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| | | | | 3926.56 in reply to 3926.1 | |
Hello Goodguy
Your email saddens me for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the disgusting distortion of Jesus' message of freedom, born of truth and love.
That one so benighted presumes the right to judge others, as God, and in God's name really raises questions about how people like this get into their positions in the first place - what sort of controls and balances are in place to ensure that the blindness of self-righteousness is counter-balanced by spiritual direction and growth designed to produce the fullness of the stature of Christ? Product control would appear to be the name of the game.
'By their fruits you shall know them' Jesus apparently said ........and I recall the last line of a poem, I think from Billy Graham .............'Weep for those who have made a desert in the name of the Lord".
Shalom
Hilary |
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| | | | | 3926.57 in reply to 3926.56 | |
Dear Hillary the Lion-Hearted, Were that the problem stopped with intolerance!! Since these people believe the Bible, they believe in prescience, in Prophets and Prophesies as the complete and literal Truth of the future already known and sure to come to pass. They KNOW (or pretend to know) that Israel was foretold by the ancient prophets and so came to be as a fulfillment of God's Prophetic Pronouncements millenia ago. So the only racist state in the world isn't condemned as Apartheid was but exalted as the fulfillment of "God's Word". And, of course, these same Bibliophiles look forward to the Apocalypse and the Rapture, 1000 years of sacred rule and then nothing. They talk about it as if it were fact, predicted by God and as inevitable and unavoidable as the past. Now if ACTUALLY predicting the future based on unknowns were something humans could do back in ancient times, it would seem to me modern mankind would retain some small vestiges of it. Yet quite a few lotteries allow people to pick random numbers shortly before these numbers are chosen and the odds of millions of people picking lottery numbers is EXACTLY the same as random numbers. What this long-standing, widespread experiment tells us is the people cannot predict the future except by knowledge of the present and awareness of tendencies and probabilities. There ARE good odds makers for professional sports, but even they aren't right all the time. Heavily indebted to Baron von Rothschild for financial support throughout World War I, the British seized Palestine and appointed a Zionist Governor. Rather than export refugees from the Czar's purges and ongoing prejudice in Europe to a small desert country in the heart of the Islamic World, we could have succored them in England and the United States. But we didn't. The US left Palestine in British hands and the British Foreign Office, with a fair understanding of the consequences and, as unobtrusively as possible, opened her borders to unlimited immigration, a recipe for disaster in and of itself as the massive influx of hungry Christians during the Crusades will attest. At the time, Palestine had a peacefully-coexisting population composed of maybe 94% Moslems, 5% Jews, and 1% Christians. Massive immigration of Jewish refugees and hard-core Zionist Jews changed this situation rather quickly. Left unchecked, Bible believers will attempt to create the Apocalypse as well. |
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| | | | | 3926.58 in reply to 3926.56 | |
As to the message of peace, it is my understanding that this message required generosity and poverty and humility of early "Christians". It required meekness and love even in the face of anger and hostility. This, I believe, is the religion practiced for almost 300 years by Christ's followers. Christians were tortured. Bishops of Rome were routinely executed publicly, yet the response of Christianity at the time as I understand it was one of emulating Christ's "Forgive them for they know not what they do." For a modern version of early Christianity, I offer Mahatma Gandhi and his nonviolent campaigns against Apartheid South Africa and Imperial England. It is my contention that the real Church gained influence slowly and quite painfully. It is my contention that this rankled those in power in Rome whose ridicule of Christian humility and suffering was wearing thin and whose decadence and cruelty were showing. The "Pax Romana" wasn't peaceful at all. It was world conquest and widespread robbery, murder and extortion by the world's best equipped and best trained army against small tribes of people and great states like Egypt alike. It was a lot like what the United States in recent times. Then there was a few years when Christianity stopped being outlawed. During this time, the Church's influence grew dramatically, but at the same time I believe that their leadership was infiltrated by power seekers and people loyal to Imperial Rome. In 325, Emperor Constantine, though not a Christian himself, convened the Council of Nicea. The Bishop of Rome did not attend. In fact, only about 25% of all Christian Bishops attended. And they didn't all agree, but by a simple majority, the "Nicene Creed" was adopted, and an "official" version of the Holy Scriptures was agreed to and, in coordination with Constantine, all other versions of "Christianity" were made illegal...including the Arian Heresy which claimed that Christ was a man, not God. For this sellout, the Nicean Bishops were given gorgeous temples to convert into Christian Churches, robes of spun gold, and lavish financial and political support. In a few years, the religion of the underdog became the religion of the Masters of the Known World, Rome.
Edited 11/7/2009 2:41 pm ET by goodguy |
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| | | | | 3926.59 in reply to 3926.2 | |
What a wonderful article. The Gingham Dog and The Calico Cat is one of my FAVORITE POEMS. A terrific article. Glad to know other people think similar thoughts to mine. |
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| | | | | 3926.60 in reply to 3926.55 | |
OK -- let's take medical "science". It isn't completely controlled by government. Large portions of it and by far the largest amount of money for research is in the pockets of the extremely wealthy pharmaceutical industry in league with the outrageously wealthy health "insurance" industry. A great deal of this money goes into finding home remedies or native remedies and extracting the active ingredients, patenting them, and then mass producing that active ingredient while promoting it through massive advertisement. Rather than "science", this is more technology and enterprise. The discovery of cheap cures is actively suppressed. Modern medicine wants to sell you pills, not cure your problem. Granted, people's health and longevity are at an all-time high. But the costs of this "prosperity" is a rather large bill, inflated for maximum profits by those who least need or merit it. Medical "science" is at least 80% medical business. _________________________________________________________________ I can't change font or size or colors, Davester...but I just want to so say here, OMG!!! I'm so excited you are on the same page as me with this!!! BTW they are working on a vaccine for cancer. God forbit they should admit the facts in naturopathic medicine which cure it. what would they do for permanent income? xoxoxoKath |
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| | | | | 3926.61 in reply to 3926.55 | |
A great deal of this money goes into finding home remedies or native remedies and extracting the active ingredients, patenting them, and then mass producing that active ingredient while promoting it through massive advertisement. ____________________ Boyoboy would I love having you aboard on this in a significant way. This is so true!!! and big pharma spends so much money on campaigns to discredit naturopathic medicine. xoxoKath |
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