2000 YEARS OF IMBECILITY

May I be so bold as to say that yes, it’s been 2000 years of religious imbecility and I will show you why?

1. Man has filtered spiritual things through the flesh and its limited perceptions; mixing matter with spirit; the result is only religion. A golden calf and invisible God the Spirit don’t mix.

A. God the Spirit (John 4:24) did not make man according to His physical image and likeness (Genesis 1:26) for He has none. That image in Hebrew is TZELEM, which means reflection or something to mirror. In this sense Jesus mirrored the Father; hence a statue of Jesus would not be an image of God, but a semblance of a physical human being. Hence each time Jesus called Himself the Son of Man (Hebrew Ben Adam) He called Himself a human being and this human being laid His life down for us of His own accord (John 10:17-18). Jesus reflected and mirrored the Father that is the reason why He said, "[John 14:9-10] He who has seen Me has seen the Father." "[John 10:30] I and the father are one." (click here) Jesus did what the Father did and said what the Father said and in this He was one with the Father. One Spirit. And although He said that the Father is greater than He (John 14:28) He spoke in His humility and subordination to the will of the Father.

This is not to take His divinity for Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit. But as a human He had to triumph over death and physically rise from the dead. As God’s firstborn, to whom belong all things, He fulfilled His mission for which the Father sent Him. But to venerate the human Jesus would be idolatry, for indeed He opened the way to the Father the only true God. In John 8:42 Jesus said, “I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me.” The sent is subject to the one who sent Him. So, there is only one God and everything else is man’s theological interpretation. However man goes about it trying to define Judaism or Christianity, inevitably; all roads lead back to the One. Some will go slower others will go faster. Those who go faster have already yielded their minds to the guidance of the Holy Spirit the Truth; and that truth makes a completely logical sense. When you try to break this awesome unit of perfect logic you will find yourself in quite a quandary for you can’t. It is that strong.

Unable to bend this union of absolute wisdom and divine intelligence one can only jump on you and define you as belonging to some non-Christian sect like Mormons, Free Masons or Jehovah’s Witnesses. Or one would flatly call you names like a false teacher or false prophet, etc., because his or her IQ is being troubled and is about to be raised, but their ego fights back. The pride of some is as high as Mt Everest and many hate divine intelligence. The reason for that is that such people hold themselves in high esteem and can't be contested.  They question anything new against the backdrop of the old and yet filled with pride domain.

[Deuteronomy 4:15-16] So watch yourselves carefully, since you did not see any form on the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, so that you do not act corruptly and make a graven image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female.

B. God’s prophets were called to show the ancients the futility of their imaginations and sin against the LORD, but their idolatrous inclinations kept only changing garbs and went through but slight alterations. The hidden worship of household idols, Nehushtan, Asherah, Baal or Moloch was mixed with the official worship of the invisible God YHVH. This went on for a long time until it climaxed at the Babylonian exile.

CLOSER TO THE TRUTH

The national pride of Israel was being redefined with pompous and elaborate ceremonies and rituals. It is human weakness and a very strong desire to show off and parade one’s elaborate and great religion, but this provoked God to anger; who although highly exalted dwells with the humble (Isaiah 57:15); that’s why Jesus was not born in a plush Roman palace but in a manger. Multiple returns and reformations dealt with man’s pride and humility.  

The further back in time we go the closer we approach the original truth. Therefore, time plays no role, and has no authority in any matter. Something false remains false even for billions of years. Physical man respects time as if time itself is true. A crook doing Ponzi schemes can get away with it for decades, but it does not mean that his operations are legitimate because time legitimizes nothing. Any false elements in our interpretations of God and our beliefs systems remain false until they are rectified. The moment the crook and his schemes (exploiting people’s desires for greater wealth) are revealed the law comes to play a role, which is viewed by the crook as a foe, but only to the crook. The same is with self-righteousness, which assumes to be correct because of its beliefs. But when God’s just wrath falls then any self-righteous ‘crook’ would not see it as God's justice but rather that of an (imagined) enemy. Justice in such cases is being viewed as nemesis.

Those who lost God’s righteousness and infected others with the same contrived the enemy persona (Satan) and made him the scapegoat for their own evildoing. Yet, the truth remains. God expresses His just wrath through the fully subordinated to Him angel. God did not change Satan into our enemy; it is a human invention. Read 2Samuel 24:1 versus 1Chronicles 21:1 and understand that God chooses to vent His anger through Satan.

THE PURPOSE OF THE LAW

The law was to serve as a vindicator for any wrongdoing. Therefore, against the law’s backdrop wrong behaviors, thought processes and popular interpretations of God and that of His Kingdom can be proven as being wrong. Those false interpretations and beliefs worsen with time. Eventually, there must come repentance, rectification, restructuring and reformation; otherwise the inevitable will happen. Little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough (Gal. 5:9). This length of time—due to man’s choices regarding the heavenly Father and His ways—makes it all even worse. This leaven had plenty of time to spread and establish itself and yet it is no good leaven. Any bread made out of it is not only nutritious but also deadly.

When it comes to moral thinking and righteousness there comes strange slothfulness. As if on purpose man wants to muddy up clear water. Yes, man has become God’s enemy and does not want to repent and love the Almighty by lavishing on Him the honor due only to Him for His absolute sovereignty, control and rule over His entire creation. Subconsciously man imagines that he can evade God and slip out from under His absolute control. This illusion or rather delusion comes from self and ego, which originate in the physical shell the flesh. Spiritual person has no self nor ego for only the natural man needs self-identity. Jesus had the Father identity for of Himself He could do nothing (John 5:9; 30). The Father did nothing without the Word (Logos), and the Spirit did nothing without the Father’s command; and angels do nothing of themselves for they do not have any self-identities except those of the One God, therefore one identity, even God’s. Only the physical man was awarded the free will, choice and self-identity, which over time took preeminence and messed up his brain. Man stopped living by God’s graciousness. Just as the expression goes, [Job 1:21] “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return there” man stopped thinking with this consciousness. Pride of this life took over his psyche.

NO GOD BESIDE ME

This deviousness of ours speaks loud and clear. And unless we repent for it we will keep on perishing. We will continue creating falsehood and with it we will keep on creating strange and incurable diseases. The power of creation is ours, but with skewed imaginations we create skewed living forms. We are killing ourselves mentally and emotionally by creating unnecessary stress. We torment God’s sheep with eternal damnation and hell’s fire (without understanding the meaning of eternal fire); with grotesque demons, split universe between a good god and an evil one and then we seek solace in thoughts of peaceful heaven from which ‘Lucifer fell and with his fallen angels.’ If all that were even remotely possible than man’s hatred directed toward God would try to unseat God Himself and throw Him completely away. Man wants to interpret God, but only subjectively in his own fleshly way. Woe to us rebels!

C. [Isaiah 45:5-7 KJV] I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

‘One God’ notion to a pagan mind is not even possible for such would have to give up and completely part with the old; and even destroy the past way of believing. That is indeed difficult. The same is with the well-established 2000 years of Christian theology, as if our predecessors were smarter than we are today. They were smart for their day and with their limited understanding they prided themselves; and then lorded that pride over others. They paraded those tiny specks of truth of their newly found faith in the gracious God until they lost themselves in that parade. At the same time the Jew handled knowledge so insurmountably great that the possibility of falling into pride became but a remote possibility. The more you have the more you receive the humbler—at the sheer scope of revelation—you become.

The three great reformers like Luther, Calvin and Zwingli killed people, behead and burned to death those that challenged their religious authority and even gloated in their evildoing. God tolerated it, for even if it takes millions of years to make one bright beacon of light to pass through the cracks of man’s thick skull; to God would be still worthwhile. Man dies and after him comes another. Before men like Luther, Calvin or Zwingli left the stage each made sure that those imprisoned by fear would continue in the same. The elements they inherited from Catholicism—which they agreed with and kept—they also passed on, but only those elements that suited them in the formation of new religious empires. The next generation must garner nothing new and nothing fresh and living, but must remain loyal to the dead predecessor of faith. Thus a cult of the dead founders of religion has been established. Woe to us for we venerate the dead and condemn the living?

Today the Almighty sends His prophets calling us back to honest sensibility. He challenges you to use your gift of logical thinking. But will you reject it when confronted with His logic and intelligence? Or will you worship those that remain in crypts of the past for they can’t argue with you anymore? Was the bloody past more glorious than the presently living wisdom of God?

[Deuteronomy 32:16-17] They made Him jealous with strange gods; with abominations they provoked Him to anger. They sacrificed to demons who were not God, to gods whom they have not known, new gods who came lately, whom your fathers did not dread.

A strange god appeared in Babylon, which passed through Persia and Greece and then landed in the Rome controlled Palestine. Before Babylon no Israelite or a Jew knew about the angel called Satan. God was responsible for everything.

[Deuteronomy 32:39] See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; it is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, and there is no one who can deliver from My hand.

Moses knew this God. Do you know Him?

[Exodus 4:11] The LORD said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?

Have you formulated for yourself a void of God religion, which is convenient dualism?

THE PAGAN FEAR

2. Pagans harbored a deep-seated fear. They feared the Almighty God of the Hebrews. This dread was awesome when it fell on the Canaanites and ever since stories circulated the globe. The Hebrew God was then labeled not only as a fearsome God but wrathful, which stirred up the common pagan superstations. From these superstations came Beelzebul (Beelzebub) transliterated as BAAL (lord or master) ZE (he is) BUL (fly or an insect).

[Exodus 23:28] I will send hornets ahead of you so that they will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites before you.

Ever since the nations associated the Israelites with those stingy and deadly hornets and therefore with terror and dread. No one knew the invisible God of Israel. (ISRA means principality and EL means God). As these stories kept on spreading throughout many nations a superstitious prejudice was also created. With the arrival of the written by Jews Word, the Bible, this mix of truth and falsehood was widely shared among the peoples.

[Deuteronomy 2:25] This day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you upon the peoples everywhere under the heavens, who, when they hear the report of you, will tremble and be in anguish because of you. 

To eradicate these sentiments from a pagan is most difficult; for pagan mind has never been trained in self-criticism and self-abasement, as it has been the case with the Jew. Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement is only one example. Exiles and returns chastised and humbled the Jewish soul.

The emergence of Judaism under Greece produced something new. Up until that point in time there was no Judaism, neither theology (to this day Judaism has no official theology); however, the need for national religion emerged when Hellenization gained ground. First the Maccabees rebelled against the Greeks until the Roman period, and owing to their successes over the Greeks the Romans granted the Jews (Judeans) sovereignty over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. At that time the Hasmoneans (Maccabean dynasty) hired the Pharisees (Prusheem) to teach the Torah. Ever since then we have the open-air teachings regarding charity, prayer, washing of hands before handling food and the Jewish attire.

In time because of the demonstrativeness (in the gospels) the Pharisees were equated with hypocrites. In 70 A.D. Jerusalem was destroyed and again Jews were exiled and dispersed. Time went on and Christianity was legalized and then became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Europe became Christian then came Luther’s reformation. Jews were evicted from Spain; pogroms in Russia and German Jews lived in Ghettos. Those who fear the Jew want to destroy what they fear.

3. Finally, the unwillingness to change comes from a closed and conceited mind. When it comes to God, no one wants to get reformed, because no one truly loves God; if anything, one loves Jesus, but not the Father He introduced us to. The human Jesus of whom we have many statues, pictures and crucifixes is easier to love for in all of His portrayals resides also the Jew of whom the Christian was taught to beware. It is a sort of vindictive love lavished upon the Jewish Rabbi, e.g., “you killed Him, but we love Him. You are down and we are up. We are better.”  Does God seek such love?

For this reason Jesus must be the Christian god for nothing else will do. As a result the Jew will cling to his God the one whom Jesus addressed as the Heavenly Father. The Christian will keep on mulling over his faith asserting and redefining it lest he might lose it, but goes no further than just being saved. Gentile Christians fear to go beyond the point of being saved by grace. Anything beyond that point is unknown and even strange. They won’t try to walk on water like the Pentecostals dare. As a result they stopped believing in supernatural healing, prophesies, tongues and the gifts of the Spirit. They interpret these things subjectively according to their predecessors’ interpretations. Again, they dwell in the pocket of the past and of the dead. Yet, the Spirit is living and He is now. The letter kills but the Spirit makes alive. But in order to travel this road one must lose own ground and own preconceived ideas. Can anyone do that? No one has believed too much. No one aspired too much. Those fears must come from fences, which our dead predecessors weaved for us.  Some waste time on the correct or incorrect formulations of catechisms, liturgies, declarations and affirmations of their faith, while the Jew keeps on studying God and His ways. There will never be any mending of gaps between these divergent camps. Having said so, what really did Jesus have in mind when He said?

[John 10:16] “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.”

Does it mean that a Jew must become Christian or a Christian must become Jewish? Or perhaps there is going to be something new that will stem from the Judeo-Christian tradition (known to Americans), which uses Judean elements of the law and the Christian grace?     

SOMETHING WENT WRONG

So what’s this imbecility I speak of here. I have been one for much too long. But thank God that He found me in my foolishness and illuminated my chicken-size brain. Psychology no longer uses this term imbecile for it is considered offensive and so it is. I am offending myself with this term. When I compare that which I knew with what I know now then my imbecility lasted way too long and regrettably so. Why was I so stubborn? Why so slow? Perhaps some of you feel that way today also.

An imbecile is characterized by weakness; feebleness; incapability, stupidity; silliness; absurdity etc. An imbecile is unwilling to learn anything new or think on his own two feet. The 2000 years of imbecility is filled with stupidity, silliness and absurdity because if God created the devil for us to look after then what right does He have to ask us to study His nature. His ways and be submitted to Him? There is no time to learn God's ways when you have to constantly watch out for the invisible enemy. Dimwitted and cloudy minds have never gone beyond the smoke of religion, which they breathe and bathe in, but can't wash off the dirt. Tell such people that God created all things for a purpose out of love for you and me. Tell them that He seeks only your good, has plans to bless and prosper you in every possible way. But the only request He has is to love Him with all of your heart, soul and mind; with your entire being; and your neighbor as yourself. 

How do we love Him? – By studying Him and His ways. How do we love our neighbor? – By not speaking against him or lying about, neither insinuating nor harming him or her in any way by being friendly and kind. That’s all. Man changed it all with his theology and his love for his own creation. For the letter’s sake he expelled, killed and bemired even those that wrote the Bible thus giving him basis for his crooked behavior. Hey, Jesus the Jew could speak to His own people that way. It’s an internal squabble, if you will. Don’t meddle in someone else’s internal squabbles for you are not a judge. You have been grafted into the cultivated Olive Tree by grace, so stay that way. But if you make yourself the judge then tremble for that’s an awesome responsibility indeed (Read Romans 11). 

Luther turned on the Jews and he found basis for his vehement outburst of hatred in the Bible. No wonder that the onset of blindness begins then. As a result one blind begins to lead another blind. They are already in a ditch, but they still believe… As if their faith is their righteousness explaining that they can even murder (in God’s name) and as long as they believe they are all right. Are they justified by this kind of stubborn faith? The self-created faith is a delusion man beguiled himself with.

GOD’S ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY

Disagreeing over God being completely sovereign over all of His creation, which includes the creation of His prosecutor Satan, seems odd indeed to many. Why man “fights” for the belief in Satan as a separate from God angel, even fallen angel? This is indeed inexplicably strange. So weird that it begs for a much deeper investigation.

What’s wrong with the human psyche, which does not allow one to see the Almighty as the truly ALL MIGHTY God? If one says that God has allowed Satan to come to Eden and tempt Eve, then at least then one would open the door of truth a little wider allowing more light to pour in. But even when considering that a pagan would close his or her mind and go no further.  This thought is like the lid on a dead man’s coffin leaving the cold corpse in total darkness. This is the imbecility I speak of here. If God allows this and that, then we must investigate further and not blindly accept our predecessors' statements on the matter.

God acts in the permissive and in His perfect will and the Bible is filled with these leads. The imbecility I speak of is the unwillingness to logically investigate; as Jesus said, [Mark 3:23] “How can Satan cast out Satan?” Study this again and again, but from God’s point of view and not from your own. God is above the created by Him being isn’t He? Don’t be an imbecile.

HEAVEN & EARTH

Heaven

No time in heaven. No time to prepare any plot. No darkness in heaven. No place to hide the plan. No measured space in heaven. No time to travel and no territory to fight over; hence no war.

Earth

Time restricts. One can plot ahead of time. One can hide the plot in the obscurity of darkness. One can find a place to hide it. One can travel a distance. One covets what another has. War over territory is only possible one earth.

Imbecility

What wars in heaven? How can the Spirit kick out spirits, winds and flames made to serve God, with what, sword or cannons? He can only extinguish them from existence. There is no need to imprison angels with ropes and chains, for how can you chain a spirit. Eternal fire means instant fire and not a tormenting for eternity fire. Spiritual beings don’t burn. After resurrection we shall be like angels. An angel stepped into the physical fire and ascended to heaven (Judges 13:20). Eternity has no lengths and measures common to earth that would be ludicrous. [2Peter 3:8] To God one day is as thousand years and a thousand years like one day.

Human mind became even more fragmented by holding on to isolated fragments of different doctrines, but is unable to unify all scriptures under one God and that’s the inability of an imbecile. But unfortunately that is of his fault brought on by his pride’s blindness, by ego and wrong choices. When one repeatedly chooses something, eventually one is given over to what one has been choosing. When one accepts and even chooses imbecility then one also becomes one.

WOE TO US

We have robbed God of His sovereignty! We have taken away the glory due only to Him! We fragment our world and pollute God’s Kingdom by giving place to devils, which we have not known, nor understood, neither has it ever been permitted for us to study them. We have all too readily embraced pagan-rooted conclusions, which the theologians introduced to us. Multiplicity of ideas and the fragmented world is not the Kingdom of God’s oneness!  We have supposed that God is not really the God He claims to be—THE ALL MIGHTY, but someone engaged in warfare with someone He Himself created! Deluded, rebellious minds that have embraced theology of their predecessors likewise seduced by the fantastic and the unexplained!

Woe to us, the rebels!

Woe to us for we have wandered off the straight and the narrow path!

Woe to us for we have lost the love of our Father!

Woe to us for we have sought after our own glory and through it we wounded His Holy Spirit, and ourselves, with many a pang!

Woe to us for we have become blind leaders of the blind!

Woe to us for we have not paid the price to search the Scriptures! We have not repented with tears and broken hearts!

Woe to us for we have placed God in a box and put Him under our own theological control!

Woe to us for we have appointed ourselves as judges and ceased to be students.

Woe to us for we do not call on His holy name with a pure heart, but according to the doctrines of man!

“How much longer do I have to cry for you, you who got drunk on your pride? How long will I put up with foolishness and the glory of man, dust driven by wind? How long will MY soul be tormented because of you? How long do I have to seek the humble and yet I find but a few?”