Intra-page Grail sublinks: [True Salvation 'Grail', His Thinking] [Satan's Religious Grail: Magical Blood] [Satan's Rev12-17 Grail Plan to unite Fake Church and Fake Christ] [vs. God's Grail Plan: DDNA Marital Unity in Son's Thinking] [Satan's out to Substitute the Groom] [So Satan sponsors mere DNA, to counter DDNA] [Satan's DNA+Political Power, completes Fake Groom] [So mankind battles over the Fake Groom, thus missing the Real One]
Blood, circulates in the body. Thought, circulates in the soul. Blood is mindless, a collection of corpuscles run by DNA instruction sets. Thought is wholly immaterial, and designed to be choosing DDNA, God's Instruction set, aka The Thinking of Christ, aka The Bible. So the real you is your soul, not your body. Human life is your soul, not your body, which is why no human can evolve. So in the Bible, blood always depicts thought, when used of a human being, since what's alive, is your soul -- body is just a bucket of biology. So "blood" in the sacrifices, is a metaphor to show what Isa53:11 says bluntly, that Thinking pays for sins: "Then the Lord delights to PLUNDER.. from His Soul's [pregnancy] labor" -- no physical blood, there. For, sins are types of Thinking (volition thinks), so paying for sin requires COUNTER-Thinking 'labor', to birth our salvation. That's what happened on the Cross, since God is Pure Thought, so can only be paid By Means Of Thinking, Phili2:5-10.
Of course, God's Truth has many enemies. Most of them are rather stupid, too. For example, it's hard to remember you are in the 21st century, when you hear the still-prevalent medieval myth that Christ's physical blood had anything whatsoever to do with our so-great salvation. The pagan mythical idea of physical blood being able to produce a magical result goes back to Abel, and is a mutation of Abel's recognition of Messiah coming to pay. The myth itself is but a mutation of what Satan told the woman, that she could get knowledge magically from a piece of fruit, in Gen3. So when the opportunistic Roman Catholic Church used the pagan idea of Blood to cannibalize the Eucharist (despite the clear meaning in Luke 22:19 and 1Cor11:25), people greedily drank it up. Every Mass. It's not the RCC's fault -- they always cannibalized pagan religious practices, thinking that by doing so they could save people thus entering the 'fold' of the Church. And probably, they did. Yet even post-Reformation, the myth lingers: can you imagine, the mainstream idea of how Christ paid for sins, is deemed a physical thing? Just like the woman thought of touching the forbidden fruit (which God never said), in Gen3 (compare to Gen2:17).
The LXX is really useful in deciphering how the Hebrew text is to be read. What's cool about Gen2:17 is how "apothaneisthe" is used. Greek preposition "apo" has the root meaning of proceeding OUT from a SOURCE. So apotheneskw, the Greek verb usually truncated in English as "to die", means from the SOURCE of the first DEATH, comes the second. So you know God isn't saying that dippy thing alleged scholars always say about the doubling of the verb being an intensity. It's far more than that: thinking is the source of all the pain you will ever have. If you were physically dead or unconscious, you'd not experience pain. So talk about intense! Because one dies spiritually, disconnected from God, one's life is intensely DEAD, even while living. How's that, for economy of Bible wording -- just pair up a known word with a known prepositional origin to its non-prepositional cognate noun, to express What Kind Of Death Needs To Happen On The Cross. For, Bible always uses etymological nuances to communicate foundational truths. Is God a genius, or what?
Look, see for yourself: there are billiions upon billions upon billions of sins to pay for. And for each such sin, a living person sinned by thinking (action merely follows on thought, always -- that's how your body works). So then if Christ had to die physically or bleed physically for sin, then He'd be dying over and over again. The writer of Hebrews is extremely painstaking on the point that Christ's death was spiritual, not physical, which is in part why the Mosaic law didn't save -- it had to use physical death; and necessarily so, to depict the Spiritual Death that is ONCE for all. Because, until a Soul could be built with enough DDNA (aka Truth, aka Bible) to Counter-Think while all those waves after waves of sins hit That Soul, sins could only be depicted as covered/atoned for with 'shadow' images (theme of Hebrews 10). The physical is dead from birth onward, which is why you can't do any works to be saved. Duh. So if you can't do any works with your body to be saved, then of course no physical anything can be done FOR you to save you (major theme in the NT, especially in Romans, Galatians and Hebrews). God couldn't make it clearer. What, does God have a body? So how can you do with a body, for Someone Who has no Body? What, why else was Christ a Lamb: lambs don't do, anything. They eat and die. So Christ ate the Word and thus BECAME the Truth, YH+WH, completed. So He BECAME in His SOUL the sacrifice of the Cross, and hence ho logos tou staurou, the WORD of the Cross. Word, thinking, paying for thinking. The punishment fit the crime, and by His being lacerated with our javelin thrusts of sins ON His Soul, we are healed, Isa53. God couldn't make it clearer.
Trace the Book of Hebrews, which is the flagship book on this topic. See for yourself. [Tracing out the mechanics of the Cross in Bible will take several years, and would be a great topic for a doctoral thesis. And be a true scholar: start with and stick with the Bible. False scholarship (which is sadly the norm) uses other 'respected' folks' opinions and feelings, and very little fact; which 'scholarship' would be inadmissable in a criminal trial, and should be inadmissable in academia/science. No one should be 'convicted' of an idea based on other opinion, but based on fact, right? So: start by tracing moth tamuth references and their LXX equivalents; then all the "heart" and "blood" verses; then how the Bible differentiates between thanatos and nekros -- you'll need some idea of the Greek Attic Drama lit differentiation between those two nouns and the cognate verbs, to get Bible's wordplay. Some of the "blood" verses are listed below, to get you started on your own hard-core research. BibleWorks or software like that makes it much easier to trace what Bible says throughout Bible. Book of Hebrews uses the SSD as a subtheme to explain why it works, and thus why the Mosaic law was obsoleted; other major chapters are 1Cor15, 2Cor5, Colossians 1-2, and 1Peter3. Verses on His Unique Physical Death (as VICTORY testimony) which you should cross-examine in the original-language texts: Ps16:10, Luke 22:43, Acts 2:31, Eph4:9, Acts 2:27, Luke 23:46, Jn19:10, Luke 23:50-53. Verses on Resurrection, which was the next step, Jn2:18-22 (His Own Role); Acts 2:24, Rom6:4, Eph1:20, Col2:12, 1Thess1:10, 1Pet1:21, all showing Father's role; Rom1:4, Rom8:11, 1Pet3:18 on Spirit's Role. Also, whenever Bible talks of foundational doctrines, it wittily uses wordplay and etymological bases to stress foundationality in the original language texts: so also becomes very deft in the use of prepositions, case endings, etc. -- as we saw, in the LXX of Isa53:10-12. So you can't do any valid research on what the Bible says, except IN those texts. Hence it will take some years: in a sense, you can never research it enough, but you can prove Substitutionary Spiritual Death and not physical death, is what Bible says happened ON the Cross, blow-by-blow. The Physical death is Proof of the Spiritual Death's Success, or you and I wouldn't go to heaven when we die, get it? So: if you'll do this research, use 1Jn1:9, ask Father in Son's name to take you through the Bible for your proof. (One reason Bible is so repetitive is that we are all different and need certain wording to "get" what God means. What verse 'clicks' for me might not work for you, even if we both were equal; for we are each unique.) And keep on at it, in God's System. So you won't be embarrassed, at the Bema.]
See all "heart" verses, so you can tell that SOUL THINKING is what "heart" designates metaphorically. So you see readily why God picked animal blood, to designate the future Messiah's Thinking Payment on the Cross. Then also see "blood" verses like
See, the first principle of hermeneutics is that you should compare Scripture with Scripture. Not, with men's traditions. Blood is likened to many a non-physical pattern of living/thought, to show what God means. You can't live without blood circulation, and you can't live the spiritual life without the Word circulating in you, main theme of 1Jn. So no salvation value goes to corpuscles which have no thinking capacity in them. Even common sense proves that His 'Blood' must be a Bible metaphor of His Thinking: it takes THOUGHT to sin, and it took THOUGHT to pay for sin. Again, only a person with zero Spirit in him could claim otherwise. Bible is too plain.
Dare you to find one verse in the Bible which says His Physical Blood did anything at all with reference to salvation. And you know it didn't, because He was dead when the soldier pierced His Side, all that coagulated blood coming OUT. Repeat: He was already dead when that happened. Some people watch too many sci-fi movies, to hallucinate that Infinite God would need physical blood, to do anything.
For think: if Christ's physical death contributed something, then why didn't Adam's? But that's not what the Bible says: "for all sinned when Adam sinned." And: "in Adam all die, in Christ shall all be made alive." Those two quotes are Rom5:12 and 1Cor15:22, respectively. Note the context of both passages. BEING ALIVE means THINKING. Duh: You Are ALIVE When You Sin, So A LIVING Person With Living Thought Must Counter-Think The Thought You Had. Now do you see why Paul keeps stressing "living", in Romans 6? If that person merely died physically, what actually paid for your living thought? Christ LIVES forever, theme of Romans 6. So A Living Payment Lives Forever, Which Is The Only Reason Why We Can Live -- ibid. So also, when He died spiritually, He was THINKING, and LIVING physically: so, it hurts more, no? Doesn't it hurt to have sin? What hurt, does a dead person have? How could a spiritual fault be paid by a physical death, since physicality, is soulless? Sheesh. Even the animal in the OT sacrifices, bled to death while still living. Hint hint. So it's a mismatch to claim that anything physical, does a spiritual job. Those sacrifices were gruesome on purpose. The Cross is gruesome -- because HE WILL BE ALIVE THE WHOLE TIME HE PAYS.
A whole lot of teachers, heads of seminaries, and degreed people of all kinds who trump the literal-blood-payment insanity, are gonna be embarrassed at the Bema, for having been such traitors to the Cross. Pray for them, so that hopefully they will wake up before they die, and recognize the bigger meaning of the Cross. And avoid embarrassment for themselves, and all those others who respect them. I'd rather be boiled in oil, than to demean the Cross as a physical-death thing. And then have to know I screwed up like that.. forever. No one ever grows up to Pleroma level who mistakes the Cross' payment as a physical thing. If the person doesn't wake up to the fact that it was Only Thinking, the person never even begins to understand the spiritual life, and hence never lives it. Which means, 99.99999% of Christendom will never live the spiritual life: they want too badly to say something THEY do, 'counts'. Pray for them all.
Now you know why God rolled out Scripture in the 19th century, and had its interpretation, escape the control of the elites. But we still need the elites. So pray for them to wake up to the Real Bible, and finally learn it, rather than persisting in man's old traditions and mistranslations of Holy Writ? God is the God of Authority, and this prayer is one of the most powerful you can pray. As you saw in the First Aspect, God really means it when He says you can ask for anything in His Son's Name, so long as you are in God's System. Doesn't matter, your puniness. Does matter, Christ's Total Payment On The Cross. So pray fearlessly, use the protocol. And watch the deliverance of the Lord...
I'm too embarrassed for the teachers, to say anything more specific about their gaffes; you can read them for yourself, on the internet. Come the Bema, Judas, who was a believer (couldn't be a disciple unless saved) will look white as snow compared to them! Pray for them: they occupy pulpits and seminaries and can yet be alerted by God to wake up and smell the coffee, so they can avoid being embarrassed. Pray for them, don't 'straighten them out' with the correct answer; cuz you wouldn't like it if someone did that to you (we none of us like someone else telling us how wrong we are). God alone knows what their soul kinks are which need re-wiring, anyway; and hasn't He already done a lot of re-wiring, for us who now know better? What, could anyone get fixed, if God Alone doesn't do it? So: they obviously don't know 1Jn1:9 and God's System, so need someone who does to pray for them. We need them, too, since it's really hard work to be in the ministry, and if they finally got straight on Bible, wow -- what a great spiritual understanding they could get and be caused to give those learning under them!
Hence we exist. Hence we are able to get that same Thinking, "treasure in earthen vessels", 2Cor4:7. Hence the command to learn His Thinking, 2Pet3:18. Hence Paul's prayer that we do so, Eph3:15-19. Notice the building metaphors used in that passage, as well as the macro building result in Ephesians Chapter 2 and 4:13. Thinking must be BUILT. The woman was "built" for Adam (Hebrew word "banah"), and the Bride must be "built" for the "Last Adam", Our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. That's entirely what life is about down here, for the believer. You have a choice to make: "what think ye of Christ". How much, do you want to be made by God, compatible with your Savior? The more compatible you are made, the closer you will be to Him. Forever. For the "Bride" is a kingdom, and not everyone in that kingdom chooses to be close to Him. As we saw in the Third and Fourth Aspects, in fact over 99% of believers will have made the choice to be rather far away. For they don't want to learn Him. They want flash, instead. To engage in a lifetime of what amounts to daily, college-style Bible classes, and then spend the rest of the day using that information in daily life as a way of sharing His Thinking 24/7, doesn't appeal. They would rather have bread-and-circus. Satan&Co. are only too happy to oblige them.
Hence the Bible itself is the True Grail, the Thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ: the OT, His Thinking as God, and the NT, His Thinking as Humanity. The Bible codifies this thinking for humanity so one may choose to get that same thinking, and have ever-increasing real rapport with Him. The promise of this codification is a central theme in Scripture, as noted above and in all my other websites, for the promise of eternal relationship with God, is the heart of God's Plan for the human race. This promise must be believed to be had, since God is Love, and will hence never coerce anyone to choose Him. If believed, then the first belief, is faith in Christ alone for salvation, John 3:16. Once thus saved, the individual may choose to get in God's System, and learn his oh-so-great Savior. To assure the believer that this is indeed 'okay', we have the wonderful First Commandment -- can't love a God you can't first learn. Hence, we have a Book to learn. The above Four Aspects explained how this learning, changes your thinking (at your discrete consent, always) via the Holy Spirit, in God's System.
In short, there are no works man can do, for human power cannot make a DDNA change. Only God can do that. In short, it's learn, not earn, and only God causes that to happen to you. All you bring, is your volition; which is a pleasure to do, since God is pleasurable to know, Ps1:2, 9:2, 13:5, 16:11, 119 (written during the to-Babylon death march, during torture)! "How precious your thoughts are to me, Oh God!" David happily wrote in Ps139:17. [Translation needs to be fixed, but that is the standard rendering. David's making wordplay on the purpose of God, and His Head, idea of David having a head to see God's Head. But I digress...] David understood that the whole happy meaning of life, is seeing God's Thinking, and he writes about that fact often. David wrote most of the Psalms; David is famously recorded in Bible has having had a number of paramours; so clearly God's love for David (1Sam13:14, Acts 13:22) DIDN'T require David be religious.
Of course, Satan&Co. have always sold blood as a magical, physical thing. Whether it's RCC cannibalism on drinking His Blood (patent misuse of Remembrance in Luke 22:19ff and 1Cor11:22-24); or, the more common pagan ideas like racial superiority or drinking blood helps conquer foes -- man likes magical blood. Makes him feel superior. So for centuries, since Satan&Co. like buffooning, they've promoted these slapstick ideas. Ancient cultures are rife with them. So many myths abound, about physical blood conferring power, buying stuff, totally satirizing the blood-of-the-covenant TEACHING (which a MIND has to get, not a body).. from Gen3:15 onward. So the magical idea that Christ shed His physical blood for a thought crime (sin), lingers in many forms. Anything to get man's eyes off His Thinking and on to something man can pride himself doing, as if the Bible were only a paperweight.
For it was Satan, not God, who invented religion in Genesis 3. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, is Satan's religious plan for the human race: oh, if you do this stupid thing, eat this stupid thing, you will be as good as God. ["God's Transmuting Plan" link at pagetop, covers this topic in greater detail in its "Religious transmutation fantasy" section.] In the Hebrew and Greek text, "good-and-evil" is a hendiadys, meaning it's all one thing. What's 'good', is ipse Evil. In English, you're supposed to translate a hendiadys with hyphens, to show the 'unity'. Here, a unity of 'good', being evil. [See also "pastor-teacher" of Eph4:11; it's one office held by one individual; so the term means that God gifts many "pastor-teachers", but not pastors who are not teachers or teachers who are not pastors: idea being, the pastor's job is to teach.] But who would follow religion, if Bible translating committees allowed the hyphen demanded by the Bible's God-breathed, original languages? Whoa: you'd know 'good', wasn't! As my best friend often quips, "they gotta keep those butts in the pews." For religion is all about, CONTROL.
Being under authority which she didn't like for whatever reason or ir-reason, she LIKED hearing evil said about God. And Satan lost no time insuinating that God was WITHHOLDING KNOWLEDGE by prohibiting eating the fruit of that tree. So Satan introduced the concept of MAGIC as a property of inanimate fruit: if you eat this fruit, you will get the Knowledge Elohim is withholding, and you will be as good as Elohim. Satan says "Elohim" in Gen3 as an epithet, and vilely: turning God into just a collection of attributes, de-personalizing Him. She didn't object to that slur on God's Character, either. (English equivalent is to call someone by a last name or nickname in an insulting manner, as if the person were a dog to be ordered around.)
So, she being already upset with authority and wanting ANYTHING else, was actually pleased by this replacing proposition of magic. Remember, she was a genius -- but here, negativity makes her quite stupid. Thus you see her motive in the original sin: to be as good as in order to get rid of being under authority. A bid for independence. As if dependence were a bad thing, a demeaning thing, a slavery. And so the human race has thought, ever since she ate.
Adam, looking at his wife post-eating, had a different dilemma. She was his wife. He loved her. God allowed this thing to happen. Adam also felt responsible, for surely he did something wrong to motivate her disinterest, and after all he didn't stop her from all those conversations with what he had to know was a Satan-indwelt 'pet'. For surely she talked about it with him. For he was right there beside her when she ate that fruit: else how could he take it out of her hand, capisce? [Inspired BHS and LXX text shows Satan's talking to both of them, i.e., the 2nd person PLURAL of Gen3:5.] So Adam must have also bought the lie that this magic fruit would make him as good as God, even though the reverse truth stared him in the face, in the form of his wife. But she was seductive now, aggressively so. Adam hadn't seen her be so powerful, before. How could he resist?
So now Adam must decide for the woman, or God. It was no contest. So for a different reason, Adam rejects God: his love for the woman. In the name of a mere human, God gets rejected. Oh, helping/being loyal to the human is good, better than siding with God! And so the human race has thought, ever since he ate.
The fallout from the Fall was psychological. First, all learning about God was completely trashed, as the spiritual connection was severed: "dying spiritually, you will die physically" is how my pastor translates the fallout clause in Gen2:17 (which you can prove true, if you run the clause through the BHS/LXX texts of the OT). Secondly, since God is truth and "Good and Evil" is not, all THAT thinking replaced what had been in man. So now man thinks like Satan, not God. Since man is so puny, what he can DO with that thinking is impotent, but his innate wiring -- which the DNA of the brain perpetuates, hence the term "born in sin" -- his innate wiring, is like Satan's:
And so the human race has been, ever since. Hence "good" is Evil. Religious, since that's the quest to be 'clean'. Popular. Promoted. Public. So long as it's popular to wear your underwear on your head, that practice will be lauded. Doesn't matter, that the practice is stupid. It will never be popular to believe in God or learn God, therefore, even among those who at least once during their lifetimes, 'obeyed' John 3:16. For they don't want to learn Him. They want flash, instead. To engage in a lifetime of what amounts to daily, college-style Bible classes, and then spend the rest of the day using that information in daily life as a way of sharing His Thinking 24/7, doesn't appeal. They would rather have bread-and-circus. Satan&Co. are only too happy to oblige them.
Hence religion, the same gambit as in Genesis 3, will be promoted, purchased, and perenially popular -- and for the same reasons. Just turn on your television, watch all the religiosity, parade! The 'female' reason for religion, is a bid for independence, as if dependence were bad; the 'male' reason for religion will be in the name of loyalty to the 'female' reason. Hence controlling it, in the name of 'good'. So the 'male' side of religion, will use nice, unctuous tones, feel-good ceremonies with lots of color and base appeal; or, violence. Depending on what appeals to the mass, at the moment. Which the smart religious leader, will know how to engender. Hence will sell control TO those who 'obey' it, so they can mass on the 'right' side, and thus feel like the Most High, just like Isa14:13-14. All the while, being marionetted by Satan&Co. Strings pulled, kinda like how Satan controlled that four-legged reptile. Graduated now, to bipedal ones which smile as they trap you, so you like how the trap, feels. And you dance to their tune, fancying yourself independent, worthy of God.
Since man has a reasoning brain, the thrall can be even more exquisite, if painful. For one can thus imagine the self a martyr, like Adam did. Giving up the self for the greater good. Like Satan did. For the messianic desire feeds ego even more, than pleasure itself. Which is why you have Satan thinking he will replace the Most High, Isa14:13-14. After all, the Son of God was going to take on Humanity and become the Messiah, which the angels all knew. How that humanity was going to come into being, well.. they didn't know. It was to be their eschatalogy, and the meanwhile they were to learn God's Thinking, since He's infinite and they are not. When the right time came, then they'd have the pleasure of passing on what they learned to that humanity, as His Servants. Of whom, Satan was chief. But Satan came to doubt God's motives, came to distrust God's explanation of Himself, as Love. So in the name of rescuing the angels and the future human race from this lying Elohim, Satan chose what we know as Isa14:13-14, I will ascend and make myself like the Most High. Which didn't work, of course. But the messianic zeal, only got stronger. So pain proves how right Satan is. And he's out to share that pain, with the humanity the Most High, paid for. Derisively. So to do that, he must show a little leg, create little addictive pleasures, so man will keep on pulling the religious lever, baby.
And human history records his runaway success.
So religion is always the mortal enemy of God, in all its forms; even and especially when it calls itself 'Christian', Rev17. That chapter is about how a FAKE CHURCH would begin to superimpose itself over God and Bible, claiming to represent both. The year Revelation was written, was 96AD, and it was given to the last surviving apostle, John, to write during his exile on Patmos (Caesar Domitian had exiled him there). In that very year, a letter called "Clement I" was written by someone who was trying to become a papal authority. There is zero evidence of any Roman office of pope being accepted, even at the time of that letter: 'Clement' sought to get authority over the Corinthians who strenuously had rejected it on Biblical grounds; so you know right away 'Clement' was NOT a pope, and that the Bible didn't provide for such an office, either. [I don't know who the real author is. It's ascribed to Clement, but back in those days, all kinds of false Gospels and other written material were ascribed to people who didn't write them. That's why the Apochrypha and pseudipigrapha are also suspect. Their content is so silly, you wonder how anyone could even imagine granting them any higher status than the goofball stories in the National Enquirer.] PopeMyth.htm has more details, and has a link to the letter. For much more information on what happened during that first century, start with LvS4a.htm, which is the first subpage of Part IV of the "Thinking" series.
To promote religion, Satan&Co. use all human devices: especially, those most integral to communication and emotion. Thus, any number of emotional gimmicks will be employed, such as pomp and ceremony, respectability and 'miracles', rousing sermons and other feely tactics. Idea is to hook you on the feeling, so you will buy the demonic doctrine pitched. The chief difference between normal human group goofiness and demon-sponsored goofiness, is that the latter is always about something Biblical. The second major characteristic is that the goofiness is simultaneously turned on like a faucet, over very large, diverse groups of people (i.e., not merely everyone at a rock concert going dreamy-eyed). It turns off as quickly as it turns on. So when on, the huge numbers of people obsessed, evince characteristics of mental illness (obsessiveness being chief among them). Yet when the 'faucet' turns off, no lingering obsession remains. Puppetting. Man, obviously, can't do that to himself or to his fellows, or we'd have world peace by now.
Doesn't matter, that some other religion's concepts, icons or heroes are nominally used to ridicule -- the root idea expressed in the goofiness intentionally points at Bible: so if you look for the Biblical character/counterpart, you'll find one. The ridiculing connection made will be in a specific context, not standing alone; it will be way too satirically witty for a human to dream up; and it will usually include conceptual play on the original-language texts of the Bible (but not always, sometimes playing on translations, instead). Since not one person in a million even knows anything about those texts; since not one in 20 million could decipher the connections across Scripture; since the same characteristics are in satirically-witty wordplays in the holy books and also point to Bible, well.. you know it's a demon-sponsored thing, not man's natural tendency to be silly. Moreover, man doesn't ridicule himself. Two prime examples of demon-sponsored goofiness are theories and 'evidence' of 1) evolution (=animism+metempsychosis), and 2) ghosts or aliens (=demons' characteristics). The Appendix of the "Thinking" series covers this topic in more detail. [Evolution is a ridicule on those who consider themselves scientific or intelligent, for the construct fails the first law of math, that no set can contain itself. Furthermore, evolution is just a trussed-up version of animism and metempsychosis, the religious idea that you transmogrify over unspecified eons toward nirvana or back to a lower lifeform, based on how moral a life you last led. The Greek version of this same idea at least was more rational, attributing to superior 'gods' the ability to transmute you. In both versions, however, something YOU did was able to generate this change, and since that exactly reflects Isa13:13-14, the passage is in essence advertised by promoting evolution. With respect to ghosts and aliens, see the "Mothman" link in the Appendix of the "Thinking" series.]
Of course, demon-sponsored goofiness often directly ridicules something Biblical, such as today's national US news (4/21/05, NBC) that a salt stain on the underpass of a major Chicago freeway, is the Virgin Mary, 'appearing'. Thousands are attending 'her', replete with candles, pictures of the dead Pope Paul II, and flowers. Much weeping. There was also a report 'she' appeared in a grilled cheese sandwich. A few years ago in Texas, 'she' appeared in a cooking tortilla. (20 years ago, no national network would bother to air such a stupidity. Today, it was actually treated as a quasi-real event. Cautiously. Cateringly. With live camera and interviews.) Why anyone thinks Omnipotent God would order such degrading 'miracles', I can't fathom. He never did anything remotely like that in the Bible; however, demons routinely do that sort of stuff, as the OT and Gospels so poignantly illustrate. So how is it, when the demonic behavior in The Book is repeated live before our eyes, we don't recognize its source? Worse, we call it from God????? Yeah, the god of this world, mocking us!
I thought it a particularly nice touch the demons would use a salt stain which looks like a narrow flowing Bell curve, dripping down a concrete support for the underpass. "Salt" means Bible everywhere IN the Bible, idea of it preserving you from worldly thinking, and hence preserving the world. See the salt parables in the NT. Water, of course, is another metaphor for the Word. I'm not sure how to regard "concrete", though surely that was around back in Jesus' day (all that Roman construction wasn't marble, you know). Oh -- since building imagery, using common materials, is a favorite of the apostle Paul's, and Paul was the only virgin apostle, maybe that's why they picked concrete (a common substance, easily mixed), too. "Koine" means common, and a main theme of the NT is that common folk can become Pleroma heroes simply by living in God's System. It's not an elitist life, the legacy of Christ. Even a brain-damaged person can grow up to the "fullness of Christ", Eph4:13 ("unity" there should be translated "System", hence my use of the term "God's System", which is exactly what Greek term "henotes" in that passage, means).
I'm also not wholly sure what's the joke with the grilled cheese sandwich and the cooking tortilla, except that both required oil to fry, and "oil" is always a metaphor for God the Holy Spirit's teaching ministry (as well as a sign of royalty), so an "anointing" means you're under Him. Bread and its equivalent, corn, are staples (though they didn't have corn in Jesus' day).. and the Bread analogy means both Christ's Body and His Thinking (starting with Passover). Oh, but a tortilla is flat, so 'bread' leavened or unleavened, the latter being required for Passover, which means the bread was FLAT! Aha! (While 'leaven' is a metaphor for sin, leavened bread doesn't mean sin, but 'normal' food, during non-Passover days). Notice how all these joking metaphors point at Bible, nonetheless. Every demon game has characteristics like these -- plays on Bible metaphors which no human is smart enough to do. Kinda like a fingerprint. Common metaphors every schoolchild is taught. Yet no one notices, heh. What a joke on us.
According to the NBC reporter, the Vatican would neither confirm nor deny, nor send an emissary to investigate, the Chicago 'appearance' of the Virgin Mary. Guess it doesn't matter if one's parishoners are thus welcome to believe a lie. Of course, when the sun turned around backwards at Lourdes oh-so-long-ago, it didn't matter then, either. No one said, "God wouldn't do a stupid thing like that to show Himself!" It didn't matter, either, in the case of the 'shrine' of Fatima, nor in the case of any 'crying statue', nor in any of thousands of insulting 'miracles' no Real God would ever do. Clearer evidence of the anti-God character of religion, one couldn't have, since ALL religion is just as 'silent', when the 'miracle' in question, serves to promote that religion. Mark's Gospel is positively scathing on that topic. Probably written just before the Temple was destroyed by Titus (70AD), the Gospel's rhetorical theme is that Christians still want God to be a dog, doing tricks for them: just like the generation which actually saw Christ do real miracles. [Mark's frequent use of "euthus", usu. translated "immediately" alerts the reader to the impending cause of the Temple's destruction, so the Gospel was probably composed as a result of Paul's and Peter's deaths, circa 68AD, as a warning to leave Jerusalem. The seige of Jerusalem was protracted with many relaxations, but when Vespasian ascended as Emperor in 69AD, Titus had to resolve the problem permanently.] So, even when the Real God does a real miracle, which is never stupid and always meant to teach something, well.. people just want its titillation, not its teaching. That was true then, that is true now. So while religion is Satan's tool, it has plenty of human adherents. THAT, is not Satan's fault, but ours.
So here in April 2005, notice the fawning, mesmerized quality of media reporting and popular attention, concerning two main elements in the Rev12-17 prophecies regarding Satan's strategy for world control: 1) the FAKE CHURCH, and 2) alleged descendants of Jesus the Christ. You just know these fawning and mesmerized people, are totally unaware of those prophecies. Look: the combination of the Pope's death and the runaway success of the The Da Vinci Code, resulted in the current media attention on both elements, since the latter is a fictional novel about the persecution of alleged descendants of Christ BY the Roman Catholic Church. That a real death and a fictional novel rehashing again the old Grail myth can be combined for national television and cable, with so much obsessive public interest in both, is alarming. The lock-step fawning in the reporters and other media professionals is even more alarming. What used to be the stuff of Tribulational movies one scoffed at as too goofy to really happen, is now real news. We had earlier 'appetizers' of this fawning feast in the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana, her funeral, the O.J. Simpson Trial. But now this kind of stuff is happening over a much broader scope of topics. As if anything is an occasion for mesmerized attention. Today, it's a Pope's death, at a time when worldwide interest in Roman Catholicism, is at an all-time-low. Today, it's a criminal trial of a singer's alleged pederasty (which I don't personally believe happened), Michael Jackson. [Though the trial of Lizzie Borden excited the same kind of goofy interest.] Today, it's a furor over the whether his sister showed a pasty during Superbowl half-time (still a furor, though the 30-second slip, happened last year). In short, this combined Pope-and-Grail obsession is but a part of an overall trend of increasing obsessions, none of which make any sense. Unless, of course, demons are herding the thing. Since the topic is Biblical, assume that they are, especially since the obsession is worldwide, not just in the US. That's one of their favorite ways of advertising themselves and mocking us, as the Gospels (especially Mark's) painfully prove.
Whether Christ actually married and had kids, has long been a popular topic of debate: the so-called "cult of the Magdelene" is based on that claim. Moreover, there are currently 'pretenders' out there making a similar claim (i.e., Prince Michael Stuart, though I can no longer find his official website). Note carefully that these 'pretenders' are all European: the popular book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, published (I think) in 1982, was based upon one such pretender, an allegedly royally-descended Frenchman of the Plantard-Saint Clair line. That line, as well as the others, all meanderingly derive from King Clovis I (aka "Clodwig" more on him below); and Clovis, from Merovech/Merowig (Meroveé, in French). According to the many legends about him, a mystical priest-kingship was claimed by Meroveé, deriving from a Trojan (Grecian) merging of kingly bloodlines with the Jewish tribes of Judah, Benjamin, and Dan. Somewhere in all that you'll find a claim folding in the Magdelene with the Merovingian line; or, instead of the Magdelene, folding in the lost ruling house of Israel (aka "disposyni"). In the Magdelene cult, it's claimed she bore Christ a daughter named Sarah who eventually married some monarch (I forget who). All this is the stuff of myth and legend, you can't prove any of it; what you can prove, is that the Merovingian kings were very into the occult, and.. um, 'wanton'. To the extreme. However, there are real claimants today, and in the past, all of them European, aka "the West" in the Bible. ["real claimants" doesn't mean their claim is valid, but that they are real people.]
So note: Revelation 17 occurs when the FAKE CHURCH and the "King of the West" (who claims to be Christ or a descendant of him).. UNITE. You know this interpretation from the larger context of Rev12-17; from many OT passages on the same subject, like Daniel 9, 12, Zechariah 12, and many other passages in Isaiah and other prophets. (The prophecy was unveiled piecemeal, as elements became relevant to the generation needing those teachings at the time; so Bible prophecy isn't nicely limited to one book in the Bible.) Once you go through them all (and it takes a few years of study in the original-language texts so you don't hallucinate what Bible says), you get the picture that
We are not in the Tribulation: Part IV of the "Thinking" series exhaustingly explains the basis for the "Rapture" (a Latin Vulgate term, Anglicized) being the kickoff for the Tribulation. However, Revelation 12-17 is also a stamped trend of history, before the Tribulation commences (also explained in Part IV). Politico-religious world rule, like the Tower of Babel and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, is always Satan's plan for the human race. With it he hopes to create a counterfeit of the Millenium, a nice world which needs no God. If he can pull that off, he thinks he beats God. So Satan's strategy never varies, except kaleidoscopically, in color and name (but not in color, with respect to the FAKE CHURCH). [You'd think the RCC would read Rev17, since they claim to be the real representatives of Christ; and then, amid much chagrin, change the scarlet and purple colors which for centuries has distinguished them! Proves no one reads the Bible, among them. The RCC dismissively treats all of Revelation as allegorical. Not a good decision! Of course, if they ever read the end of 1Peter, they'd stop claiming he died in Rome, since he never went there; if they ever did a search in the LXX on "Petra" they'd have to correct their position to say the word "Rock" refers to Christ and not Peter, in Matt16:18. So they've never read that verse in the inspired text.. for centuries?] Again, "Thinking" series has much more explanation.
So to join religion and politics via the mystical idea of a fake Christ, is really the only way he can forge that control and make what he feels will be a victory against God; which is why, he can't just use any religion, but must craft one he can call 'Christian'. So it can be 'headed', in the public eye, by someone he either passes off as Christ Himself, or.. more likely.. as a blood descendant of Christ. The latter idea is far superior, so he can get the Jews to unite, so he can get those wanting only a secular ruler, to buy into it. Remember, Revelation 13 talks about fantastic 'powers' being demonstrated by this 'beast' (the anti-christ being used as a substitute for Christ) and his prophet, which is why you have that miraculous statue in the not-God-authorized Rebuilt temple of Jerusalem. [Anyone is a Christian who has once in his lifetime believed in Christ via John 3:16's mechanics, no matter what he calls himself, no matter what religion he espouses. Christianity is a relationship, not a religion. Accordingly, "Church" isn't a religion either, but a type of fitted construction, Eph2, Eph4:11-16: "Church" is the aggregate mass of Christians, people who believe in Christ between Pentecost of June 30AD, and the Rapture. (Of course, those who believed in Him prior but were still alive ON that Pentecost, are in Church). It's a permanent body, aka "the Body of Christ" and has its own several covenant in Him. You can prove all this even in translation, if you look up all "Church" and "Body" and "Bride" references in the NT. "Saint" is simply another term for believer, stressing how he's been permanently saved (Greek word hagiazw means permanently-set-apart-to-God, usually translated "sanctify"; and hagios is its cognate noun, usu. translated "saint". The Bible term "mystery" refers to hidden knowledge which was unknown to the OT writers, and is a specialized moniker to designate the the Thinking of Christ which the Church gets to uniquely acquire in God's System. Hence, the Rev17 metaphor of a harlot 'mystery', designates a prostituted version of Church, with prostituted doctrines. So a believer IN that prostituted version, can indeed exist, since as just noted, it only took a nanosecond's faith in Christ to become a believer. Satan gets an extra thrill if he can use believers as harlots; and indeed you can prove by the doctrines touted (i.e., prolifers) that over 90% of Christianity today is playing the harlot by the Bible's definitions. So people are not the enemy, nor do we fight against them: Eph6. All this is part of Operation Footstool, and God is not threatened. We just choose to either be dazzled by the lie and get caught up in it (which 99% will choose), or to get in and stay in God's System. Freedom to choose is always guaranteed.]
In the 4th century, Satan&Co. forged just such a union (Constantine and his sons), but had no fake descendant he could use. A century later, he used Clodwig/Clovis. (It's real important to know that the Merovingian claim is not Christian, but to some degree, Jewish-kingship related. I can't prove how much and in what precise way. Looks more like it was related to Solomon and what we know as Sparta, that group of Greeks, but I can't be more specific. Nor can I find any near-contemporary material which indicates whether the Merovingians themselves made this claim. So it is more likely that people made up legends about them, including the idea of a Jewish bloodline/descendance from Christ. The dynasty did last a good 400 years, and in those days it was fashionable to attribute mystical powers to one's king. Kinda still is, when you think over how we overlaud and overcriticise, our leaders.) King Clovis I was, like Constantine, a 'convert' due to military victory. From Clovis came the Carolingian monarchy (not directly, but through gradual usurpation and marriage alliances), all of them having the same Rev17 structure (i.e., the Church crowned them kings). All this really began in earnest, way back in the 90's AD with the so-called "Church fathers", who basically supplanted the Bible with themselves as the replacing authority. (Undoubtedly, many of them didn't mean to supplant Scripture, either.) It took about 200 more years to attain the hegemony for a Constantine to 'convert'; thus this united scarlet (religious) and purple (political) anti-Christ structure dominated from Constantine until the Reformation. So Revelation 17's 'play' in history, is sordid, provable, and witty: Messiah is the Priest-King, see. So Satan&Co. are out to make a counterfeit Priest-Kingship. So since past is prologue, events here in 2005 are pointing to yet another bid by Satan to return back to those dark ages. All he needs, is one or more charismatic leaders who wow the world, and unite their 'cause' with the Roman Catholic Church. We don't have to be in the Tribulation for these bids to occur (though those ignorant of Bible, will think we are). It will be all the more sweet, in Satan's mind, if he can drum up another fake descendant of that selfsame Clovis. Since Clovis' kids were very promiscuous and prolific, there will be no shortage of folks he can use. Now you see why the attention to the Da Vinci Code, Gnostic Gospels (which are sillier than Mad Magazine), the Magdelene cult, etc. are paired. It's not the first time this gambit has been played, capisce?
Since unity among Christians is now an official goal of (the new) Pope Benedict XVI's administration, the current newswatcher better sees how Revelation 17 could realistically work in the future (purpose of prophecy is to teach, not titillate). Since all calls for unity precede war, since all calls for unity mean 1) there is massive DISunity and 2) a jockeying for power, you can expect those hostile to Christians will likewise unite, polarizing the world 'camps' still further. That's Satan's Gotterdamerung plan (why he tries to make the fake Millenium, in the first place). This same call to unity occurred last century before both WWI and WWII, and the resultant flurry of treaties, pacts, etc. proved to cause the war in both cases (because nations were bound to defend the others in the pact). We learn from history that we learn nothing from history. This trend is thus a precursor to a bid for hegemony, cloaking it in the name of the commonweal (same as the Russian and Chinese communists did, last century). If demon-sponsored, then religion will figure prominently (i.e., as it did in the Crusades and all Europe's religious wars); moreover, the group calling for unity (here, the papacy) wouldn't necessarily intend a power grab, and are but pawns being used. (However, RCC always has intended a power grab whenever it makes peace with other Christian factions, since the RCC idea of peace is everyone being under it in some way. That bid began roughly 10 years ago, with other ritualistic denominations. I haven't keep track as to how much progress has been made, so can't report on it. Presumably you can find stuff on the web about it.]
The larger significance, however, is the ongoing war Satan&Co. fight against God. Since this is the larger truth, the believer does nothing but keep on learning in God's System. He avoids entanglement, because it's only God who does the fighting, theme of Eph6. We are supposed to read the times, not get out and push God's airplane. Don't be on the wrong side of history: just keep on keeping on in God's System, learning Him Who is Seated and Really Ruling.
Seriously: the god of this world wants everyone to get 'involved' so that everyone will have their eyes on things and people, and not on God. So you keep your eyes on God. And you can only do that, by keeping on keeping on in God's System. Thus you will be used to bless the world far more, even when breathing or brushing your teeth, than all of the famous people you see on television. If you doubt this, read "Corollary 3A" and following in Part III of the "Thinking" series (LordvSatan3.htm); then, "Diamond Doctrine Facets" of LvS4b.htm. Mirroring.htm documents with real dates in real history you can vet yourself how much time the entire planet received to keep living due to one individual (usually, 490 years per person). Just because that person believed in Him so strongly. So test it all yourself, breathing 1Jn1:9 as you do so (to avoid wrong conclusions and tail-chasing, since clearly the Holy Spirit's 'brainpower' is alone sufficient). This is but one believer's deposition on the topic, and you'll need more proof than my attestation!
By contrast, God's Goal is to unite you with His Son's Thinking.. Relationship, not religion-cum-politics which arrogantly passes itself off as divine. For He married you on the Cross. Individually. Personally. No intermediaries. Bible relentlessly explains that God's purpose is a relationship, not a religion. Paul, like Isaiah before him, is especially strident about how it's not religion but relationship, in Romans Chaps 4-8 (divorce from religion, man's preoccupations) and in all of Ephesians (esp. Chap4). Religion is completely evil, and even more -- irrelevant: a fetid and impotent opposition on its way to defeat, stand still and watch the deliverance of the LORD. You are thus instead, to calmly and daily acquire your portion of the True Grail Word, the Thinking of your Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ, 2Pet3:18, Eph4:11-16. For the whole purpose of the Bible, is to teach the believer about God. Not, about religion. [Since Eph 4:11-16 is always mistranslated, check out the corrected translation in RightPT.htm.] The "shemah" of Deut6:4, meant all that, which is why "hear" (=shemah) is the first word in it. Hearing was ALL they could do, since not all the Word was yet written down. But it would be. That it would be written down, was the promise Israel had looked forward to, yearning for the day when its shadow-worship (term is in Heb10) would end, and the LORD would be her Husband. You'll find many comments referencing this fact strewn throughout the OT, like in Ps138:2b (David, prostrate, which is why 139:17 reads as it does). Like Jer31:31-34, which is referenced and explained in Heb8:8-12-10:17, 1Cor13.
This 'marriage' relationship between Creator and a Bride has always been the central theme of the OT and New. Israel rejected Him, so in Matt16:18, He announces that on HIMSELF He will build a replacement Bride, the Church, of which "Petros" (diminuitive form of Petra, The Rock-Christ, so means a 'chip' of Him), would be a part -- Peter's not the Cornerstone, for crying out loud. (See, the woman was built from Adam's rib; so the Last Adam will get a Church Bride built from His Thinking: see also Eph2,4,5, 1Cor6, 12. Very witty.) So by Matt22, He makes this very wry analogy to show Father's longstanding order that they 'marry' Messiah (gamos is the marriage itself), using inheritance verbs like kalew, in the Greek; the language is very strong, even offensive (i.e., use of "duete" in 22:4), making pointed analogy to how Esther became queen. [If you don't know it's a command to MARRY Him, you'll misunderstand why they get punished for refusing. English is VERY misleading: so what else is new, sheesh. KJV is closest, but still too tame and ambiguous. Greek anakeimai in 22:10 is deliberately multiple-entendre; the Bride shall forever lie with her husband, so first reclines at table with Him, see. He's not talking about mere guests, and English has no proper equivalent translation for anakeimai. It's His Father's Table, get it? It's very understandable why this analogy was so offensive. But how else to warn them?] So, as Hebrews 4 explains, "there remains" a promise of Brideship outstanding, since Israel didn't enter the "rest" (really cool wordplay on salt/remnant). So, as the roster in Heb11 explains, it was never about religion, but about an Eternal Intimate Relationship With Him Who is Invisible. [Church does not ever replace Israel. It's a separate covenant. Part IV of the "Thinking" series painstakingly goes through the differences. So yes, Israel will still be the head nation in the Millenium, with the Lord ruling the world through her, and through those Pleroma believers of Church (the latter will be ruling Gentile nations). But Bride is Church, forever.]
Hey: Laban substituted the bride for Jacob, so why can't Satan create his own 'Leah'? So Satan's bid to marry religion and politics, to craft a FAKE CHURCH and FAKE CHRIST, is to prevent the Real Marriage of the Cross from being consummated. Hence God's Marital Proposal to the human race via the Cross, is contested by those who don't like that fact; Satan&Co. head and sponsor all opposition to it. For, the larger story is that mankind is involved in a DIVORCE Trial petition ("riv" in Hebrew, "pragma" in Greek) in which Satan&Co. allege that God is the guilty party. So religion is not at all an issue, being as it is rendered irrelevant, since God is Infinite and no one can even dream of doing anything which counts before Him, Romans 4:1ff. All of this Isaiah graphically explained, in Isa52:13-Chap55, with 55:9 being the summary: My ways are not your ways, nor My thoughts your thoughts. No amount of religion, can transform the person into a son of God. But God can do that. Do you want that compatibility to happen TO you? Then learn His Book, in God's System. Not, religion.
Satan counters by using the old lawyer's trick of False Definition, to make Bible look like a religious book; change the definitions of the words, and even when you read the Book, you can't read it. The clever lawyer will define the two sides in a trial INcorrectly, and he'll succeed if he can play to the jury's prejudices. He carefully picks just enough truth such that the opposition can't refute that portion, but will Sleight The Meaning And Add Prejudicial Ideas to the kernels of truth, building up different meaning to the kernels. You see this gambit all the time in advertising, too. A deoderant ad won't simply show the product and say it eliminates body odor, but will show some attractive person getting attention from the opposite sex in the next frame, after using the product. See the prejudicial lie, added? If you use this product, you'll be popular. That's a play to prejudice, for everyone wants to be popular, so it's easy to pre-judge the product as producing popularity. A repeated lie always becomes 'true' in the ears of the hearers, if repeated often enough. So now you're thinking about being popular, and it's associated with that product. So what you are not seeing, is that deoderant merely reduces body odor, but guarantees you nothing. So you become religious about using the product.
Satan thus defines issues for mankind into good deeds and gross sin; the gambit is if you do the first but not the second, you are 'approved'. But the truth is, you're not: neither of these obeys the First Commandment, and it's always and only about relationship to God. Rather, by defining the issues as good deeds and gross sin, God is cut out from your thinking, and your eyes are constantly on yourself and others around you. To focus on what you do, is to spurn God in favor of self, people, things. Greatest evil there is, actually, is to make an issue of anything except learning God, seeing God, etc. Might as well spit in His Face. If you love God you want to know everything about Him, your thoughts are on Him and how He is as a Person; if you don't love God your mind is on someone or something else in preference to Him. So it matters not at all, what good deeds or sins you do. It matters altogether, whether you are learning and thinking of and toward Him. The Son of God didn't stay solely God, but chose to add on Humanity and in that Humanity become King-Priest forever to Father, theme of Heb Chaps 5-10. So obviously, that's what "good" really is. So all man's vaunted good deeds, are really "filthy" as the Bible says, Isa64:6. No God in them, just ego. The writer of Hebrews communicates this in the Greek of 6:11-12 with such sanctified sarcasm, I wonder how the text avoids burning up my computer. Same, for 5:11 (which 6:12 cleverly references, the term "nothros" meaning "dull" like a knife is dull -- meaning no Word, Heb4:12). Same, for 5:11-6:6. Scathing.
Satan and mankind, however, allege that their good deeds have independent value which God should reward -- which is not true. For only Infinite Righteousness is worthy. So the allegation is evil, and comes from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. No such 'knowledge' was in mankind, pre-Fall. Now you know why. And look how ensnaring: so long as something YOU do or don't do is the cause of your merit, then YOU can be better than someone else. Man inherited terminal insecurity at the Fall. So he has this obsessive need to make himself better than someone else. Having bought the lie that some stupid fruit could make him as good as God, well.. all other lies which promise superiority, will be delicious. Now you know why ecumenical religion -- nay, all religion of any kind -- is always so popular.
Moreover, both good deeds and sin are irrelevant: since no good deeds are good (Isa64:6 again), and sin was nailed away on the Cross (theme of Rom6, inter alia). But with that satanic definition of right versus wrong, people are so prejudicially busy looking at what they are and do, they don't look at God. They use His Name all the time; but they never learn Him, since learning Him isn't in the satanic religious definition of right and wrong, get it? Bible is really a revelation of God's Nature and Character, told in a bizillion ways. The very words in their original languages, written exactly as they are (and you'd not believe how deft the original-language texts are) show His Character in so much glory, you'd never want to do anything else, once you finally learn how to see Him in those words. For the words, reflect the Thinking, and the Thinking, the Character of the Thinking. Beauty beyond description, without mysticism, magic, but with meaning everywhere. Overflowing, as David noted in Psalm 23:5. The 'chalice', the 'cup' of His Thinking is beyond compare. And Satan&Co. don't want anyone to drink it. So redefine everything, religiously. Since fallen man is naturally religious and hence rebellious, the religious redefinition is compatible with man's fallen nature, so he doesn't look at God. Instead, he looks at himself, constantly treading the hamster's treadmill of i'm-improving, going nowhere.
Worse, those who want religion, want status, and thus resent the unearned status the God in Grace freely accords the believer. Greek verb "hagiazw" means every person who ever once believes in Christ during his lifetime, is a saint. Made so forever, by Jesus Christ, "once for all time". So even the lascivious Corinthians, are addressed as "saints" by Paul. No election but God's makes you ever a saint (so popes or people electing you as one is worth bupkis); and even then, God's election is due to what Christ did (ibid). The verb was never used of OT believers, though of course their salvation is permanent as well. Rather, the verb is due to Church (body of believers, never a building) having a unique status in Christ, which Father purposed (Eph1-2), and a "portfolio of invisible assets" (my pastor's term) so vast, that you'd be bug-eyed if you really understood it: Paul's first sentence in Eph1's Greek (English is bad) runs 18 verses long, to rhetorically convey the unending vast wealth we have in Him. Fortunately, Bible is a pretty big book, so it takes years to learn what God hath wrought in Christ. So you discover your vast wealth, slowly. It's easier to take this huge shock one day at a time. (All of the "Thinking" series (accessible from the Home Page) is on that topic, running some 1600+ printed pages by now.) So the Christian is doubly-hated for doing nothing to earn such high permanent status, even though anyone can get the same status, simply via John 3:16 and living in God's System. So it's not as though anyone is being cheated. But oh, the religious will holler foul!
Yah, and Israel didn't earn her vast estates, either. On a far lower scale than ours, her grace gifts also resulted in a spiritual life provision of learn, not earn. God is infinite, so what he wants, is for you to Learn Him, First Commandment. Hence, back in the OT, Moses explained (in refrain) that Israel could do Nothing to warrant its landgrant, Deut 6:4-5, 7:7-10, 8:11-20, 9:4-6, etc (in context). For by grace we are saved, through faith (i.e., John 3:16). Not works. Religion is about works. God is about Grace. The two are eternal enemies, theme of Romans 8:1-10 and all Galatians.
So those who don't believe in Christ, believe in Religion, their substitute 'god', and are hence hostile to those who believe in the real God (main theme of Galatians). Never mind, that the unbeliever can belong to God in a nanosecond via 'obeying' John 3:16 -- oh no, he'd really rather just hate anyone who does obey it; just as, in the OT and even now, everyone is prone to hate the Jews God chose, especially those who obeyed Gen15:6 (which the aforementioned Deut passages, all affirm). Same, for the attitude of the carnal believer, one who lives outside God's System -- he hates anyone who lives in it. Romans 8 explains why: religion is the world's thinking, done up in God-trappings or no, aka "earthly things". But God is the antithesis of all that. So, He's hated for not providing man with some gimmick whereby man can preen.
Yet Matt4, Satan's triple siren song, is competitively sung in nearly every pulpit of every religion every day and always is featured in the news. Everyone falls all over each other, to outdo someone else in good deeds! You can't get away from the harping message to feed the poor, do something flashy, control other people -- all in the name of 'good'! -- unless you avoid the media completely: who cares about knowing God, helping people is what's right! Greater hatred of God could not exist, and mankind is bombarded with it, in this oh-so-modern communications, age. Funny thing, all this hypocrisy shows up pretty quickly in one's dealings with people, too -- lots of bombast to do good deeds, all of it manipulative. Wonder why.
For the need to be good, IS the sin nature: Part II of "Thinking" series spent a lot of time on the spiritual pathology of Adam's Fall. ["God's Transmuting Plan, Origin" link at pagetop takes you to Part II of the "Thinking" series.] (Psychology actually has quite a lot of proof of the sin nature, though psychology doesn't realize that fact.) The sin nature's need to be good is a leftover genetic (DNA) programming 'memory' of the GUILT of succumbing to that stupid Tree. So there is this constant urge to be good, in order to undo or atone for that guilt. It's impossible, to fulfill. Hence man has this mindless, insane need to be good. It's a congenital defect, with no recourse: until you die, your body will torture you with its loopy need to be good. [Hence the virgin Birth, so the Humanity of Christ wouldn't have sin nature genes. Like the First Adam, Christ was thus born perfect. So like the first Adam, Christ could only LOSE that perfection, by sinning Himself.] The believer still is dominated by the need, and only living in God's System, will relieve him of it; and then, only to the extent he Lives On Scripture. There is no other relief. Religion alleges an alternate relief, in order to trap you in ever-greater misery. People generally fall for the religious trap, and die inside it, because they prefer how religion feels to how living in God's System 'feels'.
But we Become Instantly Good As God, 2Cor5:21, via John 3:16, so there's no need for religion, even if it were ever useful. Romans 6 is on this change (explaining why it works); and Romans 7-8 cover the ongoing war you experience from your body, despite the change. Because the non-spiritual can't discern the spiritual (1Cor2, 1Jn1:5-10), we can't 'feel' that we are good enough, and the body life remains dead -- ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Religion taps and traps that inability to discern. So we go through our day fancying ourselves better than others based on what we wear, own, look like, or who we know. When to know God, Who's better than everyone.. no one wants to do. So the Book remains unopened, in every hotel room drawer, no time spent on it, but oodles of time spent on hair, good deeds, escapism. What a waste. What enmity and ennui grow, instead...
The Lord warned about this also: count the cost. Getting DDNA is no Pollyanna thing. You will be attacked, more and more subtly, as you grow in Christ. And as explained in Eph6, Gal5:1, you don't fight back. You just stand fast, keeping on in God's System. Quietly. Stand still and watch the deliverance of the LORD, for the enemies are all being herded from outside themselves, by Satan&Co. For, as Paul quips often in his God-breathed letters, we were all once the enemies of God. But He didn't fight us, He died as a Substitute for us, Romans 5:8 (in context). [Greek preposition huper should only be translated, "as a substitute for". You learn this your first year in seminary, and it's drilled into your head -- but then for your tests, you are constrained to chop off that meaning to the more-ambiguous "for". You'd be fired as a translator in a diplomatic post if you were so slipshod, since a slightly-wrong translation in official correspondence can (and did) bring countries to the brink of war. How much more, then, the official correspondence of God? So, see -- even in seminary you are taught early to lie against the Word. See Mounce's tome on the Greek prepositions, his Appendix; then, consult whoever you like about this subject, check it out for yourself. My pastor can barely contain his temper when he goes over how huper is mistranslated in the Bible. Think about it -- "for" makes salvation sound like a bargain-basement thing, in English; leaves 'open' the idea you must contribute something, or that you can lose your salvation -- what blasphemy. "Subsitute for" better conveys the preposition, makes it clearer the Lamb-of-God tie to the Levitical sacrifices, makes the believer better understand why salvation is permanent, total, and why there is nothing to 'add' to it. Sheesh. Anything to denigrate Christ. Even in our seminaries and Bible translations! Funny how God 'managed' to anticipate all that, when inspiring the writer of Hebrews to write Hebrews 10. Even in translation, you can't miss the point that the salvation Christ bought is forever, and you can't add squat to it. Whew.]
Ironically, the "cost" is really profit to you. As we saw in the Four Aspects, Matthew 4:4 is an answering conversion process which is always 100% profit: any 'incoming' attack of viral RNA from anyone around you, from Satan&Co., or from your own thoughts, is to be 'captured and held' by whatever DDNA (Bible Doctrine, when you're filled with the Spirit in God's System) is circulating. That's just what happened on the Cross: so the allegation or temptation made by the viral RNA, gets re-engineered by the Truth in you, such that even more DDNA gets produced. So you don't have any need to succumb to temptation, it can just hit you: and you just let it hit you, even as Christ let sins hit Him, on the Cross. So "counting the cost" ends up meaning counting your profit, growing ever closer to your own finishing the course (i.e., 2Tim4:7-8, Jas1:12). [Term "temptation" in Jas1:12 should be translated "testing". James is speaking of a whole lifetime experience, not merely a moment or span, which is how he opened his letter. Theme is on living on the Word, but for some crazy reason people skip right over Chapter 1, and read verses like 2:18-26 completely out of context. Weird.] Getting the knowledge and thereafter the practical skill in such thinking is a lifetime endeavor. Christ trained for 30 years before He 'went public'; and thereafter, the training was totally intense in two (inner and outer) dimensions at the highest levels; culminating with the purpose of all that training, the Cross itself. So we can expect a lifetime of practice, with public-type testing, as relevant, culminating in a 'cross' of our own, by the end of our lives. That is, if we want to get in and stay in, God's System.
Your old sin nature can't live with your learning Doctrine in God's System, either. Satan&Co. can't stand it, either. So the opposition you get as you live in God's System, is what makes life difficult. Gorgeous Doctrine gets attacked. So what you are experiencing as you grow, is the Attack, though superficially it will even look like it's God Who's Attacking. So now you know why people, too, pick on you or are rabidly upset, if you simply want to learn God and make the mistake of talking about what you are learning. They will be offended. They will imagine that you are doing a work, bragging, trying to convert them. They hallucinate all that meaning, since Satan&Co. sell learning God as yet another religious activity. God forbid, you just enjoy Him and are interested. Prejudice. Hatred. And you get blamed. Just like, Adam and the woman got picked on, just as Christ was crucified, so will you be persecuted if you stay in God's System. For no good reason at all. [Immature Christians are indeed obnoxious, but people wouldn't be so offended by them, if they weren't naturally opposed to God. You don't see anyone be so offended by any other faith. Again, it's always the Bible and its believers which get singled out. Funny how no one notices that. Who picks on Hari-Krishna people or Moslems or B'Hai, the way Christians are picked on? Jews are picked on for the same reason -- they belong to Christ by bloodline and by promise. Again, it's always those who are the children of the promise, who get the most attention. Because the Bible is the Truth. That, is what's hated. It's not personal against us. Helps to remember that, when you see the prejudice continue without cause: 1Jn3:13, Matt10:22, 24:9, Mk13:13, Luk6:22,21:17,Jn7:7 (in context), John15:18-19, 16:2, 16:33, 17:14, Rom8:7, 2Tim3:12, Jas4:4. Lots of verses, huh.]
Christ's human ancestral bloodline consists of two prostitutes (Rahab and Tamar), some adulterers and quasi-wife deserters (Abram, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David, and indirectly Moses), murderers (David, among others). [Abram and Isaac both passed off their wives as their sisters, which prompted passing kings to seize their wives. Abram, of course, copulated with Hagar. Jacob did the same with his wives' servants, and for the same reason, and he never loved Leah. Judah copulated with Tamar; she disguised herself as a prostitute because he wouldn't marry her off according to custom (to younger surviving sons). Moses isn't directly in Christ's line, maybe, but Aaron his brother, is from the very beginning (Aaron's wife was a daughter of the house of Judah). The line weaves back and forth, picking up again most recently, in Zerubbabel. Moses left his first wife, though she instigated that, being disgusted with the custom of circumcision. David's paramours are too many to list, and it's very significant that the Davidic line comes as a result of his initially-adulterous union with Bathsheba.] Pretty much everyone else in the bloodline is a scalawag of one type or another, for Israel's kings were generally apostate in the extreme; greedy, covetous, heavily into phallicism (even Solomon). So it's not a moral bunch, He descends from. Racially, looks like every race is represented somewhere along the line, since when Jacob and family came to Egypt in the famine, a wide swath of the world's population from all over the world, had come there too (chiefly "Asiatics", says my Encyclopedia Brittanica article in "Egypt, History of", 1984 blue-leather edition). Two-thirds of the Exodus population, were "mixed multitude" (not racially Jewish).
So in the most noble, Royal Bloodline in history, "the" one all Grail myths are about, we see an astonishing Biblical fact: God clearly does not exclude any race, nor any 'sinners' the religious person would find shockingly offensive. In fact, David himself is called a man after God's Own Heart in both 1Sam13:14 and Acts 13:22, which is a pretty strong statement -- you are to understand David is a model of what God praises. Think about that. David (name means "Beloved", see also that term for Christ in Eph1). David, the guy who had so many women, it caused a civil war in his kingdom, lost him a war he was fighting (Uriah the Hittite, arranged-murdered-husband of Bathsheba), and plagued Israel with succession squabbles from that point onward. To this guy, God unconditionally promises Messiah will be one of his sons. Forever. So not only did God not need an 'immaculate' virgin Mary ('immaculate' being an idea in the Koran, but not the Bible), but God went Out Of His Way to craft a bloodline of some pretty shocking sinners. Shocking, that is, to those who want religion, but not God. [Mary was a great believer, probably one of the greatest believers of her time; it's impossible to imagine the pressure on her as the last surviving eligible member of the Royal Family who could bear a Messiah, if God chose. And she was a virgin when the Holy Spirit added those other 23 chromosomes at the time of her ovulation. But she had other kids afterwards by Joseph (and would have violated the Mosaic Law if she did not); and she was not free of sin. It really denigrates her great faith to promulgate the lie that she never sinned; and the Bible shows her sinning, i.e., at the wedding of Cana, where she cajoles her Son to show off by turning the water into wine. Helps you understand better what enormous pressure she was under and how God really blessed her. Don't cheapen her life by narrowing the idea of 'faithful' to an illegal permanent chastity. Only humans value that. God, in choosing David, clearly doesn't agree!]
So what do all these sinners have in common? They wanted GOD. Not, religion. So who's the bigger sinner -- the one who spurns learning Him, and hence never executes the First Commandment, or the one who learns the First Commandment? "For love covers a multitude of sins", James wrote (near end of his epistle). And the Lord with the rabbi had that interesting summary of the law being Love the Lord Your God, and your neighbor as yourself. Hmmm. No works, there. For love is, or is not. 1Jn says it is not, if the Word isn't in you. So whaddya know -- having the Word in you, fulfills the Law. Even if you are a 'sinner'. Having works in you fulfills nothing. So who is the bigger sinner? All this, is the substance of the Divorce Trial. So ask: if a wife loves her husband, but fails repeatedly, compared to another wife who obeys but never loves her husband, which wife, is the really faithful one? Here's God's definition of the bigger sinner: "This people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me." (Isa29:13, Matt15:8, Mark7:6). Compare it with the prodigal son parable and the parable about the praying Pharisee and tax-farmer.
All too often a spouse in a marriage, becomes ritualistic. Actions done, behaviors met, respectability obeyed, mean more than the opposite spouse. So the marriage becomes a stale diet of activities, and often there's this hidden tension, a sense of being nagged by the spouse who considers the self so 'proper' in all the behaviors. If it's the wife who has this problem, she deems all her housekeepings, childrearings as works which don't get the requisite gratitude from the spouse, and she gauges that gratitude, by how much she thinks he pays attention to her. Her conversation becomes horribly banal and plaintive, with always the undertone of after all I've done for you. If conversely it's the husband who has this problem, his 'proper' would be paying the bills, but else he's pretty much taciturn and uninvolved, always busy on some project, with little time for his spouse. Because, he really doesn't want to be around her, or because he thinks his fealty is a behavioral thing. Rules. Always, rules. So it's easy to see why so many divorces, occur. Running to other activities, focusing on the kids, never building the soul bonds with each other, the marriage is dead, even while legally alive. There's more than one type of adultery, you know. And this religious method of being married, is the worst adultery of all. God thus would rather have a failing David who really loves Him, than a perfectly-obedient Pharisee, who doesn't. Hell will be populated with the latter, for you have to at least want God once to want to believe in His Son.
If you want your children to grow up only seeing you because they must, keep harping at them about how much they owe you, either in your mind, or in your behavior/words. (Don't think that because you 'hide' how you feel, that your feelings are unread.) Many a mom-and-dad wonder why their kids don't want to spend more time with them -- the complaint is so common. Well, that's why the kids don't want to spend time with them: the complaining, which always has the You Owe Me You Owe Me You Owe Me in it. So they were taught 'love'=obligation, and never taught that love is free. So, obligation is all they will 'obey'. True love, they were not taught: they were taught religion, instead, and religion is always based on hatred, and hence obligation. So hatred and obligation, is what they will pass on to their children. Vicious cycle, killing the US today as I type. But God only believes in love being free; but those who go to hell don't want love to be anything but owed them. It's that horrible, that stark, a truth. So those who learn love, are always persecuted by those who learn religion. Can't be another outcome.
Hebrews 11 is God's telling of this Grail story's results, those who are persecuted for learning Christ in every covenantal age (but the passage focuses on the OT witness, to show its relationship to Church). Because Hebrews is mistranslated in strategic places (sure mark of demon tampering, since no translator would be so smart or evil), you don't get the reason for the persecution, in the translations of Chapter 11. But Hebrews 11:1 tells you dramatically and bluntly, using Attic Drama heptameter and anephora. The latter is a type of dramatic equation among each noun in the nominative case, and there are always three of them. Such rhetorical techniques have no English equivalents, so here's a too-tame, corrected English translation: "It's [due to/about] DOCTRINE confidently believed, [=] Christ-on-Trial [in us], [=] Evidence Unseen!" Then Hebrews 11:6 dramatically adds, "for without Doctrine, IMPOSSIBLE to please Him! For to approach God, one must BELIEVE that He is, and [that] He acts as the Paymaster of those who seek Him." Him, not works -- verse ties nicely to Romans 4, and all the other verses on God's rewarding. Trick is, to know what constitutes 'faithfulness'. It's not works, but getting that Grail of His Thinking in you, as Heb11:1 and 6, so deftly explain. [Bauer, Danker lexicon explains the "paymaster" origin of misthapodotes, and has a cool translation of ginomai, in this last clause in Heb11:6 -- God proves to BE a rewarder of those who seek him. What's so awesome about that translation and this verse, is how it ties to Isa53:12 and God's OT name, YHWH. YH, is. WH, becomes. So the writer of Hebrews is reminding the reader that the Hupostasis is YHWH, He who is, BECOMES via the pairing of eimi and ginomai. And He Became Human and tabernacled among us, so He BECOMES our Savior and thus Inheritor, Isa53:10-12. So Becomes our Paymaster, at the Bema. What Divine Wit! All this, packed in one verse!] Seek to Know Him, as your 'wages': "seek" is a very strong Greek verb, ekzetew, like you'd turn over every stone in your hunt for buried treasure, scour the house for that lost wedding ring, never stopping until you find it or drop dead, whichever comes first.
Not one Bible hero is praised by God for his works, ever: it's eisegesis to read into Bible a praise for human anything, else there'd be no need for a Cross. Rather, God praises the Word/Doctrine in the person (usu. mistranslated "faith"). James, having spent the entire first Chapter on this point, then illustrates what he meant, with a crescendo of 2:22 about Abraham -- using a Divine Actor verb executed by Doctrine (mistranslated "faith"), not by Abraham's own human power (volition is nonmeritorious, anyway). Verb is sunergew. In the Bible, verbs with "sun" prefixes never mean human agency, but only Divine agency (with God in the foreground or the background doing all the work); "energew" isn't "to work" but "to generate, fuel, engender", the connotation of Source Power which is efficacious. So even the dedication, the "will and to do" (which verse also uses energew, the witty Phili 2:12-13) comes from God. At which point, you won't stop seeking, and you don't care if you drop dead! [I love Phili 2:12-13. Hupakouo is mistranslated "obey". It's not an activity, but a listening, and is used also in connection with the shemah, of the OT. See also Heb5:8-9. You stand under the hearing, literally -- graphic verb to show exact mechanics of what God considers 'obedience'. Not works, but Hearing The Word. Hence God works in you to will and to do, since His Thinking is being produced in you. Great verse pair, very witty!]
Consider the wit of the satanic play on Bible, if you will. Satan&Co. always play on and build on Biblical metaphors, to craft witty, ridiculing and yet oddly admiring satires/caricatures of whatever God says in His Book. They are obsessive about this. Once you see the pattern of the obsession, you can more easily trace the origin and nature of the other 'faiths' in the world, to prove THEY are the mutations, and the Bible (even before its contents were reduced to writing), is the original. So let's go through a few of the DDNA metaphors which are relevant, so to see how this Grail myth, plays on them.
Now do you see the demonic wit? Do you see no human being could have made all this up, because no one knew Scripture that well? Look: even today, you have to really search to find out that "me amal" and "Pleroma" are pregnancy terms. Scripture was locked up away from the common guy for about 18 centuries, with only the occasional monk or nun being able to glimpse an original-language text. So who could know those pregnancy terms in the original-language texts, and then satirize them into a human bloodline? Who could know from the translation, that Isaiah explains the mechanics of the Cross? I couldn't get it: had I not been a student for 30 years under a pastor who taught from the original languages of Scripture, I'd still not know. It took me weeks of research in the MSS with lexicons, to get a corrected translation of Isa53:10-12, and I've got modern tools! So who back those centuries past, could even discern the Bible's meaning, much less satirize it so deftly? And for so long? Look: Satan&Co. are satirizing the Cross, for crying out loud -- picking a verse on how He paid for sins ON the Cross (specifically, Isa53:11 in both inspired BHS and LXX texts), and then spoofing that suffering into a human bloodline claim! No human being in medieval times could do that!
Today's version of the bloodline story roared back into the public eye, beginning with the book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, in (I think) 1982. The term "Holy Grail" derives from sangraal, really Royal Blood: it's a French term and a largely French/European obsession, ever since Clovis (466-511 AD). [The weird thing was, Clovis was German. "France" derives from "Franks", of which Clovis was; and so "France" is really just another German country. That's probably why they warred so much, lol.] Gregory of Tours tells an interesting story of Clovis' ability to remember his enemies and wait for the right moment of revenge, cleaving an errant soldier's head when the soldier cleaved a valuable vase with his axe (Book II, paragraph #27, "gregory-hist.html#book3" at www.fordham.edu, Halsall's Medieval Sourcebook). So the idea of "Grail" as itself a chalice/vase is simply due to the separation of "San" and "graal" in translation. Kinda cute, that: since we are earthen vessels designed to have the Royal Blood in our heads, and all God's enemies are out to cleave us lest we get that True Grail. Of course, if we are frigid and disdain God's intercourse of His Thinking Seed in us, we can count on plenty of whackings as Divine Discipline. So Satan&Co.'s choice of Clovis, crafting a Merovingian claim of descendance from Christ, is rather witty, huh.
After all, the Levitical sacrifices had the animal bleed to death, and the blood was collected in a bowl. Blood always depicts Thinking (thought circulates, is the essence of soul life), and as noted in the Fourth Aspect in corrected translation, Isa53:10-12 graphically depict Christ as Lamb of God, paying for our sins with His Thinking. So Bible's definition of Sang Real is His Thinking. Mindless corpuscles can't ever please God, so Satan&Co. choose mindless magic, hoping everyone will bleed to death trying to find it. Heh.
So Satan distorts the true nature of "blood" with respect to Christ into a body thing, replete with mystical powers and phallic practices. And, for good measure, Satan&Co. adapt the metaphors in the Bible about how this Thinking builds in you, to the body-oriented lie they want to tell. So the "Grail" story makes use of Bible's masonry metaphors, flower metaphors, etc. It's very rich that in the pro-Grail stories, much is made of symbology, since all their symbols have Biblical definitions no one consults. When you do consult them in Bible, you find very different meanings; such that the Grail symbology, is downright derisive of those who believe in it. For example,
So Matt16:18 should read in corrected translation, "And I announce/proclaim that you are [Chip-of-the-Bedrock] Petros, and on This Petra [pointing to Himself, Greek "tauta" is used there, with monadic article] I WILL BUILD my Church; even the [fortress-like] Gates of Hades will not overpower Her."
You need to know also that the Greek "Petros" is in masculine gender, but Petra is in the feminine gender (because it's a BEDROCK, depicting Christ since Abram went there with Isaac). So Petra cannot refer to Peter at all. You must FLUNK seminary to not know this. So if someone claims the verse references Peter, the person is either lying, stupid, or crazy, if he claims to know even an iota of Biblical Greek. Seriously. To screw up here is like being unable to read Dick-and-Jane in kindergarten. There's no excuse for it. But then there's no excuse for claiming Peter was ever a pope, since he was not even appointed an apostle except to the Jews, and he never set foot in Rome his entire life (see Acts and end of 1Peter).
Oh: "Church" is also a feminine-gender word. So Peter is a piece, not a foundation, sheesh. Look: if you chipped a piece off bedrock, the piece which fell off would be a "petros". That's what makes the verse so witty. Peter loved playing with this verse in his letters, making as many stone words as he could, constantly playing with the UNDERNEATHNESS of the idea (he's almost obsessed with using hupo-prefixes in his letters). [I really don't believe Peter was using an emmanuensis -- the wordplay in 1Pet and 2Pet is too rich, and depends too much on Greek etymology for its wit. The fake "Gospel of Peter" by contrast is so bad and gross and insulting to God, well.. anyone who thinks Peter had anything to do with it, or did anything it claims, needs to see a psychiatrist. Sorry. The fake Gospels are as silly and derisive, as saying you saw the Virgin in a cooking tortilla. God wouldn't put His Son's naked body on a shroud, wouldn't make 'appearances' in any fashion, let alone that kind, and surely wouldn't allow a woman vilely maligned 'appear' to those who adhere to the very religion which so thoroughly maligns her generation after generation. I bet Mary cringes every time some Catholic taps the rosary, treating it like magic beads, wishing they'd shut up and wake up!]
So, see: even 'Christian' scholars don't do their homework, and just repeat the lie, so of course everyone believes them. Respectability sells Satan's wares, always. I'm really embarrassed for them, because this particular lie is so easy to prove. 'Takes but five minutes (searching in the LXX/NT MSS on Petra) in BibleWorks. Since it's just not possible that these scholars are stupid, only two possible conclusions remain: they don't do their homework, or they can't read Bible. The latter is accomplished easily via the deft redefinitions one is propagandized with, from childhood. Satan&Co. are behind this, so don't blame parents, priests, etc.
Hence most 'Biblical scholarship' whether pro- or con- Bible, is shoddy. Shoddy, because like the Matt16:18 example above, you can quickly prove the apneas even with mere BibleWorks (which is just a software collection of MSS, lexicons, basic standard reference books -- you can buy the program online, or at a seminary bookstore, like I did). Most theologians who write long tomes about this or that arcane subject always presume no Holy Spirit as the Originator of the Bible, so debate Bible verses, as if men collated them from other eyewitnesses; so can't tell how the Gnostic and Apochrypha and other pseudipigrapha, are fake. So ASSume the Roman Catholic Church adulterated Bible; so don't know whether Paul was the real carrier of the Christian message; so believe Paul never met Christ, despite the clear text of Acts 7-8, 1Cor15:1-10. You only were appointed an apostle by seeing the Resurrected Christ. So here is the guy who is given to write most of the NT (i.e., Rom12:3, Acts 22), and the 'scholars' claim he never met Christ? Gimme a break! It's positively incredible, how stupid all these degreed people, are.
Another apnea example: do you know, they wonder if there was a schism between James and Paul? How can they wonder, when Acts 21 makes it perfectly clear, Paul was deliberately trapped so he could be beaten up, on the Temple steps? A trap, James knew about. You see Paul talk in the other epistles about how he was persecuted by the Judaizers, who were all run by the Jerusalem church. Sure, James later woke up and sided with Paul, but -- close friends that they were, still James was constrained by the other Jerusalem leaders. All this is in Scripture, you don't have to speculate about it. But 'scholars' do. How sad. Use 1Jn1:9 and ask Father in Son's name to have the Spirit guide your study in God's System, as often as you remember to ask it. Daily. You'll thus avoid all the anthropocentric garbage pandered as 'Biblical scholarship', today.
Note how a degree doesn't make you better able to understand Bible. When you consider how admirable and difficult scholarly research is, how hard these folks work to get their degrees and keep on publishing ("publish or perish" is the rule in the academic and scientific world), you can't help but be awed of both the scholars, and their blindness. They need prayer, for clearly they are under far more pressure, than we amateurs. So note also that sloppy research and lack of academic rigor, is likewise dishonoring to the Lord. Don't debunk the scholar who demonstrates his disuse of 1Jn1:9 by his sloppy mistakes, in an effort to justify your own laziness. That too, is a common trend Satan exploits. So instead learn from his error, but pray for him. At West Point they teach the bright young cadets the great military blunders of history for just that reason. You can't help but admire the more the officer who made the blunder; you can't help but be humbled by the very obvious fact you also will be prone to do the same. So, you pray. Constantly.
So a political Messiah is the Satan&Co. distorted presentation of Christ -- just as promoted to the Jews, back when Christ was down here. The OT prophecy in Daniel 9-12, Rev13-17 and elsewhere about the Tribulational King of the West claiming to be Christ, is thus proven at least plausible: for over 20 centuries, there persists a bloodline-descendance-from-Christ claim with the requisite mystical-powers implication, attached; which claim allegedly 'vests' in at least three royal houses in Europe. But the claim was made in variant other forms, since Gen3:15 (to prevent Him from being born to fulfill that verse). This you can prove fairly readily from that point onward, via the many phallic cults and divine-right kingships, where the kings were priests as well. For Satan&Co. always COPY what God really says, and then derisively mutate the key elements. It's their version of a joke on God and mankind, and they love it well.
And of course, there are real historical and explosive political components in the true Grail story. Imagine you are of the bloodline of the Royal Family of Christ, being persecuted post-Crucifixion: "the disposyni". He really had a family, you know. The persecution began in earnest sometime after James, one of the Lord's half-brothers, was murdered, just after Paul was carted off to Rome (circa 62 AD, if I recall correctly). Jews began revolting from Rome then, with the result that the Christians also fled Jerusalem; so it's likely that then the Royal Family left as well (if they hadn't left earlier). We know Jude, one of Jesus' other half-brothers, was already in diaspora at the time of his letter (in Bible); he doesn't disclose his location. Peter fled to Antioch and then to a Jewish enclave in Babylon (near the modern town of Al-Hillah, in Iraq), per the end of 1Peter: never did he set foot near Rome, so he was never a pope of the Gentiles, since only Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, Acts 15 and 22. So long before the sack of the Temple in 70AD, the remnants of the House of David, would have left.
So: imagine you are one of Christ's brothers, or of that Family; say you really DO flee to France, because there was a large group of Jews living there. So it becomes easy to imagine, that since you are really OF the House of David, and need to hide, that you'd eventually USE that information, to gain protectors. No matter what you had to say, to do so. Maybe Mary of Magdala (Magdala the town, so Mary of Bethany is a different person), in the company of some others, was pregnant by one of them (married or no), and well.. the story morphed into the Gnostic gospel of her name, who knows. Everyone embellishes the truth in the re-telling, and anyone wanting to discredit Christ -- or preserve his own life -- would jump at the chance to say He really didn't die on the Cross, or really didn't teach what the apostles said, or -- that he was a son, even. To save your life, you'll cater to your audience.
Or, conversely, since it wouldn't have subtracted from His ministry if He did marry and have kids (though you know He didn't, given Isa52:13ff and Hebrews 2) -- maybe someone wanted to capture the 'glory' of being blood-related to Him, and claimed to be one of His kids. People surely have done that before, with respect to lesser royalties in Europe. Man's insane insecurity will madly attribute to mindless corpuscles, magical powers. So to be or allege to be of royal blood, magically bestows added worth on the individual, see. For who doesn't react with a smile to the mere possibility of having a royal/rich/famous relative, however remote? Conversely, how many Hitlers changed their last names after WWII, even though they had nothing whatsoever to do, with Adolf? See how sick with insecurity and prejudice, we truly are?
In short, for very human reasons quite apart from any demonic herding 'help', this Mary of Magdala cult could easily take hold and flourish. Somewhere at the bottom of it, will be the real truth, and it's likely (imo) that someone in the Royal Family, went to the Languedoc and used this or a similar claim, to get protection for herself/himself/the Family. Simmer its real origin for a few hundred years, and you've got a nice Grail story as a two-edged sword: you can use the story to hate the Bible, the Jews and all European royalty, as much as you can use it to laud them. So for these past 2000 years, many have done, just that. You can see why the RCC would either promote (as with Clovis) or persecute (2nd century) the from-David-descendance claim, in its never-ending quest for political hegemony (started by Clement I so far as I can tell, in 90's AD). The Roman Catholic Church can't politically survive any living line of David, because the RCC claims the same mantle, Rev17. So it must marry that line.. or kill it. Many ways to kill: ridicule is the best way.
Neither could the Maccabees tolerate a living line of David, back in the 160's BC; that's when the house of David was usurped, and the Royal Family went underground. Thus it has been, ever since. When Christ declared Himself, He knew He was breaking the silence, thus putting the entire Family and all of Israel, at risk. For the claim of Messiah is a claim of future world rule: it's a constant prophecy all throughout the Bible, the entire reason for the formation of Israel, in the first place. Hence it is a claim which will always engender the most virulent opposition. See Isaiah Chapters 9, 11, 52 and 61, 63 for blatant samples of the prophecy you can even discern in translation.
The claim of Messiah upset the entire world then, when it was valid. So any claim of Messiahship, and especially the truncated Satan&Co. political version, will always upset the world. Man doesn't want the Messiah. That's the real reason for the Arab conflict and anti-semitism, at the human 'end': everyone resents that their own group, won't be the one in power. Satan&Co. are trying desperately to prevent that future from coming to pass, so they foment all the anti-Bible, anti-semitic attitudes they can. There is no limit to what they will do. So now you know why there has never been, nor will there ever be peace in the Middle East, until the 2nd Advent. Wars and rumors of wars, until He comes. Now you know why Satan&Co. promote the Grail lie, since it's likewise, a bid for world rule: hence flaming underground tenor of conspiracy to grab worldwide power, including all those gossipy conspiracy ideas targeting the Illuminati, Bilderbergers, Masons, Zionists, etc. [The gossip is yet another way to show resentment against the successful of the world. Gossip believed earns punishment, Matt7:1-2, so don't believe in it. Doesn't matter what truth might be in the gossip, it's still gossip, and not proven. God never approves of belief based on hearsay, even if the hearsay is correct. Note that the Bible calls us witnesses and ambassadors, never hearsayers. Trial requires witnesses, not third-hand storytellers with their own agendas of self-importance!]
So today, the Roman Catholic Church itself doesn't have hegemony. But the world should worry about a fake royal house of David claim: since that House would be the closest physical counterpart to Christ people would have. So civil and religious war would ensue; or, the house and RCC would unite. No doubt that's why the RCC made the pact with Clovis, not necessarily believing the claim of Royal Davidic background, but rather to buy peace. [It fascinates me that Grail writers often ignore the pact the RCC made with Clovis and Charlesmagne to crown them, in effect justifying their reigns. The Carolingians come from the Mayors of the Palace, who usurped power from the Merovingians, and Charlesmagne + at least one of his sons, married Merovingian princesses, so the Carolingian line continues the Merovingian line; Phillip Augustus in 1180, made quite a point of that, when he succeeded to the throne of France. According to legend, Meroveé, the original 'king' of the line, visited the Pope to claim he was a descendant of the House of David and Benjamin, exciting the papal entourage with his red-blond long hair. I can't prove such a claim from contemporary records. You can find much on Meroveé in your local library or the internet. So Clovis, a grandson of Meroveé, was supported by the papacy, in order to stabilize and unify what would later become France. Clovis made the disastrous mistake of dividing his kingdom among his sons, who were rather lascivious and fractious. Over time, they fought with each other so much, the Mayors of the Palace, just took over. The Merovingian legend is mystical, a Priest-Kingship which reigns, but never rules. It has a lot of esoterica in it. So you can see how the claim would be used by Satan&Co., only morphed into a claim of a descendant of Christ Himself, today. So history will repeat itself, and frankly the time is pretty ripe for it. Man is hungry for a charismatic demagogue.]
So, if today's Royal House pretenders ever demonstrate enough charisma to generate a big following, no doubt the RCC again will attempt some kind of unity, since the RCC arrogates to itself the sole title of "Church" -- thus proving itself currently the foremost among the Rev17 harlots of every denomination. And from that unity, will come the worst tyranny and outbreak of war: another dark ages. Mark it well, since you see in this the very mechanism which will eventually give birth to the 10-horned King of the West portrayed in Bible prophecy. Doesn't mean it will be the RCC at that point. Does mean that the nature, will be the same. ["Horn" is a Biblical metaphor for human political power, so 10 nations are depicted by the 10 horns.]
Look: what you love, you linger over and learn, never wanting to stop. But what you hate, you avoid learning, and you only linger if required in order to get something else you prefer. So ignorance is always an index of hatred; but cognizance, of love: "where your treasure is, there shall your heart also be", Matt6:21. And our treasure is His Word in our hearts and minds, 2Cor4:7, Ps119:11 (118:11 in Douhay-Rheims), Jer31:31-34, Heb8:8-12 and 10:15-17. So if we are ignorant of His Word, our hearts aren't in Him, as 1John explains (main theme of the book). So, we hate Him, in that event. Hatred means prejudice, and prejudice is man's natural inclination, since belief in a lie that God was bad, motivated the initial rebellion in the Garden (Gen3). Which means we can be marionetted by Satan&Co. just like Adam was, when Satan denounced him for being naked, and bade him sew those figleaves, Gen3:11 (mistranslated in all Bibles).
Being naturally dead to God, we are insecure: for, man wasn't made to live apart from God. Being apart from God, we are hence prejudiced against Him. It's a genetic addiction, to which we routinely succumb thousands of times a day, unaware that we even have it. This addiction shows up, however, when we believe truly irrational 'doctrines', like evolution (which alleges a set can contain itself, a mathematical and hence biological impossibility).. or, the Grail myths. The latter group is but one of many patent pagan glosses, claiming to be the 'real' story behind Jesus' life, to discredit Him. Satanic signature on the story proves its real origin. Appendix of "Thinking" series explains the seven elements of the satanic signature, their hey-see-me advertisement that they, not humans or God, are the authors. To mock any who'd believe what they sell. So they help God, for crying out loud, to get the Word out -- but we don't want it, since we don't want Him. So only we are to blame for our negativity.
The negativity is always reinforced. If you took a rat and put him in with a miniature machine which could stimulate some pleasure 'circuit' (nerve) in his body, you'd find he'd pull that pleasure lever over and over and over until he was exhausted, ignoring even food and water. That set of trials done in the 1960's, to better understand brain function, demonstrates more deeply the sin nature in man. Stimulate man's pleasure, and he will quickly become addicted to it. Doesn't matter what's the content of the stimulation. Which is why criminality requires a death penalty: the murderer, for example, has become addicted to the 'pleasure' of murder. Which is why prejudice and negativity to God likewise cannot be eradicated by nagging at such folks: they are addicted to the pleasure they get from being prejudiced or negative. Human defense mechanisms will always find ways to rationalize such pleasures, to defend the 'right' to acquire the pleasure again, over and over. Which is why, Satan&Co. can so easily puppet us, and don't need to hide their sponsorship.
So here the true evil, is Satan's own creation, the RCC, yet another way of superimposing a Bible-isn't-right claim: PopeMyth.htm provides easily-searchable evidence it formed to usurp power from the apostles, and that the very year the bid was made, God warned believers of it, in Rev17. Now watch the lawyerly shift from true evil to false premise, ergo false conclusion: since the RCC persecuted those who claimed to be Christ's descendants, therefore the whole Bible is a lie. Clever, huh. Note how the true evil, persecution, is mixed with a false premise, that there are descendants of Christ. No offense, but an objective person would never listen to such rot, whether he liked the RCC or Bible.. or not. So the one buying it, must want an excuse to hate.
So, due to prejudice against RCC, Bible, Jews (pretend) such a person will believe descendants exist. Which, to prejudice, feels good, shoots down all those one is prejudiced against, aha! Such a person will be enthralled with the idea, and will spend loads of time and money repeating 'study' of the issue. These people number in the millions, today. It's positively frightening how popular is the Da Vinci Code. Seems to me the author picked out what he knew could be easily proven false, since it's a fictional novel, duh. That first page beginning with "FACT" is your red alert to him advertising it's FICTION, for crying out loud. For not one thing on that page, wasn't but proven a hoax 10 years prior, when that Plantard guy hoaxed the ever-stupid Michael Baigent et al. Yet people eat up the same ol' information, 10 years later? As if it was a discovery? Oh well -- seems to me Dan Brown did try to protect the reader from believing what is a fictional novel for a tired Friday evening...
So watch how vile the prejudice is, that all kinds of scurrilious claims of immorality, accompany the false Grail story about these descendants.
So see: it's not Dan Brown's fault; nor is it the fault of Baigent et al., who didn't twist anyone's arms to buy their books, either. People love hating. So books which seem to provide a basis for hating -- never mind they are proven fiction, even their authors admit that -- never mind, people love buying anything which promotes debunking. Which requires hatred, to love.
Satan's 2nd macro tactic is always anti-semitism (distorting the Word is his #1), and it's easy to find dingdongs who'll buy whatever slander he wants to sell. For prejudice can always justify itself, see. [For much more on Satan's strategy and tactics, see SatStrat.htm, which is the htm name of the Appendix for the "Thinking" series. Due to a geocities.com glitch, that webpage takes forever to load: so best to save it to floppy, then copy to your hard drive, rather than reading it online. The extra floppy-to-harddrive step will make the local links accessible locally (due to a bug in Windows, at least in XP Professional).]
Now note how Satan&Co. advertise their workmanship and thus hold up our prejudice against Bible, as the fault: what, does no one notice that all the fake Gospels, Apochrypha and pseudipigrapha, whether inter-testamental or no; the Book of Mormon and the Koran, just like the Grail claim -- does no one notice that all these very slapstick books are obsessed with the Bible? Over all these centuries? Just as, the many reports of 'ghosts' and 'aliens' and demons-as-described-in-Bible are identical, yet no one notices? Such consistency since the first century can't even be maintained by mankind, much less adroitly managed and orchestrated in just the right religious spots. Surer proof of the Bible being the Word of God, no human could have; a more universal testimony across centuries, no human could have -- from the opposition! For even the enemy, likes pointing out to us negative-to-God humans, that it's all our fault we are so negative.
So: you can't find a pro-Grail book or story, which doesn't claim that the Roman Catholic Church adulterated the Bible. It's really quite humorous how the accusers don't think over how impossible that is. Sure, translations are routinely adulterated. But the RCC didn't allow the original-language texts to be in circulation, was constantly destroying or confiscating them. So that what the average joe heard, was packaged snippets in translation: the Mass is a lot of Bible snippets, sonorously voiced rather than explained. Mistranslations like the reversal of the prepositions in womb verses to make life began at conception, are but one group of many mistranslations which abound. We've been copying, essentially, the RCC mistranslations, ever since -- even though, we've had full access to the original language texts for over 100 years. So now it's our fault the translations adulterate Bible, not theirs.
But the truth is, RCC didn't adulterate the original-language texts. It just kidnapped them. With its fondness for relics, it wouldn't want to adulterate such treasures. Even the translations in the parishes, were chained to the altar or locked away from possible theft. And it was through Catholics, largely, that our most fabulously reliable manuscripts, were found. Granted, the Council of Nicaea doesn't deserve any credit for 'deciding' what's Bible, but it's also a false accusation against the RCC that the Council arbitrarily excluded valid books from what ought to be Canon; if anything, they accepted slapstick books you can prove are not from God, within 10 minutes. So their judgement wasn't too hot. So where there was a history of acceptance, the Council of Nicaea accepted one book as canonical, but another, not. However, God preserved His texts, and He proves what is His verse by verse, when you study in God's System. Especially, to a pastor-teacher -- that's his job. So forget the accusations against the RCC that it mangled the original-language texts; ignore the RCC's preening that it determined what is Bible. No, God determined it. And He still does, every day. No one can beat the Holy Spirit. No one.
See how prejudice is used, to sell that lie? If you want to blame, hear an accusation, and your prejudice will incline you to believe it. So you don't know how impossible it would be to mistranslate ALL the Bible, or to adulterate any of original-language, God-breathed texts. You don't know that since we have thousands of manuscripts -- when some enterprising scribe put a "th" where a "ch" really was -- he'd get caught, since there are MSS with the proper "ch", still in them! (True story re 1Cor13:3 -- search on "kauchesomai" in LvS4d.htm.) Protestants have mangled the translations just as much as the Catholics ever did. Satan&Co. can't allow any translator or teacher to go unpommelled. Pray for these people, whatever their denomination.
More: if you substitute the words "Jesus" and "Star of David" in the next (italicized) sentence with any other name or culture, you'll see the prejudice clearly. It's clearly a prejudicial claim that Jesus were just some lascivious mystic; that the Star of David is but a yin-yang thing. That sentence is a main contention in the pro-Grail books, and also in the Da Vinci Code. The latter had to use the contention, since the novel is about folks pursuing that idea of "Grail". But those claiming the story is true, what excuse do they have? If you substituted "Mohammed" for "Jesus" in that sentence, wouldn't the Moslems be up in arms, protesting? Yet Mohammed is a more plausible candidate, since he had many wives and it caused trouble, and there is a mystical sect in Islam, the Sufis. [Not to mention, the Koran's constant stress on wide-eyed houris as your reward in heaven. But for all that, Islam is not a mystical phallic cult, and the Moslems would be right to protest.] If you substituted "Buddhism" for "Star of David", the Buddhists would be up in arms, too -- even though yin-yang is their idea. [Harmony and unity have always been represented by male-female, but that didn't mean sex was a way to commune with God. Genesis 6 is the origin of that idea, where real demons copulated with real humans, to try and wipe out a purely-human gene pool, so Christ, Who would have to be human to pay for humanity, could not be genetically born.] And why is the claim made by the Grail proponents so bad, no matter what noun you use to substitute for "Jesus" or "Star of David"? Because it cheapens the meaning of relationship to God. That's prejudice, to belittle, and here it's GOD who's belittled. You can't hate God and be objective. Prejudice means bad scholarship must be present. Which as was just noted in the bullets above, is painfully evident.
But review of Scripture shows rather that Infinity IS a unity of opposites, aka "hupostasis" (Greek term); and yes, that's WHY God created them male and female (Gen1:26-27), but the oppositeness is INFINITY-FINITY, not male-female per se. God's Integrity is so inviolate, He can allow infinite Freedom of Truths; however incompatible the opposites are or become, those opposites still reconcile at HIS level, harmoniously. Task for us, is to GET His Thinking, so we gradually become reconciled despite all incompatibilities. So the Star of David represents Yah+Weh, alright -- but it's GOD adding Humanity to Himself (hayah+hawah, concatenated, Mediator, 1Tim2:5), not a male-female thing.
But look: if 'divine' was limited to mere male-female 'principle' which reached its highest expression in copulation and birthing kids, then what's the point of being alive? Is that all we'll ever get in 'wisdom', a momentary climax followed by years of childrearing? Is that what life is about? See how that idea derides God? See how anyone who thus believes that meaning, hates God? And these people are objective? Sheesh: every polytheistic faith has just such a central fecundity 'mystery' in it. See how Satan&Co. deride the True 'oneness' of having Christ's Own Thinking in You? Shared thinking is a 24/7 thing, rapport being a happiness which needs no set activity, to make it pleasant. So God's promise to the human race is that He can build that Thinking in us, Infinity Cycling Inside Finity, so we can have Eternal Rapport with Him. Not some momentary physical thrill followed by years of childbearing burden. See the difference between the True and false Grail stories?
Prejudice, of course, erects barriers against what self finds psychologically painful to admit. For barriers, wall off the self so self can claim independence and hence superiority. Which is, the prime directive of the sin nature, insecure as it is, 24/7. So just as Satan commanded Adam to make the figleaves, so Adam commanded his wife (Gen3); so just as the Lord quietly and compassionately reminded Adam of his insecurity and obedience to Satan via "nagadth" in Gen 3:11's "Who denounced you for being naked?"; so also the human race is bombarded with the self-flagellation works-and-pain thingy, 24/7. Sex is either thus excoriated, or touted as a mystical thing, so that man's mental masturbation, never ends. [Re Gen3:11: Cute wordplay on nahash, snake, with nagadth, denounce. Satan denounced God at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which the woman and then more Adam, 'bought'; so, buying the snake's denouncing, ever since.] That's how Satan&Co. think; that's the story they constantly sell. That's the lie we constantly buy. Trapped in such thoughts, then, we hallucinate meaning from Bible, and cannot ever read it properly. It will but always be distorted to our prejudices, and those who disagree, will forever be wrong in our eyes. Is that not the ultimate self-punishment (1Jn4:18,20-21), to lock self up in its prejudices?
God doesn't need to produce a dynasty, but people need intermediaries. As shown in the Third Aspect, most believers want goodies, not God Himself, so will never learn Him. The resultant thinking level IN people will be too small to propitiate Him -- we all don't like small-mindedness, how much more, God wouldn't -- so there has to be a synergistic mechanism for learning to think better, even in the eternal state. Christ's thoughts paid Father for the shortfall on the Cross, so we're talking about how people need this thinking IN them, not about God being owed -- but we'll all want Father to get that thinking from us, once we see Him, post-death. All anyone will care about then, is reflecting Christ. Because, He's Gorgeous. So there needs to be a mechanism to transmit that learning of His Thinking, and hence the Pleroma group will be the kings under the King of Kings, heading up their own respective subkingdoms, mainly for the purpose of teaching that thinking (a king's real role is to be a living textbook others can emulate, even down here on earth). So in that sense, "children" are to be produced. That's what Isa53-55 and Hebrews 2 take great pains to explain, the how of this 'progeny'. Paul's always focused on that theme, in his letters.
Of course, as already noted earlier, Matt16:18 is consistently abused by 'scholars' whether pro-Grail or anti-. None of these twerps even bother to research how "Petra" is used in the OT. Over which today, the Dome of the Rock, sits. I'm not kidding. There are 77 verses showing you how Bible uses the term "Petra"; you can find them in five minutes using a Bible bot or software, to obey the first principle of hermeneutics that you compare Scripture with Scripture. But no one does that. It's not even possible to misinterpret Matt16:18 once you looked up those 77 verses.
So, sure: the Roman Catholic Church is flat lying, the way it uses Matt16:18; but what's the excuse for everyone else aping what the RCC says? Bible proves that contention, a lie. So no excuse then, for the RCC-bashers to agree with the RCC interpretation, thus proving themselves twerps. Sorry, no kind words can be said. Further still, Bible proves every doctrine RCC promulgates as a lie: takes between 10 minutes and an hour, to prove each one almost 100% anti-Biblical. Yet no one trying to 'beat' the RCC even consults Bible? No, of course not. Because it's not the RCC which Satan&Co. are after. It's the Bible that they're after. It's to accuse the BIBLE. Bible is the target, not the human agents. For only the Bible is from God.
Scholars can have differences, and that's fine. What's not fine, is when no one does his homework, but everyone pretends to have done so. You'd get an "F" in school for that. Fibbing. Cheap fibbing. Fibbing so bad, the above has to be an amalgamated sketch of the claims, rather than the more scholarly specificity -- lest the specific authors and their claims, be exposed. Sometimes truth must be sketched, kinda like God did to Adam, in Gen3:11. We accuse God, but He won't accuse us back. Who denounces us for being naked, then, isn't God. God made Adam naked, no shame in it, Gen2:24. God then gave Adam the clothing his fallen religious soul craved. So He covers all our sins, too. Thank God He's not like people, huh.
So it's not God anyone on either side of the Grail debate, cares about: but only politics and ego. These latter two are our anti-christs, Phili3:18-19. God is just a designer label for each side to 'use'. So the lie, and not the truth, is exciting. So the lie, and not the truth, is promulgated. Just as it was, during His Incarnation, so even until today, only His political status is desired. His Real Person, everyone patently hates; were it not so, you couldn't tear people away from Bible study in the original languages (which conclusively prove that they are from God, given the perfect brilliance of word usage, consistency across 1500 years of compilation, and wit). So, we crucify Him, still.
In Greek the term translated "Anti-Christ" really means "instead of Christ", and hence "against Christ" everywhere you see it in the Bible; Greek preposition "anti" means "instead of, replacement for, to replace (adversarially)", and hence "against". Substitution.
Lies are substitutions for truth; problem with the lie is that since it is false, nothing true supports it, so it must keep on adding to itself, for survival. For this, it requires prejudice, which is a type of desire for a lie which feeds ego. Hence those who believe a lie seek to promote it to others, and must -- for belief in a lie, needs external support, to sustain that belief. So, those who believe a lie -- and we all do, at times -- are under a tremendous sin-nature, demon-enhanced urge, to 'proselytize'. But those who believe a truth, realize truth needs no defense, so don't care if others agree with them. So those who believe the lie are hostile to the truth, and feel threatened by it (Romans 8). So since hostile to the truth, they will not hear the truth, and anyone imagining he can 'convert' them to the truth, is dreaming (1Jn). Again, you don't attack these people. You walk away. They can only learn truth, the hard way. And who among us, hasn't repeatedly had the same need to be spanked, in order to awaken to a truth?
Promotion is the hallmark characteristic of all religious adherence, and patently demonstrates the evil idea that God is here to glorify man, instead of vice versa. Satan's claim of ASCENDANCE (allah, in Hebrew) is thus portrayed, since Satan believes a set can contain itself. Hence a political Messiah (3rd Temptation) is promulgated, rather than the One Who Heals you inside. 'Salvation' in the Grail version, is but outward, curing nothing, fomenting anti-semitism and every other kind of factious warring. All in the name of God, of course! So the only way to deal with those so addicted to self-ascendance, is to give them enough rope to hang themselves. And then pray that hope replaces the rope -- Hope in God's deliverance, when they finally realize they are choking. Who among us, hasn't had that choking experience?
We each will die, one day. So there will come a day when everyone will know the truth. From that moment onward, the person must forever live knowing the truth, as explained somewhat in the Third Aspect, above. Imagine the chagrin, the howling ("mourn" in the Bible is a howling, not at all quiet).. which goes on forever? Luke 16:20ff shows it, in spades. For no one likes to realize he duped himself his whole life -- never mind he had lots of demonic 'assistance' to make the lie so desirable -- missing out on what he could have had, if he hadn't been so prejudiced against God. Even so, believers who largely will have such a memory of wasting their lives, are comforted eternally by God. He really is not out to make anyone suffer. The memory of the delusion will be used to deepen enjoyment of the person's life, forever; if you've ever made a really stupid mistake which cost you a lot of pain, but you learned so much from it you're now grateful, you'll understand the kind of eternal comfort, God will be providing. To each of us. For who of us can say we've never had a bout of colossal delusion?
So when you read the Bible, you need to keep its first purpose of Incarnation-to-buy-salvation, in mind. Sins are a product of thinking, so that's how they are paid for -- depicted by blood, since thought circulates. Depicted thus by the sacrifices, wherein the sinner placed his hand on the animal who was being sacrificed instead of (substitution) him -- hence the carotid artery was cut (cutting animal's pain, that) and the blood drained into a bowl which the officiating priest, caught. Thus you were not allowed to eat animal blood, since it was to become the means of paying for sin: to eat it would be to profane what it represented (for it represented thinking, which is live). Same, for the articles in the Temple and its construction: the lampstands represented Word-in-believer; the oil, the Holy Spirit's enabling power; the almond/lilly cup which held the oil, the Spirit-enabled believer 'pregnant' with Word cycling in him. For God is all about, making sons from His Son. In the OT, and fulfilled by Christ, to the uttermost-level, in the NT. Paul spends the entire Book of Ephesians explaining this, wittily patterning the book after Euripedes famous play, "Ion", to show the Real Fathering, the Superior Begetting we get in Christ. So "Blood" is not a bloodline of mindless corpuscles: "but we have the Thinking of Christ", and "Christ in you, the confident expectation of glory" (1Cor2:16 and Col1:25-27, respectively).
As explained in the Four Aspects, DDNA is spiritual, not physical, so has zippo to do with the body; DDNA can only be produced by the Holy Spirit working ON you, in God's System. That has always been true: for Church, the level of spiritual compatibility with Him available NOW is uniquely intimate and high. Highest and most intimate. But it was always to some extent, the spiritual life. All the rituals, all the metaphors in the Bible are used to depict non-body stuff, so that when you did something with the body, you were reminded of the higher value. Hence, metaphors chosen often spoofed pagan practices at the time, to show how non-body stuff was in view. For example, the just-mentioned animal sacrifice was what God Would Do For You, not vice versa (common pagan idea was that sacrificing the animal was a work man did to appease God, so God is spoofing it by having the sinner put his hand on the animal, via the wave offering, etc). For example, you tied leather strips on your arms and head which had little Torah scrolls attached to them, the idea of the Torah guiding your head and hands 24/7 (tassels on garment hems had the same significance for the feet and legs). For example, you were not allowed to work on the Sabbath, nor during the key feast days (which were many, not few) so you could dedicate yourself solely to Torah thinking. Vacation of vacations, that.
God says it all when He uses Passover as the analogy: dining fellowship. Not, ritual or religion. Some day, we will all know that truth. Meanwhile, we are free to distort it into cannibalism, into brownie points for Mass attendance, into all the silly evils religion hawks. Wasting our time and money, we will someday realize that we just bought the lie because it made us feel good, and all our vaunted rationalizations will vaporize. Meanwhile, there's a Bible in every hotel room which we just might pick up, so to escape this Sisyphean view of God. And turn and be healed.
Notice the Rev13-17 character of them, a pitting of two anti-christ systems against each other, but which make a marriage of convenience for the purpose of world domination, just as the Holy Spirit had John explain (i.e., in Rev17:13,16):
The apathetic human populace the meanwhile, drools or groans over either side; and at no point bothers to actually study the Real Bible, to see if those self-proclaimed representatives tell the truth. Because, apathy doesn't want truth. Apathy wants titillation. Anti-Bible stuff, hey -- let's spend billions of dollars on books alleging something saucy against Scripture, but no time actually learning what God says IN His Book. Titillation is man's preferred 'grail': so man is Satanfodder. Hence man bleeds to death religiously. And, pointlessly.
Part IVc of the "Thinking" series (LvS4c.htm) has a "MEGA" table which shows how Satan&Co. promulgate their DIOS plan upon the human race. The "A" in "MEGA", is apathy: God is only worth a few hours' nominal attention every week, so self can preen about being a good person! So depicted by, engagement in do's which are of petty character and are to be rewarded. Overt hostility accompanies any suggestion that the apathetic person is not a good person thereby. Apathy prides itself on its apathetic attitude toward God, its petty religious practices and observances, its God-is-a-pain message (so 'church' is treated as a chore one must do on Wednesday and Sunday). Because, that's what the apathetic human wants God to 'be': a royal pain, so gimme some reward for all the chores I've done for you! The apathetic person makes a big stink out of how good he is, to cover up how apathetic he is. It's a defense mechanism. So the teachers largely do not teach Bible accurately; in an effort to excite interest, they go in for works and singing and other folderol to excite ego and emotion. Hence religion, "the devil's ace trump" (my pastor's term) isn't so much the fault of the teachers, but of the laity who want all those lies as stars they can pin on themselves, and assuage ego. No love for God is ever present; hence no true love for people, ever exists -- main theme of 1Jn. The person who is apathetic to God will never be less apathetic toward anyone else, for he is too self-centered, morphing everything in his life to serve ego. Avoid these people -- well, you can't, since over 90% of mankind is in this 'bracket'!
The apathetic person hides his own apathy from himself, substituting works or being nice to people, as what God wants. Never really learning Scripture ITSELF, but relying solely on others; getting little homilies or snippets, never really curious to know God for Himself. Kinda like marrying a man for his money, the apathetic believer fools himself that he is a good person for substituting the nice things he does for people, as if God was served. Anti-christs, these -- by the billions!
So, they flagellate themselves, slowly bleeding to death. Since to them "God" is a pain, whenever they need to feel good about themselves, they will seek something they find painful, and call that serving God. So, having sought all this unnecessary pain for so long, the idea of God becomes ever-more unattractive, and all that suffering wears the body out. All of it, self-induced. Add to this the fact that the person who never learns God never learns how to think well -- witness any TV newscast you like for conclusive proof on man's total inability to discern squat -- and the life becomes inordinately complicated with glitches. (It's hard enough, even without added complications due to human stupidity.) So, over time, the person's self-fulfilling prophecy about God wanting suffering.. proves 'true'. Aha. At which point, God is supposed to reward them, see.
Of course, sooner or later the falsehoods get exposed, and usually because Bible is recognized as disagreeing. Hence, iconoclasm grips the apathetic person. Hence, blaming the teacher who doesn't teach the real God, the person chucks God altogether -- for the teacher, lied! Thus you have the "God is Dead" phenomenon of the 1960's and 1970's. Never mind, that it was the teacher who lied (presume), not God Who lied. God gets cast out, too. And of course the Real God, being adversely judged (Matt7:1-2), does nothing. Satan counts on God's Integrity, uses it against Him. But note how man's prejudice is exposed. It was never God they wanted, in the first place, but a teaching which was a lie. They are only mad that the teaching proved to be a lie; had it never been exposed as a lie, they'd have still believed in it. Hypocrites, all.
Or, the apathetic folk suddenly get sick or have a disaster. At which point, God is supposed to deliver, since they have been sooooo good with their petty, vile observances and He's supposed to be grateful! But, He's not. So then they wonder why God doesn't rescue them from their illnesses and bad decisions. God is a dog, supposed to fetch them out of trouble, supposed to serve their idea of what makes God 'good'. And if He doesn't deliver, well.. then the Bible is wrong, or the teacher is wrong, or the one accurately portraying Him is wrong. Doesn't matter, if real wrong exists. It's just an excuse. So it's all God's fault, and they 'fall away', convinced they were lied to. No: they never got close, to start with. They bought the lie all those years, but now conveniently forget that. So they flagellate themselves the more, by attacking others or 'get even' by avoiding God altogether. He let them down, see. Never occurs to them that He can't positively reinforce lies. If you call Him by some other 'god' name, He won't answer. If you believe a wrong thing about Him and insist on it, He won't nag you about the error. Love never nags. Kinda like that movie with Mel Gibson, "Signs", only once Mel's character stopped blaming God, did he see what the 'signs' actually were. When you blame God, you only beat yourself up. Can't see too well, if you've always got a black eye...
In short, the Bible has been routinely abused in translation and teaching for centuries, but even were it not -- the apathetic, would still find another excuse. They want God to conform to THEM, not vice versa. So, not good people, but haters, 2Tim2:26-3:7. Satanfodder, then, bleeding themselves to death, fancying their many little works as deserving credit, fancying themselves martyrs of a heavy-handed and aloof God. From Whom they divorced themselves, oh so long ago. Gleeful eaters of the Grail myth, these folks, oh so au courante, now. "Always learning, but never able to come to an EPIgnosis of the truth. Avoid such persons as these." 2Tim3:5-7, playing at a neighbor's house, near you. [EPI means "upon", connotation of building on a foundation. Totally unlike the "masonic" ideas promulgated in the world, true Spiritual Masonry is a major topic of both OT (i.e., the Temple depicted it), and NT (i.e., Eph2, 4:11-16). It's not at all mystical, but learning the Bible itself under God's System: viz, under the power of the Holy Spirit, which is utterly unfeelable -- learning, not earning -- learning, and rather prosaically -- see "God's System" link at pagetop.]
So the history of the human race, is the history of self absorption, and hence Satan&Co.'s success. We call 'love', what pleases US, never mind how perverse the 'love' might be. God is supposed to conform to OUR standards, not vice versa; for, when we claim to conform to His Standards, we pat ourselves on the back! As if, all His Standards were worth, was to praise our obedience. So, when we demonstrate our intense apathy by allotting no or little time to learning the Word versus what we think we do for people, hence what we do for people, damages them by selling the to-people lie; so, when we demonstrate our intense hatred of God by nodding at Him on Sunday, expecting goodies and blessing in return; so, when we enjoy blaming others or self when things violate our standards, well -- clearly we are flagellating only ourselves. As one thinks, so he is, Prov23:7. And the thinking, is empty and vile; but feels good, so we keep on doing it. marionetted. Trapped. Loving our self-absorbed prejudices, nurturing them in others. Viral RNA, never DDNA. With disastrous true consequences God will never override.
You'd think this confirmation of Bible prophecy, particularly one folks drool over, would be front-page news. But since it illustrates Truth, it's boring; so no one recognizes it (I can't find anyone who notices the bald 'coincidence'). I mean, people have puzzled for centuries how it could happen that some guy in the future, could claim to be Christ; how a Fake Church could ever exist which likewise would endorse such a liar. Sheesh: and here all along, this European bloodline claim, is how old? Recycled every now and again, racing across the world like the plague it is?
Yet now that the false Grail story is popular again, does anyone look at the BIBLE? Oh no: the Grail story is about Christ, yet no one looks at the Book to see what The Book might say about it -- or, when they look, they read something weird, as mentioned above in the subsection about pro-Grail, anti-Bible, prejudicial 'scholarship'. How amazing! And instead, people focus on whether the RCC persecuted, on whether He had kids -- with a fiendish glee over the famous having 'flaws'; thus, making many a fortune for the writer who promulgates them, whether via 'harmless' fiction, or no. Because to the sin nature, it feels good to rebel against authority, and particularly, against God. Hence the glee over 'discovering' the Catholic Church's murderous crusades against those who believe(d) in a from-Christ bloodline; since in their lust to blame the RCC, they gleefully lump Bible and God in their accusations, as if the Catholic Church ever properly represented either; so you know the prejudice is really fueled demonically, not rationally. Thus you can come to see how folks in the Tribulation, will fall for the very same claim. What's past, is prologue.
So it's not surprising that real people lay claim to the House of David, leaving implicit the legend: psst, we are also descended from Christ Himself! "Prince Michael Stuart" (or Stewart) claims to be descended from David -- though his spokesman, Sir Lawrence Gardiner (or Sir Laurence Gardner), doesn't claim he's from Christ's loins. At Amazon, you can buy the latter's books on the subject. Of course, another claimant was Plantard, who (hoax or no) obviously thought it propitious, just after the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, to use the pro-royalty climate for a claim of his own (he died in 2000). Then there's the House of Hapsburg, who had been largely the ruling house of Europe, almost until WWII ended. They don't themselves trumpet a claim, but you can find many who claim it about them. Doesn't matter if any of these claims were true. Does matter that people are obsessed about the idea. Generation after generation.
Thus you see today, how people will be obsessed by the same lie, in the future. So, we're looking at demonic herding -- there's no other rational explanation for so much lasting attention on a dusty country's ancient prophetical king, is there? Do you see this much attention focused on any other king or faith, over so many centuries? Who's busily out debunking Krishna or Shiva? Who's obsessed with disproving Allah, or Zeus? How many books are written claiming to be updates of the Bhagavad Gita or the Tibetan Book of the Dead? When has anyone spent their lifetime trying to prove Gautama, a mere philsopher -- even though he himself, claimed that's all he ever was? Oh, but only the Bible gets scads of counter claimants specifically focusing on it or its characters, like the Book of Mormon, the Koran, all those fake Gospels and other counterfeit tripe (Apochrypha and pseudipigrapha -- read for yourself)? The Mary Sura is positively obsessed with Him! Book of Mormon's clever misuse of OT and NT is so genius, I wish I could meet the demon who called himself Moroni -- clever name, since 'moron' partly means demon, a son of darkness, in the Greek, and the "-oni" ending is a respectful diminuitive, in the Hebrew/Aramaic of Jesus' day -- to congratulate him on his wit! Oh, but only on Christ! is this kind of negative, obsessive attention focused. Now do you see how it must be demonic? Man isn't capable of that much focus, hostile or otherwise, century after century...
All this happens before the Tribulation begins, and there's no guarantee how long before it needs to occur; nor is there any guarantee that it need remain. The fake Temple could be built, then lots of war after that -- for the purpose of rebuilding the Temple is to create massive destruction of the Jews. So, when that attempt fails (as they all do), the fake Temple can be destroyed yet again. Then, after some years, victory again gets it rebuilt. This scenario has already occurred repeatedly: Hadrian rebuilt a fake temple in 135AD, and Justinian tried to rebuild it. The Arab Dome was built 685-691AD. So more destructions and rebuildings, don't tell you anything but that it's a tool of Satan&Co. No one knows, not even Satan, how much longer history goes on, before the Rapture occurs -- so he's been trying since the Crusades, to rebuild the Temple. All he's been able to manage, is the Dome of the Rock. Well, at least he can protect that Rock, pending his intended world-hegemony political gambit.
For Satan loves a rich joke: use a FAKE Christ to kill interest in the Real One. Especially, if a real bloodline member of the Royal Family can be used -- that's a way of 'returning' Christ, right? Especially, since the Real Messiah was rejected by Israel, already. Especially, if a lie about Christ having kids can be used against Christians: for that ploy obfuscates the entire Church Age Doctrine of the Bride of Christ and the 'sons' plan which the NT exhaustively explains. Since the True Grail is to get His Thinking in you, if a fake Christ is lauded, then the Christian can easily substitute for that fake 'grail' of political rule. Heck, the Christian right already thinks political rule is God's Plan -- proving they are Satan's pawns, and that they don't even remember Christ's famous statement to Pilate, "My Kingdom is NOT of this world" (i.e., John 18:36).
Most of all: do you see the potential for war, here? No one could be neutral to Christ's Birth in the first century, which Daniel had predicted to the very year, almost 600 years prior (see LvS4a.htm and Mirroring.htm). No one can be neutral, even now. Ever. Satan&Co. go to the Lake of Fire, if they don't prevent His Second Coming. Which they seek to do, by means of the ribald lie that Christ has returned, get it? [You'll notice that none of the Tribulation movies 'remember' that the anti-christ King of the West poses as Christ: shows that none of them do their homework. If you read books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail with this Tribulational plot in mind, promulgated from the Crucifixion onward to have a valid paper trail, you'll see clearly the demonic conspiracy, so will avoid getting upset with mere humans. This plot began way before the Incarnation, by the way, but it's too convoluted, to explain. Suffice it to say you can readily prove that many folks claimed to be the Messiah even before Christ was actually born, so that when He was born, it would be easy to conclude even Him an impostor, if you were sufficiently ignorant of the facts. That ploy continues, and will keep on being played, until He actually returns.]
Substitute Christ, substitute Mission, substitute salvation. So you never get, the Real One. Again, it's a rich joke: before the Incarnation, it was a real bloodline persecution, going so far as to break Trial rules in Genesis 6, with the demons (who are now in Tartarus) deliberately copulating with as much of the human race as possible, to get rid of purely-human DNA. They almost succeeded (which is why phallicism has been a ploy ever since): only eight pure humans, were left. Hence the Flood. Post-Cross, the physical bloodline gambit -- which had been a real issue but is no longer, now that Christ completed the Cross -- today the world has this nice paper trail of the past, so a mystical physical bloodline can look like the truth. So, what was once the truth (sans the mysticism) can be built on, by appeal to our prejudices, and thus blot out the new and real 'bloodline', the production of Pleroma believers by means of learning Bible in God's System. How apt: Isa53:11 in LXX, which is all about how this thinking gets DDNA-reproduced, uses the preposition "anti" to show how Christ is a Substitute for our sins, so we can substitute our thinking for His, once saved. So notice the Satan&Co. wit on that preposition: they aim to substitute a DIOS for Him, in our minds. He paid for us with His Thinking, so that "Blood" is mockingly made physical, such that we get 'saved' politically by mindless corpuscles which have magic properties. Heh.
Since God's Plan is intimacy via shared Thinking, and since the main Biblical metaphors used to explain that Plan are sexual (euphemized in all translations), the anti-Christ 'spin' must bang the drum on sex in order to spoof the real and Holy meaning behind the metaphor. God invented sex for pleasure in marriage, not for procreation (Gen2:18-25 is well before Gen3:15ff)! When you compare the nouns and verbs used for marital intimacy with the ones used for the relationship of the believer TO God, you see that the reason why God invented marital sex, was as an analogy to the pleasure in knowing God, so you could understand God's will was not religion.
Hence, the Garden couple: marriage is altogether part of the nature of being male or female, indissoluble from it. As my pastor likes to say, "Adam wasn't just created a male, but a Husband. Isha wasn't just created a woman, but a wife." That's why homosexuality is not only a sin, but until the NT, a crime as well. To teach how the sanctity of marriage, isn't an obligation, but the fulfillment of the soul. To depict, fulfillment with God. The obligation, protects the soul from temptation. Commandments are designed for the same purpose, hence the First Commandment, is to Love God. So to become ascetic, is also against the Law (always has been, which is why even Onan was killed by God). So adultery and fornication, were also against the Law, though Christ changed the 'crime' rule (i.e., with the woman caught in adultery, general principle there) to be a matter only the Supreme Court of Heaven, can decide -- and it's thought, not merely the act, which governs (see all "adultery" verses in the Gospels). Now note the analogy, which Christ prayed for using marital terminology, in John 17: Church (believers between Pentecost and Rapture) is the "Bride" of Christ, as Paul explains in 1Cor, Ephesians (not only in Eph5, for he uses marital vocabulary throughout). 'As John deftly explains, in 1John (also using marital vocabulary, when you look up the etymology of his stressed terms, like menw).
So here's the anti-christ: politics and religion are all about, harlotry. Congregations of bodies, preferably in adversarial relationship to each other, so can instead war. Politics is easily seen as a form of prostitution, when you examine what people will do to gain political power. Religion, too. Not too much different from the ancient phallic cults, really. Phallic cults were never pleasant affairs -- sex was mandatory, thus poisoning the concept of sex as a marital intimacy, between two people, male and female, devoted exclusively to each other. But Religion is just another type of adultery, since the couple trying to be religious, eventually view their activities as more important, than the soul bonds between them. Most divorces occur due to a 'growing apart' between the spouses. And religion is all about, divorce. For the more religious you become, the more you focus on yourself, even and especially when you imagine you are being 'good' to people. So you become addicted to being 'good', and hence farther apart from your mate, who by the way won't be properly grateful for all the sacrifices you see yourself making. It's the oldest reason for divorce, and the most potent one. Infidelity isn't just a fling with some hussy, y'know. [Fornication and adultery program the soul to regard the act more and more as a body thing, so with repeated engagements in either one, the sex act degrades; it becomes a religified standard of huffing and puffing, how you look or 'perform'; the act depersonalizes the other person, to the extent that eventually love and sex separate in meaning. It's not at all like the movies. Trouble is, one doesn't realize how jaded an attitude one derives from promiscuity, as the subsequent addiction to the sex act -- rather than to your mate -- takes over all else. Sex was designed to bond a married couple to each other, soul and body. Once you divorce sex from marriage, you divorce the soul from the body, so eventually your soul cannot integrate with your body in sex. So true intimacy, which is a soul function, remains frustrated. It's no coincidence that sexual dysfunction is so prevalent today. God explained the problem all over the Bible, to protect the human race -- but who listens to Him Who Invented Sex? Pretty graphic depiction in Ezekiel 16 and Hosea (whole book), plus passim verses in Proverbs, are there to warn of the problem. That's why adultery, fornication, pederasty, homosexuality, etc. are all sins. They harm those who engage in them. God is not trying to deny anyone pleasure, but to increase its enjoyment. For, intimacy with God, is 24/7 cycling of "Christ in you" -- the Seed in you, the oneness of John 17, "sanctify them in the Truth", verses 17-19, since the Husband sanctifies the Wife, Eph5 (etc) -- get it?]
Sex thus becomes a rallying point for politics and religion to form their opposing forces. Yet when convenient to both sides, sex is also what will unite them: that's how the Chinese Communists were able to enlist the support of China Inland Mission, for example, in their bid to beat the Kuomintang. Thus the Bible is cheapened into a politico-religious tool, as if it were 'Christian' to ban all the Chinese brothels. The KJV translation was another such compromise, so is conveniently lying or vague where needed, to allow both sides (RCC and Calvinist) to claim their interpretations are correct. So of course, all its sex references which clearly mean Fellowship With God are euphemized; all out-from-womb verses (which you need to know, to realize how God births Christ's thinking IN you), are reversed to in-womb verses, as if life were in the womb (making God a sadist, at the expense of peace between two groups who believed the lie of life-in-womb, never bothering to check what Bible said in its inspired MSS). So, see? Ascetism is the worst type of harlotry, which is why the Lord so excoriates the Pharisees, and you have scathing verses like Isa1:13 and 64:6. For ascetism is a substitute mate, substitute for Knowing your Husband. Many is the divorced husband at the bar or golf tee whose ex-spouse nagged him to death with how good her deeds were (meaning that he was no good, or didn't reciprocate the high value of what she did for him)! Of course, many is the divorced woman who finally couldn't live with the know-it-all, anymore. Infidelity by nagging, is far more destructive. And murderous.
Christ was crucified the first time by ascetics who distorted everything He said, into a political bid for power. That was never the goal, since He already IS God, and doesn't need political power. Task was, could He without using that Godness, pay for sins? As a result of which, we could get His Thinking IN us, and thus become like Him, hence a worthy Kingdom Of Priests For Father? That was first Israel's lot, which she refused at the First Advent, preferring a political kingdom to an eternal spiritual one. So, Church was born Out From Christ, Matt16:18 (always egregiously distorted, by the Catholic Church and everyone else who quotes it). So, of course now that He won and is risen, the same distortion Satan used so well in the first century, continues: Rev13-17, politico-religious gambits. So, of course Christ is spun as having had kids, or the Disposyni (royal family, i.e., His brothers) are spun as wanting political power. Nice petri dish for more pogroms. Satan's macro tactic of anti-semitism and like machinations are covered in the Appendix of the "Thinking" series; again, Part IV of that series explains more how the torch of priesthood passed from Israel to Church (which is a different priesthood, so never usurps Israel, see Hebrews Chaps5-10).
So really, Satan just keeps on playing the same ol' tired game he played at the First Advent, which we have in writing in The Book God Wrote. But we don't read that Book, so fall for the Grail myth pandered by folks who prove conclusively they couldn't read the Bible if it was spoonfed them. But we don't care. We like the lie. Because we hate God. So, the myth will keep on being popular, more pogroms will come from it, and apathetic humanity will squeal at all the carnage, wondering how it all could happen. Yet another holocaust, yet more hand-wringing, then back to the myth because it feels good.
Thus it happened in the first century, and thus it happens ever since. For what happened to Christ, happens to us all; only Bible is a defense, and only then, after some while spent in God's System. Think of living in God's System as a castle fortress, beseiged. Outside the castle (1Jn1:8 or 10), everyone wars, hence the hunger for war remains, and grows stronger, never satisfied. Like the Battle of Berachah, the enemy are all killing each other, and the believer within God's System, doesn't do a thing.
