel here, but copy and paste what I have already said on the subject, (with some minor revisions) and then tie it into the question of whether God can be seen as our Mother, as well as our Father.
First, when God our Father releases a teaching through a particular prophet, and this includes Jesus Christ, it is given in terms that are tailored for the mindset of those to whom the prophet is speaking.
I believe that it can be said with a fair amount of accuracy, that the people of Jesus' day, were a very narrow and closed minded people, with a very narrow outlook. These people, if they ever thought about where the center of the universe was, they were inclined to believe that the earth was the center, and that the sun revolved around the earth. And of course, their conceptions did not even include the fact that the earth was round. And as you all know, it took more than 1,500 years for the truth to triumph in the minds of men in this regard. Moreover, the culture was stridently patriarchical, i.e. male centered, and after 2000 years, this has only just begun to give way to some ray of truth. I mean, a mere one-hundred years ago, the women in this nation, America, were not even allowed to vote.
These are just some of the limitations, in no way representing the entire list of mental limitations, that God had to take into account when releasing his Word through Jesus Christ in the year 33AD.
Therefore, the teaching that Jesus released in public was primarily given through the vehicle of parables. Anything that had a really deep mystical meaning, was presented in the most simplified manner. Now, this had to be the case, because the quality of human pride will reject out of hand anything that is too far outside the framework of existing knowledge. I mean, the human ego likes to think that it knows everything. And it is very stiff necked in this regard. If something totally new is presented, they do not say, "O, please tell me more, help me to understand." Rather, they will simply take offense, because the revelation of new knowledge challenges their pre-conceived notion that they know everything. Rather than relinquish such a pre-conceived notion, they defend it, and they defend it, by rejecting out of hand the new information. So, when you need to present to such people a truth that is completely outside of their framework of belief, you have to deliver it in such a way that some portion of it falls within the existing framework of belief, but will at the same time bump right up against the existing framework, gently pushing the line of limitation outward, to nudge it out, and this is done with generalities. We see this throughout the four gospels, and we see it in the Book of Revelation as well. This describes, I think fairly accurately, the general character of nearly everything that Jesus spoke in public.
Additionally, if we keep in mind the important question of how accurately the teaching will be passed down from generation to generation, especially in those days when there were no printing presses, we can see, that if the Master spoke a particular truth that was so far outside of the people's ability to comprehend, that he would run a great risk that the structure of that belief would get modified, molded, or reformed, by the limitations inherent in the mindset of those people, as that paricular concept was passed from generation to generation. So, if the Master wanted a paricular truth to survive, he would have to present it in way that would be very general.
Moreover, we can conclude from what is said in the Bible, that many more things were said to his close circle of immediate disciples. But even some of them had their limits. I am thinking here of the time when he told everybody that they had to eat his flesh, and drink his blood. This caused many of his disciples to walk away. And this was a metaphor, not the direct revelation of the mystical truth that he had in mind. You can imagine how many people would have walked away if they had him talking about the transfer of spiritual energy from his chakras to our chakras.
Therefore, when we confront the great task and challenge of making sense of what we find in the Bible, we have to understand that what Jesus spoke to the people in public, represents but a tiny, microscopic subset of his total knowledge, and in regards to what he did speak, these ideas had to be clothed with generalities. And in regards to what he actually spoke to his disciples, he said a lot more than what we see recorded in the Bible, and that this great body of additional information will eventually be released to the general public through the vehicle of progressive revelation in later centuries as the people are ready and able to assimilate it. For example, in the Book of John, we find the following testimony:
This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true. And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen. (John 14:24-25)
And there is this additional testimony:
Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. (John 20:29-31)
The bottomline is this. Jesus Christ was not about to challenge the patriarchical basis of the culture by teaching the people that God is Mother, as well as Father. For those people, it would have been a bridge too far. They would not have accepted it, and the good that would have otherwise come from the Teaching that he did reveal, would have been lost.
I think that it is fair to say, that for any opened minded person in the 21st century, that it is self-evident that God is as much Mother as God is Father. That this is an absolutely reasonable observation.
For example, we are told that we are created in the image of God. Well, what do we see around us? We see male and female. We see fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers. I hope a lightbulb is going off in the minds of most of the readers of this thread. Duh ... If we are made in the image of God, then the image of God is an image of male/female, which means that God created man, and he created woman, out of his/her own sense of male/female identity.
And what does it say about our Father's valuation of his own female half, that He gave to woman, the single greatest responsibility of life, and that is, to bring forth new life, His life?
Just as every Man/Woman union is intended to be a valueable partnership for the raising up, and nurturing of new life, so to is the partnership of our Father/Mother God, exactly that, as an a priori creative principle, which is at the center of all life, and all creation, worlds without end, i.e. the highest partnership which makes possible the highest expression of life throughout all the heavenly mansions.
The Bible is timeless, truthful, and the guidline by which we should live our lives. If you want to change the words and meaning to adapt to your "21st century" worldview, go ahead, but you put yourself in grave danger by leading others astray.
Hogwash. Jesus said, explicitly, no one comes to the FATHER except by me. Jesus IS God, who came in the flesh. Saying that he could not challenge the "patriarchal" society is BS, and shows your lack of faith. Go ALL the way back to genesis, and find out that God did not create woman until Adam had tried darn near everything as a mate. THEN, God made woman.
The "creation story" in the Book of Genesis is total allegory. And it could not hope to be any more than this, when we understand that the writer is trying to present a representation of several billion years worth of both spiritual and physical history in a few hundred words. This creation story is no more valid in literal terms, than the creation stories that you find in every other culture on the face of the planet. They all have one thing in common. They are all structured to fit into the very child-like minds (read narrow and ignorant) of those people who populated those ancient cultures for whom these stories were woven.
And the same thing goes for many of the things that Jesus said. Some things you can take literally. But some things you can't take literally. You have to use the reasoning power of the mind to tell the difference between the two.
The words of Jesus Christ validate this assessment. Remember that in the Book of Matthew 13:43 Jesus said, " ... Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." In this the Master is saying that there is a hidden truth in his words, and there will be some who will be able to understand it, and there will be others who will not be able to understand it. In other words, the meaning is not contained in the surface literal interpretation of the words, which everyone can read and understand.
In regards to the Bible passage you refer to, "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6) This is an example of one statement by Jesus Christ, the meaning of which, cannot be taken from the surface literal interpretation.
Actually, this passage has at least three distinct interpretational dimensions.
First, the Master is saying, that he is the example that the Children of God must follow. He is showing the way. He is revealing the truth about the way to go. He is giving the Children of God the example of the life they too can lead. And in as much as that life is a result of his personal communion with the Father, so too will our ability to live that life also be a result of our personal communion with the Father. He is saying, that no one can come into that condition of personal communion with the Father, unless they follow his example, unless they follow his footsteps, unless they honor the truth that he brings, which means conforming the thoughts in our minds, with the truths that he spoke.
All of these ideas came together in a very coherent way, when he said, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48) This is one statement that you can take literally. This is the goal that Jesus Christ attained to, and this is the goal that he has set before each one of his followers. And he referred to this goal again in the following passage:
"And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?
Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me." (Matthew 19:16-21)
Here the Master is showing us that there are at least two basic stages that a soul goes through on its journey towards perfection. The first is keeping the commandments, which means that the thoughts, and feelings of the soul have been aligned to God's purposes. The second stage, is following the Master in regards to his ministry, which means a life dedicated to the redemption of souls, and not to the enrichment of the self, or the comforting of the self. In other words, the soul must make the transition between that condition of life wherein its actions are totally devoted to feathering its own nest, to a life totally dedicated to feathering, in this case, the spiritual nests, of all souls who the father desires to redeem. In other words, the condition of perfection is not really extent within the fabric of the soul's identity, unless the soul can prove that the thoughts and feelings of God that it contains within its own consciousness (derived from personal communion with the Father), can actually be acted out on the world stage as part of the overall divine plan for the redemption of souls.
The second dimension of meaning contained in the above spiritual passage, has to do with the mediating role that this Master has played, through the Piscean Age, wherein, the actual energies of perfection which the soul anchors within its own awareness, will actually come from the heart of this Master. In other words, as the soul walks the Path of Initiation, desiring to put on the whole fabric of perfection that the Master has in store for the soul, the soul's desiring in this regard is fulfilled by this Master.
For example, lets say that on its journey into that state of perfection, that the soul comes to the realization that it is not grateful to God to the extent that God deserves our gratitude. This point of perfection, as a goal to be achieved, is first revealed to the soul through a direct revelation by this Master to the soul, of how much God deserves our Gratitude. Here, the statement by the Master takes its most literal interpretation. How does the Master reveal to the soul this fact that God deserves our constant and immense Gratitude? He does this, by revealing to the soul, the actuality of what God is actually doing for the soul. In other words, the Master reveals to the soul, an actual point of divine reality, as it pertains to the Father. And you can say, in a manner of speaking, that the Master reveals to the soul, an actual portion of the Father's face. By that vision, the soul comes to understand, instantaneously, how much God our Father deserves our immense and constant gratitude. Now, the soul cannot see this reality on its own. It must have the assistance of the Master in this regard. So, when the Master says that no one will come unto the father except by him, he is exactly right on that score. Once the Master reveals this point of divine reality to the soul, the soul then inventories its thoughts and feelings, and comes to the conclusion, that in fact, the soul is not meeting this standard of perfection. Seeing that the soul desires to meet this standard of perfection, the question is, how does the soul do this? How does the soul accomplish this? How does the soul come to that place where it has the wonder and beauty of God at the center of its attention constantly, whereby its entire identity radiates constantly great waves of gratitude unto God? The answer to this question, is that the soul will first begin making concerted efforts in this regard. It will at least try to think gratitude at all times and under all circumstances. And as the soul makes those efforts, the Master will release into the consciousness of the soul, those elements of spiritual power and vision that will allow the soul to achieve this goal. I am simplifying here. And it should be noted that the soul cannot achieve such a point of perfection overnight. It takes persistent effort, and application to the Master, for the soul to even begin to make progress. But progress can be made. When the Master set forth the admonishment in terms of perfection, he was also setting a promise that he would see to it, that anyone who believes what he says, and makes the effort in that direction, will be given the victory.
The third dimension of meaning, in regards to the above scripture, has to do with the Universal nature of the Christ. Here we are referring to the Biblical principle of the Only Begotten Son of the Father. This Only Begotten Son, is of infinite dimensions. All souls created by God partake of the identity of this One Son. In other words, all of the facilities of consciousness required to place the individual soul into communion with the One Father, are derived from this One Universal Christ. This is the basis of harmony between all citizens of heaven. Jesus' communion with the Father is derived from his unity with the Universal Christ. And his capacity to work with souls individually, to place them into contact with the Father, is also derived from the resources of the Universal Christ. In other words, as he works with individual souls on this planet, placing them individually in contact with the Father, he is transferring to them the facilities of the Universal Christ. So, when he says, " ... I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6), this can be taken as a statement that applies to the Universal Christ, which Jesus has become one with.
There are several important implications to this. The first being, that every being in heaven, communes with God the Father, through the same facilities. And that there are many, who can play the mediating role, that Jesus has played for the evolutions on this planet over the last 2000 years, an opportunity however, that very few have taken advantage of.
Now, in regards to the issue of whether or not God is Father, and God is Mother, let me say, that as the soul walks the Path of Initiation, and the Master Jesus reveals the identity of the Father to the soul, for the purpose of bringing the soul into that aforementioned state of perfection, by and by, the identity of God as Mother will become clear. Jesus Christ himself will reveal to the soul, that God is both Father, and Mother. One cannot advance on the pathway towards the goal of perfection, with anchoring the truth within ones mind, and one of the most important truths that there is, is that God is both Father, and Mother. And as Children of God, that ought to be a very comforting truth to hold onto, even if you have not seen that fact with your own inner vision.
ImaGraftedBranch continues ...
The Bible is timeless, truthful, and the guidline by which we should live our lives. If you want to change the words and meaning to adapt to your "21st century" worldview, go ahead, but you put yourself in grave danger by leading others astray.
No doubt there are timeless truths in the Bible. And it is clear, that on the pathway towards the goal of perfection that Jesus Christ held out before us, we cannot afford to ignore anything in the Bible that is actually true.
But, there are many things in the Bible, as noted above, that require interpretation if one is to come to a true sense of what is being spoken. And there are many many false interpretations masquerading as the gospel truth, being set forth as church doctrine, which are however, absolute falsehoods. Like the idea that Jesus Christ is the ONLY Son of God. Well, in regards to this, I must point out that we are all sons and daughters of God, relating to Jesus Christ in the same way an acorn relates to a full grown oak. God intends every acorn to grow into a full grown oak, and there are no exceptions to this rule.
If you can get your mind around this idea, you will see that this is exactly the actual truth that makes abortion a crime in the sight of God. And it is the basis for this statement by Jesus Christ:
" ... Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." (Matthew 25:47)
Therefore, we have a mighty responsibility before us, to use the reasoning power of our own minds, which is a very valuable gift from God, to discriminate between what is true, and what is false, in terms of what this or that person says a particular Bible passage means.
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