Tarot Deck

Free Spiritual Soul healing therapies? Have noticed soul healing therapies seem to be charged for on the internet seeing the nature of the treatment and the law of oneness believed some would do this as a free service. Does any 1 know of a healer that does this as a free service? thxs

what is the best website the provides free self help for Emotional and Spiritual Healing ?

Free information on spiritual healing? Im looking for information on my gift of spiritual healing and if possible information on spiritual healing for animals

(Spiritual) Healing Retreats...? I live in Ontario, Canada. I'm wondering if there exists such a place where one can go to spend a month, two months, more than that (?) where people spend their days meditating and participating in spiritual healing techniques, yoga etc.? Does there exist such a place where one can go for free or for very little, if they're in crisis? ??

Can I legally open up a spiritual healing business? I want to help people suffering from depression and/or anxiety. I would help them realign with their higher self in order to bring joy and inner peace into their lives. I used to suffer from depression and anxiety and I no longer do after undergoing a spiritual transformation. I would love to offer my services for free, but if I am going to dedicate all my time I am going to need to earn a living. I would only charge somewhere around $50 per hour session. My aim would be to 100% cure any person from mood disorders. Plus I have a bachelors degree in Psychology so it wouldn't be as if I am out of touch with the medical aspects of these disorders. Also, this idea comes from the purest heart-felt of intentions. I genuinely care for others and would absolutely love it if I could spend all of my time doing what I love most--helping other people find true happiness. Zach, Thank you for your opinion, but what about all the people who attend sessions with therapists and are still hurting? I do NOT want to scam people...I would work very hard with them to find and reconnect with their inner strength, light, and love. I don't expect you to believe me because you don't know me...but if you did you would know that I am not wanting to do this for any reason other than to help others if they wished. I lived the first 22 years of my life with depression and anxiety so I only feel compassion, love and empathy for others that still are.

where can i learn spiritual healing? I would like to know if there are any recommended books or free training or correspondence courses available. Is certification neccessary?

Have you ever been at your lowest and turned to the Angels for help? Some people go through some awful tragedies in life, we are all individuals and we all cope in different ways. Have you ever turned to the Angels for help and if you have, how did that help arrive? I have my way of connecting to the Angels, i'm interested to know how you connect with your Angels and what responses you have had? Have you seen an Angel or just felt one? How do you know that they are with you? What signs do they give you? Peace, Love and Light. x myspace.com/free_spiritual_healing FREESpiritual.healing.googlepages.com freespiritual.healing@hotmail.co.uk

a spiritual gift of healing? i believe i have a gift but i am kinda nervous to tell people without people thinking im crazy. so i keep it to myself and only my mother and a few friends and my boyfriend believe me, because i have healed them a few times. its more like a temporary relief, like i am the human tylonal. im not sure what this gift is called or if there are really others that have the same gift as me. i had this gift since i was 17 for the past 4 years. i have other gifts but this is a more stronger gift. i can lightly touch the most painful places on a persons body and grasp it like i am pickin electric looking worms from the spot and just draw the tention out this way and cup it in my other hand, when my hand is full i go out side and release it. my mother suffers from diabetic neuropathy and her feet are so worse from the firey numbness in her toes and feet with the feeling of needles pricking her toes and feet and she crys sometimes keeping her away. regular massages never work until i do my healing process with my light touch onto her feet for an hour. if you just lightly touch her feet she would go through horrible pain as if soemone is setting her feet on fire, but when i do it she is in full relaxation and enjoys the pain free moments and then feels nothing the entire night. so thats a good thing because it was hard to rub her calves and feet without her biting her tongue in pain. she thought i was being stupid and crazy when i asked to do my thing but she became a strong believer after that and thought how strange it is. others have witnessed the healing. im sure if i practice it will last longer, just like latley because i havent done it in so long. but i thought i was the only one till my mom called me into the living room to see tyra banks show that had psychic children on there. some of them did the same thing as i did and it nearly freaked me out with amazement. so are there really other people out there like me and have this gift? or am i just over using my imagination and everyone is really over using there power of the mind to believe? i want to know if i am really gifted without hearing im crazy because if no one believes me i might as well keep it to myself as a secret. it would be a waiste to do so. because i truely think GOD wants me to use my gift eventually. knowing my mother went through so much. i am here for a short while visiting and my mother has slept so well since i been here. so what do you think the wierd thing is i had faith in god but it want strong till i started doing this and i guess it could be a sign that he is really there...idk. but it comforts me to know that there are believers and that im not the only one out there, and i will try harder in what i do, i wont do the tv thing of course and go that open about it, and i or anyone at that will never be as powerful as God because God is the only one out there with the true power. he can give and take it away but im gonna use it while i still can and do better and never harm. i guess some of us are there to share the faith of God. and non believers will just have to wonder till they can open their eyes and understand.

Has anyone personally met and experienced healing from Dr. SHA (www.drsha.com), the certified medical doctor.. Has anyone personally met or experienced healing from Dr. SHA (www.drsha.com), a US certified medical doctor from China who is also a master of various martial art disciplines including tai-chi, qi-kung, shaolin kung fu? He has written many #1 Best Seller including "Soul Mind Body Medicine". My friend tells me he is is now a full time spiritual teacher and healer claiming to be God's Universal Servant and has performed miraculous healings and offers free long distance remote healing around the world every week... i'm impressed with one of his teachings that "all illnesses are due to some form of blockages on the cellular and spiritual level, Unconditional Love melts all blockages and Unconditional Forgiveness brings inner peace". His ambitious mission is to join all souls through love peace and harmony by teaching "i have the power to heal myself, you have the power to heal youself, together we have the power to heal the world. Has anyone had had first-hand experience with Dr. SHA?

Christians how strong would you faith be if you had to go threw this kind of life for 7 yrs? some times when I close my eye's i see these eye's and they blink. All sorts of evil faces.....where the heck can a mind come up with this? I mean such demonic faces, how does the mind just get sick and create these image's? I mean these eye's blink... My sickness even has a sense of humor. When I was getting dental work done showing my teeth in x-rays, a low thought said I wish I could show them my teeth. I almost started to laugh and I could not help it. With a image scaring the doctors with these demonic teeth.There has been other signs of humor in this illness, sarcastic humor. What can create humor, doesn't humor need intelligence?Not to mention I have a vile manner of telling people to **** my ****..... over and over in my head. Talk with Jesus I sometimes say it....bugs me, just spits out. I always say I am possessed, because of what happens at the church, getting wiped around and stuff. My mental illness is quite irritated to prayers and worship. The shrink says he has never heard of a sickness communicate with prayer as I talk about. If a pastor ever says those that need spiritual healing over the congregation in a prayer, I put up quite a show with my body and my head. They once prayed this prayer and I was forced to sit down because my head went in a Mad scream back and forth NO way. I was not screaming but noises were coming from me....I guess if you were taken like that you would make a noise as well. so have anyone ever heard of a mental illness like this? Not to mention I have 1000's of voices. The only reason I keep my sanity I believe is because I seek after God and I know in my heart I will be free. How would you be before the lord after 7 yrs like this? The pastors in every church just stare at you. They say you are not demon possessed. I think they are looking for someone like the movie the exorcist? I keep wondering if I should bring some pop corn to the pastor when he just stares at me. I was once on my knees weeping because of all the satanic thoughts being in my head, and I was saying sorry to God for being a very wicked person. I was waling in church at the alter. Baling my eye's out. I stood up and I fell straight to the floor. I was shaking left right and center my whole body, like I was having a seizure, but I was fine in my head. The Christians came over to me and placed their hands over me and tried to cast out the demon. (their Idea). I went from a low pitch to a High pitch. I think I got the whole beat of the cord. I was screaming, or it was screaming. Then they pulled their hands away. I guess I was really loud. I was so confused about what happened I did not want to leave the church. I wanted this demon out of me. Then they called the cops on me....and do not want to try again, and say I am not demon possessed? Why would they say that? I have tried all kinds of church's. The same happens, I am wiped around like a rag doll sometimes. But they say I am not demon possessed. The pastor told me to search the spirit and test it. I called on God and asked if I was possessed if he would show me the spirit and frighten me. That instant a life like picture came to me and I was frightened. I told the pastor this he just shrugged his shoulders and said you are not demon possessed. Talk about NO help from my family when I need them. The only thing good out of all this 7 yr walk is I learned how to love the Lord. SO how would you be with your church and your faith if you had this for 7 yrs and you do not know how to be free? hope you can read it all... no help from my church family....not from people on Y/A. Some Christians have been good to me.

Do fundamental Christians in the USA agree that free health care for the poor is Christian and if not why? God in God's infinite wisdom and perfection choose to come amongst his human creation as a member of the poor peasant class. Not the wealthy or powerful or political classes. Christ encouraged everyone one of us here, then and now to have an unmediated physical and spiritual relationship with God and each other. Christ opposed in principle any form of earthly hierarchy including politics and traditions linked to judgment that divides and deprives people on many levels. Christ asserted that the kingdom of God is within and without and that we must become as children again to experience it and he maintained he is here for anybody or more to the point is here for the nobodies...the poor..the destitute and those with no hope. Christ freely healed anyone.. sinner or virtuous..with his infallible divinity...subject to no laws made amongst men and Christ healed for FREE! Therefore I am confused at the attitude of certain fundamental christians who currently in the USA through their lobbying and protests who are clearly acting more like satan in their support of rejecting a health bill to enhance health-care for those who need it most. Please no quotes form anyone other than Christ and remember this:Is it not better not to render unto Caesar and rather render unto your brother and sister for surely the reward will be greater than what can ever be transient here in the world of poverty and death. Can you state if you are Christians please. So far you all appear mean spirited, worldy and dying slowly of the incipient cancer that will leak form your closed minds that are sinking into politicalism that wont matter one day for you like I will be not here in this place. If you are not Christians then I accept your answers however a true Christians laughs at this world of illusion linked to politics and money and British Empire onday you'll face your own words believe me but in the meantime your blocked. Yetis endure cold:So what your implying is that Christ by healing for free is an evil communist?What is wrong with seeking the reward after the living death you support here fool!! It is times like this when I feel proud to be born here in the UK even though I reject countries as definitions of my consciousness which I am glad to say is Universal. How petty.How mean and how unchristian some of you sound.You reveal your inner truth by what you state.You will surely die here and remain here as dust and atoms upon the wind with only your own memories to sustain you in the devils playground where you dwell in darkness and spiritual destitution.SHAME ON YOU AND YOUR HOUSE.

Is this directory of questions ready for a religion that is not attached to the Old Testament? BELIEFS AND CUSTOMS OF WICCA Not every Wiccan will subscribe to all of these points, but generally they are representative. 1. The divine Spirit is present in all creatures and things: people, animals, plants, stones... 2. The ultimate creative force manifests in both feminine and masculine modes; therefore it is often symbolized as the Goddess and The God. 3. In some covens, both are celebrated equally. In others, The Goddess is given precedence or even celebrated without reference to the God. 4. All Goddesses and Gods are aspects of The Goddess and The God. The aspects most popular in Wicca are the Triple Goddess of the Moon (Maiden, Mother and Crone) and the Horned God of death and rebirth. 5. Reincarnation and karma are valid concepts. Upon death one goes to a state of rest and reflection, and eventually chooses where and when s/he will be reborn. 6. Magick is practiced for positive (helping) purposes: spiritual development, healing, guidance, safety, etc. 7. Rituals are generally performed outdoors when possible, at the New and Full Moons, and at eight Sabbat festivals which mark the progression of the seasons. 8. Magick and celebration are performed in small groups, usually 3 to 13, called covens. These are basically autonomous -- there is no central church authority or hierarchy. 9. There is no holy book, or prophet, no equivalent of the Bible or Jesus or Mohammed. Individuals have access to the divine, and do not require an intermediary. Every initiate is regarded as a priest/ess. 10. The central ethic is "And ye harm none, do as ye will." Whatever energy you send out returns threefold, so it is wise to be kind to others. 11. We should live in harmony with the Earth and Nature, and not exploit them. 12. Though Wicca is a valid spiritual path, it is not the only one. There is no recruiting, and people should be free to choose the path that best fits their needs. 13. The concepts of original sin, sacrifice, redemption, Šconfession, the divinity of Jesus, sinfulness of sex, Judgment, Heaven and Hell, denigration of women, bodily resurrection, and the Bible as divine revelation are not part of Wicca. Neither are Satanism, the Black Mass, desecration of cemeteries, the sacrifice of animals, etc. Copyright (c) 1983 Amber K., Our Lady of the Woods. Used by Permission

Do Christians take the Healing and Miracle Power of Jesus seriously? Unbelievers will always deny that God heals, even amputees, even completely dead corpses. Anything that didn't happen under an Atheist's nose didn't happen- unless, of course, it was Evolution. The Bible prophesied that "In The Last Days shall come scorners...yadda, yadda, yadda..." We know that Unbelievers will always disbelieve, down to the Last Second, when they absolutely have to admit that there are some things they don't know nothing about. Okay. What is the excuse of Christians, who claim to believe Jesus healed every case of sickness, disease, maiming, and death that was brought to his attention. The victims did not have extensive knowledge of "Positive Thinking." They didn't have the benefit of fifteen years of schooling, with theological training, and so on. They were just people with needs, who approached someone who wanted to help them, and could. My experience with supposed Christians is that they are too lazy to seriously dig into what they believe and why they believe it, the closer it gets to Miracles and Healing. It is enough for them to believe that these things happened to some Ancient People thousands of years before they were born. They are even prepared to die defending those beliefs. But it is amazing how many millions are prepared to die, or let supposed loved ones suffer agony and death, rather than APPLY THEIR BELIEFS AND DEVELOP HEALING POWERS THEMSELVES. I had no immunity to malaria (a potentially fatal, insect-borne disease), having been brought up where the disease didn't exist. For eight years or so, I survived with the use of the drugs available, until their side-effects became almost worse than the disease, and were doing nothing. Then I got saved, and gave my heart to Jesus, and was baptized with The Holy Ghost, and healed myself through prayer, without using any drugs. (I have known people on my campus who had the finest medical treatment their money could buy- one flew out to Europe for treatment- who died of this disease.) So, no one can tell me that there is nothing to healing. My explanation would be that the Spiritual Power in Christianity boosted or supplemented my immune system- until I learned to heal myself through detoxification (i.e. fasting), which involves nothing spiritual at all, after I left the Pentecostal Organization that tried to tell me they now owned me. (I fell seriously sick almost immediately.) I personally have never attempted healing that requires gross physical replacement, while I have, through my own spirituality research, uncovered several techniques that would apply. However, no Christian I have ever spoken to (including pastors and suffering Christian laymen) have the slightest interest in learning how to heal anything and everything. I cannot give my views away for free. I am considering *paying* Christians to look at them.) I have not attempted to start a church or publish books because I have always despised the use of these tactics to "make money." However, no one respects my principles. Whenever I find someone new to talk to, certain people, even pastors, take them aside and give them a little talk, and then they never talk about it with me any further. Being trained in science (short of diploma or degree level) I can appreciate how Divine Healing is an extremely important miracle, that people who should know better simply take for granted. The energy required to materialize, say, a little finger, or annihilate a cancer, would, if released, crater a large city. Any sort of creative miracle healing involves the synthesis of maybe hundreds of complex chemical substances- which all have to be replicated perfectly, without error, or they could kill the body. Raising the dead involves the transformation of probably thousands of parameters throughout a whole body- all of which have to be done right, or the corpse stays dead. I get very irritated when people talk about this as if it were of no more consequence than them blowing their nose! They say rubbish like, "Since Brother X raised three people from the dead, he's become a snob!" "He became lifted up with pride!" (No! They became lowered with envy!) "He won't come to hear our favorite pastor speak, he says, "How many dead has HE raised?" Then there are the possibilities raised by transmutation and spontaneous creation of matter and energy involved in Jesus' transforming water into not just wine, but *quality* wine. Do you know how many chemical substances are involved in making something that looks and tastes like good wine? This cannot be just ethyl alcohol glucose, and fructose! Yet, Christians, supposedly educated in science, just gloss over this example of Divine Power and say, even in as many words, "*We* don't need to know how to do that!" Tool after tool is thrown in the gutter and spat upon! (A famous Pentecostal Pastor in our country was out of gas (a potentially fatal experience at night), and he prayed and God told him to tell his driver to do it in th (Interrupted by electric power cut.) the fuel tank, and he did, and it became fuel. Another pastor was in the same jam. He said, "Hallelujah! I'll do what Brother Adeboye did!" He did. His engine knocked.) What is especially galling is that there was an American dropout who took one section of Jesus' Gospel and emphasized exercise of its fundamental principles out of all proportion, and made unprecedented discoveries that embarrass Academic Scientists to this day, and built him a $100 million empire by the time of his death. He uncovered unheard-of Secrets of the Mind and Universe, which the Christian Church ought to know about, but mostly don't even want to know anything about- until someone writes a book about it that is reviewed on "Oprah." Evangelist T. L. Osborn was probably the first to film Christian miracle healings. Now I find, there are several to be found on YOUtube. It is important that we do not limit our knowledge to Atheistic and Satanic "Science, so-called." Instant-Healing of unequal length legs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtoosvGIqYs Slow Healing of amputated stumps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHAf3W3iPPY&feature=related Gordon Lindsay in his MINISTRY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT series (THE WORKING OF MIRACLES,) recounted a case where some ignorant fellow was about to be prayed for by a powerful lady evangelist. She could see that something was wrong with one of his eyes, but could not imagine what it was. "Do you believe Jesus can heal your eye?" she asked- not having time to ask anything else, it being a *long* prayer queue. The boy replied, "Yes!" She prayed for him that he be able to see through his impaired eye. This happened immediately. The lady evangelist later learned, that the reason why the young man could not see through that eye, was because it was made of glass. This miracle was continuous, and lengthy examination of the case was made. For instance, they found that he could see with the eye removed! The above case was the first I heard of this miracle being repeated by Christians. The basis would be that the Spirit Body does not need flesh in order to see. Therefore one need only find and engage the appropriate trigger to activate these senses at the Physical Universe level. This would be proof that the spirit indeed exists. The denial of which is the necessary first step in Materialistic Deception. Where these sorts of miracles have been documents, the documents are simply buried, or destroyed. I once testified to a blind Law student in our Pentecostal Fellowship, but whose condition nobody else seemed to care about. I quickly found that he could not be instructed, and was not motivated to do his own research. He was interested to hear about Gordon Lindsay's "Glass Eye" testimony, but insisted that he was just as much spiritual as myself or anyone! When I mentioned baptism of the Holy Ghost, he said huffily, that he already had "that experience." He graduated but never healed.

have you ever heard of a mental illness where you see demon face's some times when I close my eye's i see these eye's and they blink. All sorts of evil faces.....where the heck can a mind come up with this? I mean such demonic faces, how does the mind just get sick and create these image's? I mean these eye's blink... My sickness even has a sense of humor. When I was getting dental work done showing my teeth in x-rays, a low thought said I wish I could show them my teeth. I almost started to laugh and I could not help it. With a image scaring the doctors with these demonic teeth.There has been other signs of humor in this illness, sarcastic humor. What can create humor, doesn't humor need intelligence? I always say I am possessed, because of what happens at the church, getting wiped around and stuff. My mental illness is quite irritated to prayers and worship. The shrink says he has never heard of a sickness communicate with prayer as I talk about. If a pastor ever says those that need spiritual healing over the congregation in a prayer, I put up quite a show with my body and my head. They once prayed this prayer and I was forced to sit down because my head went in a Mad scream back and forth NO way. I was not screaming but noices were coming from me....I guess if you were taken like that you would make a noise as well. so have anyone ever heard of a mental illness like this? Not to mention I have 1000's of voices. The only reason I keep my sanity I believe is because I seek after God and I know in my heart I will be free.

Religious cause dead in more children Colorado Children's Deaths Rekindle Debate on Religion By MICHAEL JANOFSKY ENVER, Feb. 20 — The deaths over the last two years of three Colorado children whose parents denied them medical treatment on religious grounds has fueled support for state legislation that would prevent parents from using their religion as a defense against prosecution. The parents of all three children belong to the General Assembly and Church of the First Born, a small denomination that believes in prayer, rather than medical treatment, to cure illnesses and disabilities. Largely as a result of intense lobbying by the Church of Christ, Scientist, which also favors prayer over medicine, Colorado and 45 other states have statutes that allow parents to use their religious beliefs as a defense against prosecution for withholding medical treatment from their children. The exceptions are Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nebraska and North Carolina. But with evidence that dozens of other children of parents with similar beliefs may have died in the last 25 years in Colorado, this state has become one of the first to consider eliminating the religious exemption, which its opponents say sanctifies a form of child abuse. The effort has rekindled a debate here, pitting religious freedom against the rights of children. "I don't think freedom of religion should allow a child to die for not getting proper medical care," said State Senator Bob Hagedorn, a Democrat who is leading support in the Senate for a bill now under review in the House. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that parents do not have an absolute right to deny their children medical treatment on religious grounds, saying in a 1944 decision that while parents "may be free to become martyrs themselves," "it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children." The court reprised the same thought in a 1990 case. But legal experts say that state and local officials have not seen the Supreme Court language as a clear directive for prosecution of child abuse and homicide cases. Congress did little to clarify the issue with a 1974 directive that required states receiving federal money for child abuse and prevention programs to have an exemption for parents who substitute spiritual healing for medical care. The requirement was rescinded nine years later, but by then, most states had enacted their religious exceptions, which effectively allow parents to treat ailing children through prayer without fear of prosecution if something goes wrong. Then in 1996, Congress seemed to reverse itself in the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, saying there was no federal requirement that a child must be provided "any medical service or treatment against the religious beliefs of the parent or legal guardian." In Colorado, for example, prosecutors have always been able to bring civil charges against parents who deny their children medical help under state civil laws. But few have, said State Representative Kay L. Alexander, the House Republican sponsoring the measure, which was approved 8 to 3 by the Criminal Justice Committee. Ms. Alexander said the exemption in the criminal code "has had a chilling effect" on local district attorneys. Leaders from many of the dozens of churches that favor prayer over treatment say they have ample proof their spiritual healing works as effectively as a visit to a doctor. Marvin Peterson, an elder of the church to which the families of the three dead children belong, said a member recently fell off a ladder and cracked open her skull. After elders prayed and anointed her with oil, he said, she recovered. "I've seen people healed of cancer, seen it with my own eyes," Mr. Peterson said, taking strong exception to critics who characterize the church as a cult. "We believe that if it's the Lord's will, you will rise up." While few critics of Mr. Peterson's church and other like-minded denominations argue with the right of parents to choose the manner of treatment for themselves, they assert that children have constitutional guarantees to medical care. For years, Rita Swan has been one of the leading voices on their behalf as founder of Children's Health Care Is a Legal Duty, an organization based in Sioux City, Iowa, that lobbies for removing the state exemptions. Once a Christian Scientist, Mrs. Swan said that in 1977 a church "practitioner" — a member who is paid to pray — told her and her husband after several weeks of prayer that their 17-month-old son, Matthew, was suffering from a broken bone. Since Christian Scientists are allowed to consult doctors for broken bones, the Swans took Matthew to a hospital, only to learn he was suffering from spinal meningitis. He died a week later. Mrs. Swan and Dr. Seth M. Asser, a pediatrician in San Diego, released a study in 1998 that found 172 cases of children dying between 1975 and 1995, more than 30 of them in Colorado, after their parents failed to get them medical treatment on religious grounds. Mr. Peterson responded, "Children also die in hospitals every day." Prosecutors have been loath to bring charges in many cases because of the ambiguities of the law and what they say are well-intentioned actions of parents whose religious beliefs are so strong that they prefer to put their children in the hands of God, rather than a doctor. Frank Daniel, the Mesa County district attorney, had jurisdiction in the cases of the three Colorado children who died. He won a conviction for criminally negligent child abuse, a felony, in 1999 against the parents of an 18-day-old infant who died of meningitis. He declined to prosecute the parents of a 3-day-old infant who died of a heart defect. He said today that he had yet decided what to do in the latest case, involving Amanda Bates, a 13-year-old girl who died of complications of diabetes two weeks ago. The county coroner, Robert Kurtzman, ruled her death a homicide. Copyright February 21, 2001 The New York Times Company Also see Religious cult won't acknowledge Child! Killing Children over religion Sullivan County Tennessee Exposed Homepage Terrorism Guestbook E-Mail Visitors since March 2002

A spiritual journey - How do you like this poem? A Spiritual Journey Across from the mountains, A little house sits in the tree's, I'm lost in tranquility, As my soul tries to breath. White clouds moving slowly, The breeze a calm still, I'm caught in the moment, As my heart starts to heal. A piece of me, In the startling blue sky, As I spread my wings, My soul starts to fly. I fly to unknown places, Where pain and hurt once dwelled, As the memories flow pass me, My eyes start to swell. Tear drops drip slowly, Down my cheeks, The wind wipes them dry, And gives me some peace. Soaring so free, Over water and land, My Spirit Guide gently, Takes me by my hand. He shows me what was, And what's meant to be, And why my life, Is so important it seems. A long soar, Like the eagle high, I bow my head, And I start to cry. Back on the land, Across from the tree's, I began to realize, What healing means. It mean's not to forget, Let the past flow, Of all the horrors, One soul had to go. To take the strengths, And apply them to life, Is a valuable lesson, I've learnt this flight. Alone in the sunset, I watch it go down, When I finally realize, What peace I have found.

how come pastors can not preach the gospel of healing? ? I am at church today and almost every pastor that says those that have a need today raise your hand. I raise my hand and he prays over me. HE ONLY PRAYS lord I pray for whatever his need may be in the body to be healed. Of course nothing happens, because he only prays for my body. WHY NOT pray Dear Jesus I pray that what ever he needs in the body or if it is spiritual problems will you recognize them and heal them. See I image the man as Jesus in my head because he comes with his name. So if a man is having problems with demon possession how can he ever get free? if he only prays for the body?I have to go up there and say you should always pray in the body and the spirit. Not just for the body. There might be some of those spiritually in chains. IT is like Jesus only wants to heal sickness in the body, but leave those left chained with evil spirits, still in chains. how come no one knows how to preach for Jesus? You will find the odd one, but most only think people need help with Cancer or things of the body that is sick...I hate it......

Could you please help me to get rid of this? My situation I really need your suggestions, info, links, et cetera to get me break away from this computer addiction please. I have been living with computer since its advent, and I have been too long in this bit and byte world. I have almost no problem with my family and/or social matters (maybe), but certainly, I have problems with myself. I realize that my addiction to computer and internet has seized big values of my life. Please do not assume that I am addicted to the gaming, gambling, chatting, or sexual leisure online. I think I have really got the most of the computing and internet, I got answers for my quests in life: history, languages, hobbies, health, skill improvement, and other eye-openers, but I realized that at the end I just barely do not recognize myself. I knew that before the PC arrival, I was a simple human with a romantic and artistic mind inside, and then later I evolved to such a robot, to be precise: a slave of the technology. The internet had made me more tied to the PC, at first it delivered me the news of the world, marvelous things found there within the clicks and so on, but then made me deep drown into the pond of information. The cost and the lost Having knowledge to computer hardware made me always upgrade my gears. It made me spend big cost just to fulfill my lust over those times. My room is full with the old gears, gadgets, and things from online stores. My PCs and notebooks are full with MP3s, PDFs, and many things downloaded both free and paid. I also spent for many external/ portable harddisks for backing up and traveling. I do not mean to showoff, I just tell you how worse it was from time to time during about 20 years. I sometimes think about the lost time for repairing my gears, updating my softwares, browsing; and how many books that I have not read completely. There was a break One time, in two straight months last year, I spent my times with my son playing Tamiya, small racing cars in small tracks. It was wonderful that it made me totally forgot my computers. We have had most of the time together for racing, modifying, winding the wires for the tiny motors, etc. My wife was so amazed that the toys have made me away from the PC. It ended because of the coming rainy season that made us packed and boxed back the tracks and cars, and I simply switched back to the old routine. In search of healing I remember a precious phrase: Two kinds of those who lost; they are who looks for wealth and for knowledge. This phrase sometimes wakes me up but bad habit is addicting and I found myself always returned into that path. I think it is just similar to drug addiction. As the internet is an endless resource, I search through it for the cure, and I have found some articles about it and tried to implement them, but it always hard for me to liberate myself from my habit. I really hope that finally I find it in this forum, especially from you. Your helps, Please I know that some of you are familiar to manage some types of dependence, or maybe you have healed from the same situation. Whether you have some psychological, spiritual expertise, certain medication, or exercises, please share your advice, I need it badly. I do not want to clog the rest of my life in that digital world. There must be somebody else also in pain from the same thing, your kind suggestion will be very valuable and it will save some life. Thank you very much for sparing your time reading this lengthy note. God bless you. PS: I post this in Computing & Internet, Health, and Social Science with time interval, hoping to net more inputs. Please do not waste your time to put any unpleasant or unnecessary words, consider it will not only read by me but also by the other fellow readers. If you are not in the same situation with me, you perhaps still have the advantage of knowing the answers. Thank you, again.

Do you have Forgive Affirmed Spirit for Christian Spiritual Terrorism? Spiritual terrorism is the concept of undeserved eternal life for those who do not say that Jesus was God and perfect and to be like in life today completely! Hi! I am a Forgive Affirmed Spirit and this is what I profess and try to act like. Forgive Affirmed Spirit is the belief in a way of life that is a method of grief resolution and functional communication processing involving active listenning, sympathy, empathy and affirmation of shock, denial, anger, guilt, depression, loneliness and hope. A Greater Works of communication and action, a way to learn to love your enemies "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you AS IF YOU WERE THEM!" And nobody is perfect! NOBODY! We are all judgeable, hopefully in a graceful discerning way! We are all doing our best every moment! Humans judge everything as we are a part of it. Without difference, we have nothing to live for, nothing to witness. Sin is difference, the relative seriousness with regards to law and survival of other beings, is punishable by the courts. The best way to judge is with as much graceful discernment as one can muster in a given moment! Life is the question(uncertainty) asked by the exhaling infinitely compacted imagination invention, or no thing, which is completely certain of everything, completely omniscient or all knowing. When I die, I believe I will be in a new state, aware of all that is and yet divided into the nature of dust that I am in, whereupon my dust shall fall. My being will remain an infinite part of an infinite being and infinite knowledge without my material human being status of now. So there will be a change. But my soul, my passions and discompassions, will move on to infinite places of comfort and challenge. Able to return to this state of uncertainty and free choice illusion for another ride when it is called effectively to do so. So that the children of God, the creations of God, .. are actually part in parcel of that God or Creation Energy! This life is a roller coaster ride. Enjoy your passion within it and whatever gathering of two or more in Forgive Affirmed Spirit to make it better can garner. Healing be unto you and yours and me and mine in Forgive Affirmed Spirit

Mary Baker Eddy; 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures'? Have you read this book? What do you think? And is it JUST about physical healing or does it include moral and spiritual healing too? Is there anywhere I can pick up a free copy?

Even with cultural differences considered, why are we still acting like unaware uneducated idiots? There is only ONE God and He loves us all. He wants all of us (His Children) to do His Will, in peace and love for each other NOT in war!!! But unfortunately too many are abusing the gift of free-will and choosing to ignore Him and turn away. It doesnt matter whether you are Bhuddist, Hindu, Christian or any other religion. The fact is (which we are being blind to) is that God has sent many Prophets and messengers since the beginning and still does! From Krishna (5000 years ago) To Jesus Christ more recently, Mohammad, Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa, The Dhali Lama, etc. They bring the spiritual message from above with His love. All the Prophets prophessised about The Coming of The Holy One (Christ), not in religious sense, but in a spiritual, healing, saving, message of The Eternal life that is there for all, if only we turn in our hearts to The Light. What is The Light? Love is The Light!!! Think spiritually and you will find all the answers you need. Remeber, He is coming!

dealing with healing power? my previous post has been deleted despite I really dont see how I didnt respect yahoo chart so I decided to post it again . I will like to share with you what is happening to me regarding my spiritual development , I have been feeling some vibrations on my legs 24h/ 24 follow by my upper body , these vibrations are stronger when im talking to my inner guide and ask questions about my spiritual development , lately the vibrations also started on my hands but more on the middle of my left hand where I have been feeling for few weeks a small ball taking place. The communication with my inner guide are improving as the time goes and I use it now to get some answers regarding my spiritual development and my day to day life, my inner guide told me that the vibrations I feel are a positive feeling, she told me that the vibrations on my left hand are due to a healing power that I do have. since that happened I tried to heal twice, the first time I tried to heal myself from a pain on the right wrist but it didn’t works then my inner guide told me it didn’t works because I didn’t do it correctly . however today I tried for the second time to heal but this time its was a dog which was limping because of an accident , I took the dog and did what my inner guide told me to do, I did hold the dog paw with my left hand and started to believe that the dog Im holding is healing, few minutes after I freed the dog to see how the dog walk, the dog was still limping but not for long as the dog limped for less than 5 minutes then it stop to limp and could walk normally and even run for a long time as nothing happened before . I now want to try it on a human being but Im a bite afraid of their reactions. How do other people deal with this kind of spiritual gift which has been given to them to help others in the physical world ? ps: I dont need people who have no idea on spiritual world to tell me that im crazy and need help because its not the case and I will advise them to look for the truth by themself before to judge as its smarter . thank you .

Since some of you say Ghandi and Buddah were perfect or almost? How did they say a person could free themselves from the sins of the world? how did they tell an individual they could achieve eternal life? How did they give a person HOPE, HAPPINESS, SPIRITUAL HEALING? Or are you saying they are just Good Men who had some Good ideas for human beings?

found a new psychic forum? hiya ive found a new psychic forum, discussion group tarot. readings. spiritual healing. meditation. psi balls. hypnotherapy. dreams. astrology. auras. chakras. spirit guides. philosophy. pendulums. downloads. blogs. & probably more it was a yahoo group that i once went to that has moved & looks better & its FREE jenny http://www.holisticpathstowisdom.co.uk/ opps sorry forgot link lol

Can somebody give me a copy of a song lirycs? Is there anyone who knows the song sung by Jed MAdela that was included to Kris Aquino Album. song goes somethin like, it's your love that heals my wounded heart. It is spiritual / inspirational song i think. also a good link where i can download for free mp3 of that song. Comment: Salinda S, I don't have the luxury of time to search it that is why i need an exact link to the song. The Dark side, nice try, but that's not the song. thanks anyway i also do appreciate the song that you posted. got the title for it. I google searched Kris Aquino Album but no lyrics available. Title: HEALING by Jed Madela I think it is a revival song. nio, homeboy is also where i heard it first. I think, it was already a revival but i find it good.hope i could get a copy of that album.

Christians - spiritually injured? Do you have something, anything, that limits your joy, or your willingness to fulfil God's calling? You've tried a few things, but it's still there? All four gospels speak of a woman who had an issue of blood 12yrs. "and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse. When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. . . and straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague." (Mark 5:25-29) The spiritual healing is there because (if we are born again) we are "in Christ", sons of God, "new creatures" (2 Cor. 5:17). Trouble is, we learn to live with a lesser vision of ourselves . . . until it troubles us so we can't live with it and claim to believe in Jesus . . . so we "press in", past all the excuses and fears that held us back until we are truly free and as we should be. Or do we? "Don't get bitter, get better" Our "overcoming" is to see this thing as God sees it, to see over it, to see beyond what we physically see and experience now, to be stronger than it, so that it no longer controls our thinking. Then we will automatically . . . "lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed." (Hebrews 12:12-13) Do you have a story to tell about this? yes, go jo jo shoe - blessing in disguise, if u have no money u don't worry about things u can't buy & havn't got.

The Benefits of Fasting - Body, Mind and Soul? Would like to talk about the infinite benefits of fasting. There is no doubt that the benefits are endless. I would like to point out the many that are very fascinating. Self-Restraint Self-Restraint BY fasting and practicing self-restraint we are exercising the will power, which if intelligently used can take us to great heights. It's our conscious will through which we chose the things we chose to do and accept the thoughts we intend to submerge into our subconscious. Quote: 2:183 O ye who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that ye may (learn) self-restraint Quote: 2:184 (Fasting) for a fixed number of days; but if any of you is ill, or on a journey, the prescribed number (Should be made up) from days later. For those who can do it (With hardship), is a ransom, the feeding of one that is indigent. But he that will give more, of his own free will,- it is better for him. And it is better for you that ye fast, if ye only knew. The spiritual benefits of fasting are endless. We get close to the Omnipotent power that is the source of all Health, Wealth, Love and all Goodness [Rehmat] that exists. The feeling of peace and serenity that we get when are close to Allah are if anything blissful and beyond words. But what about the physical benefits? There are many fascinating facts. One amazing of such benefits is this: Quote: Abnormal growths within the body, tumors and the like, do not have the full support of the body's supplies and therefore are more susceptible to autolysis. Quote: Due to the lack of incoming energy, the body must turn to its own resources, a function called autolysis. Autolysis is the breaking down of fat stores in the body in order to produce energy. During fast the Billions of dollars are spent on curing cancers, tumors and other diseases that have their root causes due to the energy imbalance in the body. But by fasting we are preventing these things from arising in the first place. After a lot of wear of tear during the year, our bodies need a much needed rest not to mention mental rest as well as worshiping leads us towards inner peace, which if archived will dramatically turn your life around. In addition, fasting allows speedy detoxification of the body, keep in mind that toxins are the root causes of endless disease. The miraculous benefits are endless, I leave it to you to read them from the link below. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1834 No next time you are fasting, just realize that what a deeply spiritual thing you are doing and what great benefits it as for you, surely Allah was right when he said that fasting is better for you, only if you knew, thanks to medical research, spiritual healing now do know.

What are the chances of my Aura Photo being much more different/positive this year.? First of all if you have anything negative to say use another question, if you believe then feel free to answer. Last September I went to a Psychic Fair where I had a picture taken of my Aura and wasn't really surprised with the results what showed up and the magnificient colours. I've just found out that the same Spiritualist Church where I sometimes go to for Spiritual Healing is holding another Psychic Fair and I will definitely be attending if nothing more than to have another photo taken of my aura (clairsentience2:04) to see what difference there is via both colour and quantity. Because of the amazing leaps and bounds I have made both in my personal life as well as growing Spiritually I feel the colours would be different. For those who have had pictures taken (in a kind of before and after Spiritual evolution type scenario) were you surprised with the results? Like I said, please answer only if you Believe. The Best Of Very Good Energies To You All. Draco27: I live in a small town in England where theres a Spiritualist Church, thank you for answering and I'm very sure if you comb the internet you will find either Spiritualist Churches or New Age stores that would greatly help with your enquiry. I get that you will probably be quite surprised with the response on the third or fourth attempt so don't give up on the first or second try even though you'll feel disappointed at first, remember, all good things come to those who wait.

Can anyone tell me about the Eastern Orthodox Church? I recently became a Christian, but I have not been baptised nor do I even go to Church. I don't know. I was in a Christian hospital a few months ago and some people came to talk to me about spiritual healing, only if I wanted it. I told them I was interested. I was so moved by the story of Christ's sacrifice for me that I decided I wanted to accept him as my saviour. I have a lot of problems though with the way many Christian denominations, including "nondenominational" interpret God's word, though. But anywho, I am interested in joining the Eastern Orthodox Church. What can you tell me about it? What can you tell me about it from the viewpoint of someone from another Church? What are the services like? Does anyone know of any Churches in the Silver Spring, Maryland area that I could attend? Please feel free to email me if you are afraid to say what you really want to say here.

Would you help me to escape from my computer addiction please? My situation I really need your suggestions, info, links, et cetera to get me break away from this computer addiction please. I have been living with computer since its advent, and I have been too long in this bit and byte world. I have almost no problem with my family and/or social matters (maybe), but certainly, I have problems with myself. I realize that my addiction to computer and internet has seized big values of my life. Please do not assume that I am addicted to the gaming, gambling, chatting, or sexual leisure online. I think I have really got the most of the computing and internet, I got answers for my quests in life: history, languages, hobbies, health, skill improvement, and other eye-openers, but I realized that at the end I just barely do not recognize myself. I knew that before the PC arrival, I was a simple human with a romantic and artistic mind inside, and then later I evolved to such a robot, to be precise: a slave of the technology. The internet had made me more tied to the PC, at first it delivered me the news of the world, marvelous things found there within the clicks and so on, but then made me deep drown into the pond of information. The cost and the lost Having knowledge to computer hardware made me always upgrade my gears. It made me spend big cost just to fulfill my lust over those times. My room is full with the old gears, gadgets, and things from online stores. My PCs and notebooks are full with MP3s, PDFs, and many things downloaded both free and paid. I also spent for many external/ portable harddisks for backing up and traveling. I do not mean to showoff, I just tell you how worse it was from time to time during about 20 years. I sometimes think about the lost time for repairing my gears, updating my softwares, browsing; and how many books that I have not read completely. There was a break One time, in two straight months last year, I spent my times with my son playing Tamiya, small racing cars in small tracks. It was wonderful that it made me totally forgot my computers. We have had most of the time together for racing, modifying, winding the wires for the tiny motors, etc. My wife was so amazed that the toys have made me away from the PC. It ended because of the coming rainy season that made us packed and boxed back the tracks and cars, and I simply switched back to the old routine. In search of healing I remember a precious phrase: Two kinds of those who lost; they are who looks for wealth and for knowledge. This phrase sometimes wakes me up but bad habit is addicting and I found myself always returned into that path. I think it is just similar to drug addiction. As the internet is an endless resource, I search through it for the cure, and I have found some articles about it and tried to implement them, but it always hard for me to liberate myself from my habit. I really hope that finally I find it in this forum, especially from you. Your helps, Please I know that some of you are familiar to manage some types of dependence, or maybe you have healed from the same situation. Whether you have some psychological, spiritual expertise, certain medication, or exercises, please share your advice, I need it badly. I do not want to clog the rest of my life in that digital world. There must be somebody else also in pain from the same thing, your kind suggestion will be very valuable and it will save some life. Thank you very much for sparing your time reading this lengthy note. God bless you. PS: I post this in Computing & Internet, Health, and Social Science with time interval, hoping to net more inputs. Please do not waste your time to put any unpleasant or unnecessary words, consider it will not only read by me but also by the other fellow readers. If you are not in the same situation with me, you perhaps still have the advantage of knowing the answers. Thank you, again.

Please expand and explain these sentences? 1. The sacraments are visible signs that confirm our membership in the body of Christ and bring us closer to him through their action of consecration, spiritual nourishment, healing, reconciliation and unity. 2. A basic principle of christian morality is that each person ought to act in accord with the dignity of his or her own nature. As human beings, we are called to act like human beings. This includes being neighbor to our fellow human beings. 3. Moral obligation is a moral force, not a physical or coercive force or compulsion. The moral force of the moral obligation comes from the human value that it protects. Although it is still left to the free will of persons to obey or not to obey the moral obligation to do good, it is only when one obeys the moral obligation to do good that one becomes his or her true and genuine self. 4. The Ten commandments are fundamental moral precepts; yet, they are the minimum requirements that a person must do or avoid doing. Jesus told his followers not to disregard or forget these commandments, but to go beyond them to fulfill the great commandment of love.

Numerology Cycles and Patterns give it a go ? Try to find the circle or pattern within your life.1st try a simple Numerology Reduce the year to a single number and see how you that number will fit the major event/s of that year. Eg: Births, Deaths, Marriage, Divorce, Separation, Extra. See what it was trying to teach you.If you know exact date try reducing it to a single number.Eg: 06.08.1978 (add together like this) 0 means nothing 6 + 8 + 1 + 9 + 7 + 8 = 39 then 3 + 9 = 12 then 1 + 2 = 3 So 3 is Creative .... Meaning of the Numbers 1 ) Beginnings. The act or process of bringing or being brought into being; a start. 2 ) Duality & Unity. Male and female energies merging. Unity of Spiritual energies with physical energies. 3 ) Creative. Having the ability or power to create 4 ) Balance. Creating strong foundations for the future. 5 ) Freedom. The condition of being free of restraints. 6 ) Healing. To restore (a person) to spiritual wholeness. 7 ) Spirituality. The state, quality, manner, or fact of being spiritual. 8 ) Karma. The total effect of a person's actions and conduct during the successive phases of the person's existence, regarded as determining the person's destiny. 9 ) Endings. A concluding part; a finale: a happy ending Love & Blessings Milly

Another spiritual poem, Comments and critique? Hymn on Bryn Calfaria Saviour on the the Mount of Calvary. You died on the Cross for me, Let me bear another's burdens Each one's burden born for Thee. By the grace of your pure offering, Your great Love has set me free! Let forgiveness, sin's undoing Be your grace now shown in me. Moses lifted up the serpent, So to heal from venom's power Let us lift our eyes up to Thee, And be healed in death's dread hour; Let us linger not in judgement, Nor by shame in sin be bound Ministering reconciliation. Lead us to the higher ground. It actually was written on the Welsh tune Bryn Calfaria (Mt. Calvary), similar to the tune Nettleton, few English versions even mention Mt. Calvary. As to mixing You and Thee in the same piece, theologically it is consistent with the I/Thou, where both formal (believe it or not You) and intimate (Thee) are appropriate in addressing Jesus as Saviour. Born is correct for the past tense of bear, the participle borne was not appropriate. It is a passive construction, not followed by by. It is an interpretation of Jesus commands, "Bear ye one another's burdens" and "Pick up your cross and follow me". I do not ask that anyone necessarily agree with my faith, I simply put it forward as I understand it. I in no wise consider Thee archaic language.

just a little something I wrote please feel free to respond? Man has many hidden sins Only God sees within Man goes through the day with smiles His inner foundations based on spiritual miles Everything is about survival Sinners forget the body of Christ, what he gave for our inner peace Man has assurance of salvation should he be alive in sleep If not, demons withing a restless swim ,lakes of fire so wrought and deep Pray to God, our fathers praise Thank him for gifts, give our hearts a lift Father says you believe, ye shall live in splendor and glory that is his Feed us his spirit, we never go hungry Those who suffer hunger pain need only turn within, seek him , they shall evr be full Times of trouble and insecurity. We fall to knees, seek guidance to get through or days Never be without faith, though paths chosen for you may seem long and suffering Promise is kept, we will benefit in the glory that is his Forgive, forget can be tough Love the neighbour, turn the other cheek God will take our wounds by hand Heal and give our spirit a tweak. -30- Thank you for your time, I wrote this while I was going trough some inner turmoil . e

Do you believe Jesus Christ is God and Love? The Bible says :John 8:32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." It is true, Before I didn't have my (spiritual) eyes enlightened because of the darkness of this world, saturated by our carnal living. I realized my life needed change and only ONE God is capable of resurrecting my polluted spirit and soul. When I recieved Jesus Christ to live in me, I never was the same again. I now have a supernatural peaceful, joyfull and healed life! Full of Love! You can do the same thing as I did, only believe by faith and I pray 17I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit[f] of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you. Love, Sandra

What do you all think of this short poem? RED RAIN RED RAIN DRAWN FROM IMMANUEL’S VEINS, TO REMOVE AND BLOTCH OUT MAN’S INHERITED STAIN, TO HELP MAN REMAIN FREE FROM THE BEER, THE SEX, THE LIES, AND THE COCAINE. RED RAIN DRAWN FROM IMMANUEL’S VEINS, TO EMPOWER MAN TO BECOME A SERVANT OF THE MOST HIGH, RAIN THAT IS GIVEN WITH UNLIMITED SUPPLY, A BLESSING FROM THE LORD THAT HELPS ONE DRAW NIGH. RED RAIN DRAWN FROM IMMANUEL’S VEINS, THE HEAVENLY DOCTOR’S TRANSFUSION, ADMINISTERED TO BE SPARED FROM THE ENEMY’S CONFUSION, TWISTS, WILES, AND ILLUSIONS. RED RAIN DRAWN FROM IMMANUEL’S VEINS, RAIN THAT HEALS, EMOTIONAL, SPIRITUAL, AND LITERAL PAIN, RAIN THAT ENABLES US TO PRAY IN THE HARDEST OF OBSTACLES, SURELY OUR SUPPLICATIONS WILL NOT BE IN VAIN. RED RAIN DRAWN FROM IMMANUEL’S VEINS, IS THE BLOOD OF THE SLAIN LAMB, JESUS CHRIST, THE NEXT ADVICE FOR PEOPLE NOT UNDER THE BLANKET OF THIS RAIN, MY HEART GOES OUT TO YOU, CALL OUT TO HIM, CONFESS YOUR SINS, NONE OF US ARE BETTER THAN ANOTHER, RED RAIN.

My cousin is so annoying he knows not acceptance of people? He has not seen that he has become a religious fanatic! I am stepping out of religion, after I have seen no religion has the full truth, even though I was forced into the Pentacostal denomination. I am spiritual pantheist now. I am loving it as I am free to love unconditionally and heal. He writes me on facebook "Why don't you talk about the LORD??" "DID you deny the LORD by posting about healing through within?" He then searches a note from 2008 I wrote about God in which I still believe but I don't believe God is a man! I deleted it as I was shocked he would be snooping through my notes Today, he liked a status I put when I was religious too bad it was from early 2009 and it now 2010! I can't believe he searched my posts that much!!! I am starting to believe he is a hypocrite, and I really want to tell him a piece of my mind! I thought his public prayers on facebook was too much but now he's lost his mind! I simply, changed my privacy settings on facebook so he cannot comment I don't know what else to do? Wouldn't you be mad? I usually don't even get mad but this upsets me! He is family but I cannot stand someone who wants me to be something i'm not =(

What if Religions were created as proxy's to pure spirtituality in order for those in the know to keep power Think of Spirituality as the technology of the Ancients. Their Architecture, Cultures and lives revolved around it much like how our lives revolve around Technology now. What if there was a time when most people knew that they could directly connect into the spiritual grid or life-force that drove all creation? Imagine the power that individuals would posses if they could find peace and healing from within all on their own by praying or meditating directly to the Center of all creation without any middle-men. Maybe at some point in ancient history some smart individuals saw the benefit of creating proxy's to spirituality in the form of gods & myths, in doing so took away something that was essentially free from the masses. The analogy in our present time would be, what would happen if everyone suddenly had access to free and unlimited energy for their personal use? The answer is the few who have benefit from the ignorance of the masses would loose significant power.

According to the Bible, no man can forgive even one sin.? Then should the followiing scriptures be removed from the bible or are their a lot of proties who just cant read the bible they believe 100% . Jesus Christ Granted the Apostles His Authority to Forgive Sins John 20:21 - before He grants them the authority to forgive sins, Jesus says to the apostles, "as the Father sent me, so I send you." As Christ was sent by the Father to forgive sins, so Christ sends the apostles and their successors forgive sins. John 20:22 - the Lord "breathes" on the apostles, and then gives them the power to forgive and retain sins. The only other moment in Scripture where God breathes on man is in Gen. 2:7, when the Lord "breathes" divine life into man. When this happens, a significant transformation takes place. John 20:23 - Jesus says, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained." In order for the apostles to exercise this gift of forgiving sins, the penitents must orally confess their sins 2 Cor. 5:18 - the ministry of reconciliation was given to the ambassadors of the Church. This ministry of reconciliation refers to the sacrament of reconciliation, also called the sacrament of confession or penance. James 5:15-16 - in verse 15 we see that sins are forgiven by the priests in the sacrament of the sick. This is another example of man's authority to forgive sins on earth. Then in verse 16, James says “Therefore, confess our sins to one another,” in reference to the men referred to in verse 15, the priests of the Church. 1 Tim. 2:5 - Christ is the only mediator, but He was free to decide how His mediation would be applied to us. The Lord chose to use priests of God to carry out His work of forgiveness. Lev. 5:4-6; 19:21-22 - even under the Old Covenant, God used priests to forgive and atone for the sins of others. II. The Necessity and Practice of Orally Confessing Sins James 5:16 - James clearly teaches us that we must “confess our sins to one another,” not just privately to God. James 5:16 must be read in the context of James 5:14-15, which is referring to the healing power (both physical and spiritual) of the priests of the Church. Hence, when James says “therefore” in verse 16, he must be referring to the men he was writing about in verses 14 and 15 – these men are the ordained priests of the Church, to whom we must confess our sins. Acts 19:18 - many came to orally confess sins and divulge their sinful practices. Oral confession was the practice of the early Church just as it is today. Matt. 3:6; Mark 1:5 - again, this shows people confessing their sins before others as an historical practice (here to John the Baptist). 1 Tim. 6:12 - this verse also refers to the historical practice of confessing both faith and sins in the presence of many witnesses. 1 John 1:9 - if we confess are sins, God is faithful to us and forgives us and cleanse us. But we must confess our sins to one another. Num. 5:7 - this shows the historical practice of publicly confessing sins, and making public restitution. 2 Sam. 12:14 - even though the sin is forgiven, there is punishment due for the forgiven sin. David is forgiven but his child was still taken (the consequence of his sin). Neh. 9:2-3 - the Israelites stood before the assembly and confessed sins publicly and interceded for each other. Sir. 4:26 - God tells us not to be ashamed to confess our sins, and not to try to stop the current of a river. Anyone who has experienced the sacrament of reconciliation understands the import of this verse. Baruch 1:14 - again, this shows that the people made confession in the house of the Lord, before the assembly. 1 John 5:16-17; Luke 12:47-48 - there is a distinction between mortal and venial sins. This has been the teaching of the Catholic Church for 2,000 years, but, today, most Protestants no longer agree that there is such a distinction. Mortal sins lead to death and must be absolved in the sacrament of reconciliation. Venial sins do not have to be confessed to a priest, but the pious Catholic practice is to do so in order to advance in our journey to holiness. Matt. 5:19 - Jesus teaches that breaking the least of commandments is venial sin (the person is still saved but is least in the kingdom), versus mortal sin (the person is not saved). P.S. Only Jesus can forgive sins. Man truly can't forgive even one sin. Read the above or is it not in your deleted version of the Bible

Since Priest's don't have the authority to forgive Sin? And only God does should the following Scriptures be removed from the Bible so it can be updated .......... I. Jesus Christ Granted the Apostles His Authority to Forgive Sins John 20:21 - before He grants them the authority to forgive sins, Jesus says to the apostles, "as the Father sent me, so I send you." As Christ was sent by the Father to forgive sins, so Christ sends the apostles and their successors forgive sins. John 20:22 - the Lord "breathes" on the apostles, and then gives them the power to forgive and retain sins. The only other moment in Scripture where God breathes on man is in Gen. 2:7, when the Lord "breathes" divine life into man. When this happens, a significant transformation takes place. John 20:23 - Jesus says, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained." In order for the apostles to exercise this gift of forgiving sins, the penitents must orally confess their sins to them because the apostles are not mind readers. The text makes this very clear. Matt. 9:8 - this verse shows that God has given the authority to forgive sins to "men." Hence, those Protestants who acknowledge that the apostles had the authority to forgive sins (which this verse demonstrates) must prove that this gift ended with the apostles. Otherwise, the apostles' successors still possess this gift. Where in Scripture is the gift of authority to forgive sins taken away from the apostles or their successors? Matt. 9:6; Mark 2:10 - Christ forgave sins as a man (not God) to convince us that the "Son of man" has authority to forgive sins on earth. Luke 5:24 - Luke also points out that Jesus' authority to forgive sins is as a man, not God. The Gospel writers record this to convince us that God has given this authority to men. This authority has been transferred from Christ to the apostles and their successors. Matt. 18:18 - the apostles are given authority to bind and loose. The authority to bind and loose includes administering and removing the temporal penalties due to sin. The Jews understood this since the birth of the Church. John 20:22-23; Matt. 18:18 - the power to remit/retain sin is also the power to remit/retain punishment due to sin. If Christ's ministers can forgive the eternal penalty of sin, they can certainly remit the temporal penalty of sin (which is called an "indulgence"). 2 Cor. 2:10 - Paul forgives in the presence of Christ (some translations refer to the presences of Christ as "in persona Christi"). Some say that this may also be a reference to sins. 2 Cor. 5:18 - the ministry of reconciliation was given to the ambassadors of the Church. This ministry of reconciliation refers to the sacrament of reconciliation, also called the sacrament of confession or penance. James 5:15-16 - in verse 15 we see that sins are forgiven by the priests in the sacrament of the sick. This is another example of man's authority to forgive sins on earth. Then in verse 16, James says “Therefore, confess our sins to one another,” in reference to the men referred to in verse 15, the priests of the Church. 1 Tim. 2:5 - Christ is the only mediator, but He was free to decide how His mediation would be applied to us. The Lord chose to use priests of God to carry out His work of forgiveness. Lev. 5:4-6; 19:21-22 - even under the Old Covenant, God used priests to forgive and atone for the sins of others. II. The Necessity and Practice of Orally Confessing Sins James 5:16 - James clearly teaches us that we must “confess our sins to one another,” not just privately to God. James 5:16 must be read in the context of James 5:14-15, which is referring to the healing power (both physical and spiritual) of the priests of the Church. Hence, when James says “therefore” in verse 16, he must be referring to the men he was writing about in verses 14 and 15 – these men are the ordained priests of the Church, to whom we must confess our sins. Acts 19:18 - many came to orally confess sins and divulge their sinful practices. Oral confession was the practice of the early Church just as it is today. Matt. 3:6; Mark 1:5 - again, this shows people confessing their sins before others as an historical practice (here to John the Baptist). 1 Tim. 6:12 - this verse also refers to the historical practice of confessing both faith and sins in the presence of many witnesses. 1 John 1:9 - if we confess are sins, God is faithful to us and forgives us and cleanse us. But we must confess our sins to one another. Num. 5:7 - this shows the historical practice of publicly confessing sins, and making public restitution. 2 Sam. 12:14 - even though the sin is forgiven, there is punishment due for the forgiven sin. David is forgiven but his child was still taken (the consequence of his sin). Neh. 9:2-3 - the Israelites stood before the assembly and confessed sins publicly and interceded for each other. Sir. 4:26 - God tells us not to be ashamed to confess our sins, and not to try to stop the current of a river. Anyone who has experienced the sacrament of reconciliation understands the import of this verse. Baruch 1:14 - again, this shows that the people made confession in the house of the Lord, before the assembly. 1 John 5:16-17; Luke 12:47-48 - there is a distinction between mortal and venial sins. This has been the teaching of the Catholic Church for 2,000 years, but, today, most Protestants no longer agree that there is such a distinction. Mortal sins lead to death and must be absolved in the sacrament of reconciliation. Venial sins do not have to be confessed to a priest, but the pious Catholic practice is to do so in order to advance in our journey to holiness. Matt. 5:19 - Jesus teaches that breaking the least of commandments is venial sin (the person is still saved but is least in the kingdom), versus mortal sin (the person is not saved).

Since Priest don't have the authority to forgive Sin? And only God does should the following Scriptures be removed from the Bible so it can be updated .......... I. Jesus Christ Granted the Apostles His Authority to Forgive Sins John 20:21 - before He grants them the authority to forgive sins, Jesus says to the apostles, "as the Father sent me, so I send you." As Christ was sent by the Father to forgive sins, so Christ sends the apostles and their successors forgive sins. John 20:22 - the Lord "breathes" on the apostles, and then gives them the power to forgive and retain sins. The only other moment in Scripture where God breathes on man is in Gen. 2:7, when the Lord "breathes" divine life into man. When this happens, a significant transformation takes place. John 20:23 - Jesus says, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained." In order for the apostles to exercise this gift of forgiving sins, the penitents must orally confess their sins to them because the apostles are not mind readers. The text makes this very clear. Matt. 9:8 - this verse shows that God has given the authority to forgive sins to "men." Hence, those Protestants who acknowledge that the apostles had the authority to forgive sins (which this verse demonstrates) must prove that this gift ended with the apostles. Otherwise, the apostles' successors still possess this gift. Where in Scripture is the gift of authority to forgive sins taken away from the apostles or their successors? Matt. 9:6; Mark 2:10 - Christ forgave sins as a man (not God) to convince us that the "Son of man" has authority to forgive sins on earth. Luke 5:24 - Luke also points out that Jesus' authority to forgive sins is as a man, not God. The Gospel writers record this to convince us that God has given this authority to men. This authority has been transferred from Christ to the apostles and their successors. Matt. 18:18 - the apostles are given authority to bind and loose. The authority to bind and loose includes administering and removing the temporal penalties due to sin. The Jews understood this since the birth of the Church. John 20:22-23; Matt. 18:18 - the power to remit/retain sin is also the power to remit/retain punishment due to sin. If Christ's ministers can forgive the eternal penalty of sin, they can certainly remit the temporal penalty of sin (which is called an "indulgence"). 2 Cor. 2:10 - Paul forgives in the presence of Christ (some translations refer to the presences of Christ as "in persona Christi"). Some say that this may also be a reference to sins. 2 Cor. 5:18 - the ministry of reconciliation was given to the ambassadors of the Church. This ministry of reconciliation refers to the sacrament of reconciliation, also called the sacrament of confession or penance. James 5:15-16 - in verse 15 we see that sins are forgiven by the priests in the sacrament of the sick. This is another example of man's authority to forgive sins on earth. Then in verse 16, James says “Therefore, confess our sins to one another,” in reference to the men referred to in verse 15, the priests of the Church. 1 Tim. 2:5 - Christ is the only mediator, but He was free to decide how His mediation would be applied to us. The Lord chose to use priests of God to carry out His work of forgiveness. Lev. 5:4-6; 19:21-22 - even under the Old Covenant, God used priests to forgive and atone for the sins of others. II. The Necessity and Practice of Orally Confessing Sins James 5:16 - James clearly teaches us that we must “confess our sins to one another,” not just privately to God. James 5:16 must be read in the context of James 5:14-15, which is referring to the healing power (both physical and spiritual) of the priests of the Church. Hence, when James says “therefore” in verse 16, he must be referring to the men he was writing about in verses 14 and 15 – these men are the ordained priests of the Church, to whom we must confess our sins. Acts 19:18 - many came to orally confess sins and divulge their sinful practices. Oral confession was the practice of the early Church just as it is today. Matt. 3:6; Mark 1:5 - again, this shows people confessing their sins before others as an historical practice (here to John the Baptist). 1 Tim. 6:12 - this verse also refers to the historical practice of confessing both faith and sins in the presence of many witnesses. 1 John 1:9 - if we confess are sins, God is faithful to us and forgives us and cleanse us. But we must confess our sins to one another. Num. 5:7 - this shows the historical practice of publicly confessing sins, and making public restitution. 2 Sam. 12:14 - even though the sin is forgiven, there is punishment due for the forgiven sin. David is forgiven but his child was still taken (the consequence of his sin). Neh. 9:2-3 - the Israelites stood before the assembly and confessed sins publicly and interceded for each other. Sir. 4:26 - God tells us not to be ashamed to confess our sins, and not to try to stop the current of a river. Anyone who has experienced the sacrament of reconciliation understands the import of this verse. Baruch 1:14 - again, this shows that the people made confession in the house of the Lord, before the assembly. 1 John 5:16-17; Luke 12:47-48 - there is a distinction between mortal and venial sins. This has been the teaching of the Catholic Church for 2,000 years, but, today, most Protestants no longer agree that there is such a distinction. Mortal sins lead to death and must be absolved in the sacrament of reconciliation. Venial sins do not have to be confessed to a priest, but the pious Catholic practice is to do so in order to advance in our journey to holiness. Matt. 5:19 - Jesus teaches that breaking the least of commandments is venial sin (the person is still saved but is least in the kingdom), versus mortal sin (the person is not saved).

Is loving someone, honoring their spirit, sometimes saying stop what you are doing? Warning - this question is not what you think... If you are not familiar with my dilemmas, or search for truth and honoring the spirit, you will find the question complicated and becoming shocking the further you read. Even those who have shared thought or care or wisdom may be. I'll tell you now, what has always floored those who love me, and those who have counseled me, is my resilience which is filled with light, and my ability for compassion and healing of many along the way. But here are two who do not seem to want to be healed, and they happen to be two I love....One by nature's design - the other, I have no idea how we came find ourselves in love. Warning for those who occasionally read my q's or a's, this is not like the usual, more like a couple really old personal putting it all out there...looking for the truth to light my way... To tell another that they must stop what they are doing in relation to your self.... Not a very ego-less approach. Some would say no one is doing anything to you, I say people do things in relation to you, unless you are a Buddhist with not many relations or relationships only on certain level. Most Buddhism doesn't seem to work in sharing livelihood necessities to pay for food, shelter, whatever else your community demands that you have to be productive in making a living to then pay for the things your community expects you to have to make a living...ie car insurance...house insurance...gasoline...warm clothes, shoes....dishes... Once these necessities are the shared responsibility of two people for their offspring it becomes a different thing to be non attached, and ego-less, and even in the responsibility of teaching the young how to eventually provide clothing for themselves, shelter for themselves, exist in the community... If someone has fear and ego problems in the bonded relationship, and gets angry frequently, is not loving to say stop, or is it loving? and if they don't, what is loving ? What is loving to someone who yells with rage that you have some character flaw, or spiritual illness that they have come up with off the top of their heads. What if when asked not to yell or rage insults, they fly into another rage and yell more.... What is the loving thing to do...? What if a day or hours later, they admit they were raging about a message they send themselves of self hatred. What if they say they will seek help for their corroded ego? What if they don't . What is loving, how to help someone heal ego, so that they feel free to let it go, how is one loving but not standing like a punching a bag for their self hatred? How does someone lovingly remain bonded to this person through shared children, for ever, and not worsen their condition, even if separated, how does one hold their spirit in honor, and lift them up? For if you reflect to them, even lovingly, gently, (or even with fortitude of standing up to deflect the hating rage -if being strong is the answer, this too failed), that they are suffering from self hatred, (as they have imagined that you dealing with life's demands of feeding, cleaning etc. that you had said that they were bad, not good enough, worthless, when all you had indeed done is ask for more, with honor to what they already were doing -having even imagined hearing the words come from me when never they did, only ever asking of consideration) that this then feels that you are saying they are suffering a spiritual illness or character flaw... and this only hurts them, and then they are angry and turn it back out towards you... How does one love this anger that will always come toward oneself, how does one love the one that says you are unlovable? That you have made up the rage, it isn't happening, (you had to record it to be sure you weren't imagining things as they had imagined your words, and after years of recording out of habit from his asking there be proof of what you have asked to stop - never was there a time you said attacking things, or the words he thought he heard you say, and the volume of his screaming is unmistakable...) and that if it is happening you caused it. How does one love the one and, yet say "stop, remember, you say you hate yourself. you feel like you are a failure, this is why you angry -those were your words when you are calm, this is why you must find something to be unlovable about me, You are lovable , even when you rage, I have not stopped loving you, you are not evil , or bad, you are lovable," yet still be telling them stop using you as the punching bag. What if when you say this with kindness and gentleness, they are still angry and say that you are lying and really think he is bad. What if you finally convince them you're honest and true to them and love them. They are calmed but sad and morose. They stay depressed. You try to bring them joy, cheer, warmth, and take care of all the details a I am deleting this question in about 15 minutes, I just need to get to the lilbrary and print it off, this was more a processing and believe me it was a lot longer than what you see! LOL How long before someone reports it and deletes before I get to? The race is on...! Feels so easy when you say that Fireball...forgive the same thing every other week, sometimes days in a row, or once a week? The very same thing each time? For 13 years....a little challenging at times... my mother called now it is going to be hours before I can get this thing off here.. a promise to help is a promise to help... quick edit to the point - I believe in the healing power of love, I believe my love will outlast his issues raging, but how? How far do I need to be? We are forever bonded, I think for me I have to have repetition end, it doesn't tear me down or make me doubt his love for me like it once did, but it is so hard to stand in the storm and not reach out to extinguish the cause, heal the wound, but sometimes being asked to stop is the loving method? that just doesn't work? or all the loving and forgiving in the world won't heal a wound until he allows it..? Still then how do you stand in the storm week after week, year after year,....You'd think I just got used to it...but rage is intense when added new orginal condemnations are added, or lies are told to friends, and doctors, and he gets a little scary as to what he is capable of to insure I won't walk away.... even in peace/ love this is to much for him to bare...besides, he would just rage occasional when he saw me, with the kids... just fyi, until I do get to the library, the interesting thing is he usually controls it after some counseling, to after kids are alseep, or only on the phone, or they're not home yet, mostly, but true, even a little is teaching, exposing them to ...and they must sense...

Christianity: Do we worship demons while watching anime? Okay, here's the story: For years I've been a fan of Japanese Anime, and just love a good action scene of martial arts being displayed. In Japanese Anime the characters usually (or often) draw their power from beast like creatures like foxes, wolves, serpents, snakes, dragons, lions and so on,or from what they call their own 'life force'. A serpent, snake, dragon, lion and wolves are Biblical representations of demons and satan. Knowing that, I can understand many anime characters are demonically influenced (and probably go to hell being possessed, while not receiving christ), but I couldn't care less because they are but anime(meaning not real), and I'm far more interested in the good I can get out of the movie. So you could conclude that the characters in Japanese Anime, often are inspired by demonic power, often bringing some form of destruction, more than healing, through either physical powers, or spiritual powers under the name of 'chakra', 'zen', 'aura', or just 'spiritual energy', or so...... The flip coin is, that I'm also a devout christian, trying to follow Jesus in a pretty liberal way, meaning trying to be free, and not fall into the pattern of rules and regulations. A couple of days ago I saw a presentation, and in the end the guy said "In the end days there will be those who will be 'worshippers' of demons and devils, and will not want to turn away from doing so." ...or something (paraphrased). So, I started to think, though I may be wrong somewhere: 1- What is worshiping devils? Isn't it admiring them? Isn't worship like admiration, adoration, glorification and exaltation? Not only verbally, but also in the heart agreeing of their superiority and splendor? So I noticed of myself that in anime, exactly those scenes where the character starts to have 'determination' (is what they call it), it's able to draw the demonic power, and gain superhuman strength. (and I'm not only talking about DragonBallZ here, but many other anime out there, like Saint Seya, Fist of the North Star (Aka Hokuto no ken), especially Bleach, Naruto, Hunter X Hunter, Wolfs Rain, or even the scene's of Initial D, where the driver's been seen with an 'aura'. Exactly those scenes I like or get thrilled by them, as I watch them, because they often go together with some intense special effects or music, to accentuate the scene, meant to be breath taking and exhilarating! Could this also be the worshiping of demons like the guy mentioned, if it is obvious they get their strength from demons? I am fully aware of Matthew 15:11: "not that what comes INTO a man defiles him, but what goes OUT of a man can"(paraphrased)! In other words: there's nothing wrong with viewing the anime, there might be with the part of worshiping (giving admiration, exaltation (often goes with the thought "I wished I could be like that"),and glorification (eg: "Did you see last episode? It was awesome the way that XXXX (eg: Naruto or Ichigo/Bleach) killed that monk!") of some of it's scenes, or even there might be an issue when not physically doing those things, but in one's heart admire them (as Matt 5:28 says: "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.", meaning that one can sin, even if it's only in the heart, and does not appear to come to the surface). So could it be that in the process of watching Anime,man might get tempted to glorify a demonic power (even in his heart)? Certainly a valid point of concern, because if so,I would have been worshiping devils for over 17 years now(about the time I started watching a lot of Japanese Anime)! As I was pondering on this question, another thing took place. I was playing a game called "phantasy star", and it plays back in the far future, where men has developed a tool called a "photon generator" (or something). A 'Photon generator' is seen as a purely (far futuristic) scientific tool, that can emit photons, and thus give the user of it additional energy that can be released as 'fire', 'ice', 'earth', 'light', 'gravity', or 'dark matter'. The 'photon charger' (or whatever they might call it in phantasy star) is in other words, a purely scientific device, that one triggers on or of much like one would trigger a gun or a microwave, and can not be seen as demonically, but operates within the physical laws it supposed to operate into (given that it could exist), and can be seen as a tool. But the end result is about the same: The main character get attacked by evil powers (creatures or humans) he can not overcome with his own power, and calls on either his demon, or the power of his scientific photon device. Since there is no difference between the characters save the one character calls for photon power, and the other calls for demonic aura, and yet I get the same thrill with seeing both men being bestowed with superhuman strength, my question would be: - Is it bad to see anime (Demonically p last sentence got cut off, and is: - Is it bad to see anime (Demonically powered), knowing that it would be ok to see if the demonic power would be replaced by a device like a photon charger (or something)? None really seemed to grasp the core question. Many explain things I don't seem to ask in my question. I'll repeat it here again: "could it be that in the process of watching Anime,man might get tempted to glorify a demonic power (even in his heart)?"; that's my question. Not whatever you would do instead of watching anime,or try to justify anime, that is besides the point. Thank you.

Chiron role in synastry ? I am just wondering if any of you astrology folks consider chiron as an equally important factor in synastry ( and composite ) as other typical planets ? Since Chiron is about healing and is a connection between physical and spiritual consciousness, and I think relationship is also about healing. How would Chiron be interpretated when it makes an aspect with the other person's planet ( Sun, Moon , Mars, Venus ... )? Please feel free to share your knowledge about this ( examples are greatly appreciated ) Thanks in advance Thanks RA that was very helpful ...excellent thank you Thanks Jamie, will consider that book , it looks good ( on a side note , please erase your comment on my recipe's Q hey. Thank you)

what do you think about Dr jose gregorio hermandes the servant of god? he was born in venezuela my country here the history A religious man, Dr. Hernandez was twice called to the priesthood and he travelled to Italy for religious training in 1908 and 1913, but each time his fragile health forced his return to secular life in Venezuela, where, as a "servant of God," he treated the poor for free and even bought medications for them at his own expense. It was while on his way to deliver medicine to a patient's home in Caracas, Venezuela, that he was struck and killed by a car on June 29, 1919. He was 54 years old. After his death, his fame as a healer and as a spiritual assistant to doctors grew. His remains are venerated in the church of La Candelaria in Caracas, and both doctors and patients all around the world have testified to his intercessory powers, especially for those seeking a proper diagnosis and healing under a physician's care. The Vatican has heard the words of the people, and in 1949 the process of canonization was begun. In 1985

Have you seen the hilarious anti cannabis advert yet? You'll find a link on the yahoo homepage in news. Man what a laugh. And of course laughter greatly relieves tension and is very good for mental health especially when combined with good herbal medicine. So thanks to "Class B Jacqui" for that one ! I have never seen anyone act as in this feeble advert during all my long time of having an interest in the cannabis herb. I have also done a lot of mock emergency scenario situation film and prop etc. work and this is such a funny and rather pathetic cheap effort. If it were not so hilarious it would be sad. Jacqui Smith is going for the jugular on this one. As this old boiler of an MP knows absolutely nothing about cannabinoids or cannabis horticulture and medicinal uses. My questions are: Is this do gooder fear campaign to try and justify the twenty four grand of public money that she screws out of the people each year for an unoccupied residence in London which she lied about while living free elsewhere. ? How is it that 37 years of interest in cannabis herb to this very day has not had any negative effect on my mental health or that of my many friends whatsoever. Maybe it is simply due to all the laughter dancing and love of these many friends which I have made worldwide through my interests in this amazing ancient herb its spiritual constitution and history diverse uses and many healing qualities. In true brit nanny state syle isn't this ad campaign really saying we cannot tax it so we will axe it. The UK govt does not give one damn about mental health issues. Otherwise they would take full control and responsibility for the mess that is NHS trust privatisation and give Gordon Brown some long term sick leave ? How about some anti alcohol ads to protect young people picking it up in supermarkets and corner stores and lets get bloody real UK ? All this drug rant and off track belief in wrong information. Cannabinoids do NOT and CAN NOT possibly CAUSE Schizophrenia. Utter rubbish. No room or time to explain why but I assure you well well researched. I am not some pothead skulking on the dole in a smelly bedsit. Some stereotype and greatly underestimate when it comes to people resenting others freedoms? To the person making reference to "buying" from drug dealers ? When you cultivate a natural herb plant from a seed who do you need to pay in such a direction ? I wouldnt even know where to find a drug dealer ? This ad is cheesy cheap scare mongering bullshiit which will divert curious youngsters into other directions such as drug solvents and alcohol abuse. Irresponsible trash ! bazspur4 Captured forever into Babylon, TV footie and all. So using his theory many of Dylans 40 albums and The Beatles Sgt Pepper & White Album were all down to insignificant exsitences and lethargic lack of creativity. Life in the fast lane for you now mate. Of Tescos that is. Bless. You write well I must say. lol

how can you explain such miracles if nothing was behind all that? people in the islands of FSM (federated states of micronesians) got healed from blindness,crippled stood up and walk and a lot more miracles works on the behalf of the hungry hearts and imagines these same people went to the doctors and also use Natural remedies and even go to a witch doctors since all of them believe in those stuffs and not everyone get cured by their faith in their witch doctors and if they do,its only temporary,it wont take them long to enjoy their cured body and then go back to the same situations again.Nothing works for them that long and most of them just cant be cured by any even if they have great faith about their witch doctors and natural remedies,all of those fail to give healing to their bodies. what happen is that miracle took place in their islands as soon as those Pentecostal pastors arrive in their islands. people got cured from a 6years blindness and another from crippled since birth,cancer got healed,people that doctors lost hope on them got healed from their ugly sickness!! people from all over the big islands came to the main island and all of them return to their home cured and full of joy. these happen 5years ago, and up til now,they all walk happily and majority of them get rid of their voodoo practices, they are no longer under the rule of satan.majority of them belong to Jesus now. so if there was no God, how can you explain all these??these are the exact promised of Jesus,"He said to all His followers,Go out into the world and preach the good news-His gospel and the free salvation and to lay hands on the sick and they shall be recovered according to His Will, and He said to ask in His name and He will give if its align in His Will. and healing is one of His Will. what can you say to disapproved the work/Word of God? God promised and God gives, is there anything there that contradict His Word of promised? IF????????? there was NO GOD at all, what healed these people,the name they use on the people to heal them is JESUS!! they pray to our heavenly Father to heal them in JESUS name. they tried everything else and nothing works for them and they have the same faith on their spiritual and natural stuffs but still it never come to their satisfaction until Jesus gospel came to their islands.all of them that seek healing got healed and yes a lot of them got delivered from demon possess. please answer respectfully,thank you.... :))) if you think God don't exist you must have answers to all these,and don't worry I got specific prayers too and all came to pass just like how i requested.. amazing how everything came as requested and how people got healed in the name of Jesus!!! wow...!! i challenge you to give me answers from your own science views,how or what does science say about such thing?? so sorry for my poor grammar,marks and spellings.i know you can understand me..i am really looking forward to see how your science view can explain these miracles.from our own point of view God works on our behalf but what is science views on these stuffs?? remember...be nice :)) @invisible talker: you people dont know that these people are all over america? they are also fighting you guys war,how sad that you dont know about them. c'mon people back yourself up in your science view... :))) how can anyone document something that happen so fast?, even if they took eveidence of what God did in the islands,you will still ask for their previous documents of their pass life before getting cured. you people are just so faithless..you cant explain these in your science view b/c science cant even explain the creations of the universe and everything within. the only thing christians cant explain is who created GOD and where He came from.

Study of Matthew 4:23-25. Can you help with any relevant scriptures or comments ? Matthew 4:23-25..... 23 Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. 24 News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them. 25 Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him. Cross reference scriptures Matt 9:35, Mark 6:6 & 1:14 & 1:39, Luke 4:16, Acts 13:14, Luke 9:11, Acts 10:38 & 15:41, Mark 6:55, Matt 17:15, Mark 1:32, Acts 5:16 Mark 3:7, Luke 6:17 Please feel free to look up any of the quoted scriptures . Comment Three general words are here used. He healed every sickness or disease; none was too bad; none too hard, for Christ to heal with a word. Three diseases are named; the palsy, which is the greatest weakness of the body; lunacy, which is the greatest malady of the mind; and possession of the devil, which is the greatest misery and calamity of both; yet Christ healed all, and by thus curing bodily diseases, showed that his great errand into the world was to cure spiritual maladies. Sin is the sickness, disease, and torment of the soul: Christ came to take away sin, and so to heal the soul. Note Decapolis. A district containing ten cities east of the Jordan and the Sea of Galilee. Notice, in the ministry of Jesus, (1) He was active; (2) He went where people were; (3) He went where the busiest people were --fisherman, those at work, Simon and Andrew--those preparing to work, James and John; (4) He went where worshiping people were; (5) He went where needy people were. This time i have listed scriptures but i think these verses in Matthew are pretty easy to understand , I have added a comment & a note i came across when prepareing to ask this question. Is the Comment correct , why or why not ? Is the Note correct or not ? Is there anything in Matthew 4:23-25 that you personal get from reading these verses ? Are there any important points you think i have over looked ? Can you add any relevant scriptures or comments ? Would you care to comment on any of the cross ref scriptures i listed ?

How many followers of Dianetics and Scientology truly understand their principles? The basics of Dianetics are from pychoanalysis (plagerized and redefined terms) and yet in actual practice do not work at all to heal the body or the mind.. The basics of Scientology, treating the spirit (thetan, from the greek word theta supposedly meaning spirit) are primarily mental exercises from "spotting spots in space" which may or may not be "anchor points" that are used to free the "spirit" from the body (compare exterior or out of body experience) to healing others "just by knowing what you identified as "charge" or "spiritual discomfort". The founder, LRH, couldn't get tax exempt status for his "modern science of mental health", so he created a "spiritual religion" to get tax exempt status for his "church". Dianetics covers the first 4 dynamics and Scientology covers last 4 dynamics. Evidently, he convinced enough people that his processes were working, at least apparently. Since most of Dianetics and Scientology are based on "unworkable" and constantly "revised" principles. And it's followers still "believe" it works. Are they willing to testify under oath that their practices and techniques aren't at all harmful to human beings. Many people, including myself, accepted this new science as a science and couldn't care less if it were a religion or not as long as we were helping people to get better. Only the most advanced Scientologists were allowed to use their "new and advanced techniques" on paying clients. So since there are so many believers in the principles of Dianetics and Scientology, why hasn't there been "a technological breakthrough" in their church that so powerful and predicted by LRH to "shake the rafters of this universe and a few universes beyond"? Do we really know for sure that the "between lives area" is so occluded that we are unable to "remember our past lives" and unless we "handle present time problems" by paying for the help of Church Seniors, we may never know what our past lives were or who we were in past lives. Ya'd think that the many customers of LRH, and friends, would eventually understand they'd been "hood winked". I hadn't for a very long time.

Take a look at this, your needs... also... can you...? Aries moon special needs: physical exercise, which comes naturally to many Aries types... is important for health and as an outlet for emotions and excess vitality. Taurus moon special needs: growing things to tend, such as plants in the house and yard Gemini moon special needs: long talks with people, whose advice you trust when something is bothering you. If it means a big long-distance phone bill, skimp on something else. Cancer moon special needs: being near water as often as possible restores your peace of mind. Leo moon special needs: being out in the sunshine warms you and makes you feel truly alive. Winter doldrums may make a trip south, even for a weekend, something you should plan and budget for as a true necessity. Virgo moon special needs: you do need a clean, orderly home, so indulge in it but don't drive yourself crazy with perfectionistic standards. If at all possible, get someone in to help. They won't clean as well as you'd like but you can put the finishing touches on the job without having to do it all. Libra moon special needs: for you, an occasional vase of fresh flowers may be uplifting and calming, so it might be considered a necessity rather than an optional item. All Libra moons need beauty and harmony in their environment. Scorpio moon special needs: times of solitude in which you regenerate and heal yourself are crucial to your well-being. Water can be especially healing for you - for instance a hot tub or a steam bath treatment or soakin in a tub in which several cups of Epsom salts have been dissolved. This purifies both physical and emotional toxins. Sagittarius moon special needs: travel is almost a basic need for people with this moon, leading to a great new burst of vitality and energy, so take the necessity to budget it for seriously. Still, if travel is beyond your budget - maybe because you've been overspending - you may wish to explore a new dimension of familiar place and thereby gain rejuvenation. Capricorn moon special needs: buying yourself a small, elegant but practical gift may be comforting to the part of you that works so hard to secure the finer things in life in the future. Let yourself have some of it now. Aquarius moon special needs: All the latest gizmos to free you from household drudgery and stimulate your mind. Pisces moon special needs: A strong spiritual connection with the divine, however you personally define it, is essential for without it you may feel deeply insecure, lost and adrift in a confusing world. Vote for my answer please, the long good answer. I'm sick of people using accounts to vote on themselves so let me kick the cheaters ass. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100414085142AA7QQrG

to person who saw JESUS walk by her/him readk, don t fear men persecution? john 14;27 THEREABOUT JESUS WILL SHOW HIMSELF TO YOU. john 1 said..the WORD is GOD and jesus is the WORD. so the more WORD you ate and drank your spirit man "LIGHT UP"(glory) and where there is GLORY..there is PRESENCE OF JESUS. welcome to the upper room of acts of apostles!! someday in prayer of holy tongues, you will be greatly amazied...of being john 16:15 you did not chose me, but I have CHOSEN YOU..... a pure heart rises us up higher and higher. enoch was holy and pure.and never died. being in the word of GOD..cleanse us. in the spiritual realms is the world all around us. thy is why the kingdom of GOD is at hand...all around us. so when we pray in love by faith with truth in spirit nature..the prayer of a righteous man/woman avail much..for the sick, for the blind.for the deaf..for the nation.forthe leaders in schools..at work..in politics.on and on...faith worketh by love. he who abide in love abide in GOD. and GOD is with them/abide in them. and in this state of obedience/love..prayers are heard. and honored. worship praise petiton/prayers thanksgiving and worship/praise again. are a basic of entering into heaven BOLDLY(the blood of JESUS sancified us) to enter heaven..holy of holies. only priest can enter that realms..and you've entered. GOD IS LOVE..there is no darkness (shadow) in him. fear is darkness..unbelief is darkness. that why folks did't get a healing from JESUS when JESUS gone to his HOMETOWN. be weary of legalistic..condemning christians. their hearts are STONE COLD..opposite of GOD. they may speak words of GOD..ect..but GOD is LOVE..not hate or judge or condemning..the blood took care of SINS once and for all..it is FINISH! NOW..he want us..to help build the church, with truth that set us free..with wisdom..to help guide us..to maintain right standing in our SOUL..our spirit are saved..but our soul..get us offtrack..and open doors to diseases, poverty..oppression of the devil..ect. eph 4 said.about apostles, prophet(ess) ect..will PERFECT THE CHURCH..logically..you are growing into that spiritual governmental postion..as you eat and drink the words of GOD..remember..stay IN LOVE to OGD>.to others and well self respect..there is NO CONDEMNATION in christ..(romans 8:1).and the law of the spirit of LIFE(love, truth, faith.ect0 IN CHRIST has made you/me/us free from the law of SIN (curses) and death(fear). fear and faaith is the like of west and east..they can't work together. LOVE liberate us from fear. faith in HIS LOVE keep us in safety (ps 91,103, 23) RMmartin2u@aol.com if need of it. your vison is part of a prophecy of young men/women will have vision. you are on track of His WILL in your life. be humble. and a blesser to others..resist condemning others..lust live the idiots. or the proud one. pray for their heart's eyes-ears to hear the truth..like the parable of the seed, hard heart recieve no truth..some truth get in.but pressure of satan..the world..and men..choke out the words of LIFE/love/truth..till their heart is PLOWED UP..nohting happens..but when the HEART is HUMBLE they they got clear sight and hearing to hear and accept the truth..to liberate their soul and body and spirit.

What Have You Done Lately To improve yourself spiritually? But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. James 1:22 (KJV) Our obedience to the Word releases the power within the Word. You have to act on the Word in order to release the healing power that is in it. Now, James chapter 1 tells us to be doers of the Word or else we deceive ourselves. You can come to the place where you think you are "all that" spiritually. Perhaps you have stood on the Word in the past. You learned the Word. You heard the Word and have had manifestations of healing and other blessings in your life before. But something happens to us that we do not recognize. Over time we come to a place where we are living off our past triumphs, teaching, and revelation, when we have to deal with a current problem. You have to have current faith, current Word, and current revelation to deal with the current proble m. If you do not, you will wind up trying to catch up. Yet, mentally you will think, "Well, I don't understand. I know this situation. I understand this, I have been taught this..." but you are not current. Operating in the things of the Spirit is, "what have you done lately?" What have you done lately to build yourself up in faith? What are you doing right now? In spiritual things, you are either getting stronger all the time, or you are getting weaker. Yet, mentally, you are thinking, "I'm all right." But you are not all right. You are self-deceived. And you do not find out that you are self-deceived until you get up and attempt to shake it off, and it does not shake off. It's like Sampson, he got up one day and tried to shake himself loose and had no power. But the power comes when you continue to look in the Word of God. James 1:25 says, "But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed." The Word "looketh" implies constantly looking into. I am still looking into this. Looking into what? The "perfect" law. That means there is no flaw in it. There is no lack of power where healing is concerned. And there is no lack of power where the Word of God is concerned. It is the perfect law of liberty. It will always set you free when you continue to apply it every day of your life. Scripture References: Judges 16:20-21; John 8:31-32

Which culture does this best describe? Hello. I am sorry in advance that this is so long, however, I am in the midst of writing a book based on a dream that I had. The story begins with a child who lives in a commune like community. Their beliefs are quite simple in the manner that they have little to no electricity, no phones nor do they use motor vehicles. They live in the forest and build their homes from wood and leaves, they grow their own fruit and vegetables and help eachother to build these homes and farm the land, even though each family has their own farm, they believe greatly in helping eachother. They were simple clothes but are not under the belief of growing beards, although their dress sense is modest. I have done a bit of research and am at a loss as to who these people may be or where they could’ve possibly have evolved from. I would like to allow my book to be as realistic as possible, so I am seeking advice and guidance with what type of background these people could come from. I do not feel they are hippies as they wear clothes and do not practise nudity or “free love”, they do get married and generally do not cheat. I also do not feel they are Amish, as they do not worship “God as his role is in their lives. I feel that this is more of an ancient culture and am unsure which road to start to look down. The women wear long flowing dresses with bare feet or sandals. They do not bare lot of flesh or wear a large amount of jewellery other than crystals. The men wear long pants or knee length shorts (although in their past I feel lyon cloths may have been worn). The men hunt food and are very skilled at this. Their chests are hardly ever bare, unless they are working in extreme heat or possibly when they are hunting. Because they work of the land, most of the men are quite strong and athletic looking, with olive skin from the sun. They do usually accept people/outsiders into their tribe/commune but only when a person marries into it and once they do this they remain. Their beliefs are more of a spiritual nature, where the respect the earth, her creatures (they never kill unless it is for food) and see/sense peoples energy. They also believe in healing/Riekii and can also sense people’s motives or feelings, which they call “reading people”, some of them are also quite gifted physics. They also use crystals and herbs and talk to the trees, earth, etc and may cast spells, which is more like “earth magic”. There is no formal schooling for children as they are brought up to live of the land and help their neighbours. (The main character in my book is actually sent away to go to school). The males are taught to hunt at a very early age and are often taken into the woods with their father to learn how to hunt and fight. The women are not generally encouraged to do this, they tend to learn the more spiritual side of things and arts and crafts, although the males are permitted to learn some of the spiritual side of things. They do have an ancient language, although very few of them, apart from the elders speak it. The men tend to govern the house hold. If any one can help me with this, I would be most grateful. If I have a few ideas from people or even if some one thinks this sis familiar and wants to share this with me, it would greatly assist me. Thank you. Wow, thank you both very much for your input. It is hard to pick a best answer, I think it might be a combination of the two. I loved the video, I actually really like to think that there are still people living like that. Thanks again and all the best for 2010 to the both of you.

Seriously, why would anyone think this is helpful? I came across a person who was in enough pain to want to die, and this was one response: "Ya know what?? Get over yourself already!!!!! God put you here, with the purpose of serving HIM!!! Read Ephesians 6:12; and get ready to be set free!! God is not the problem here, you do NOT know your enemy. Get off your duff, and seek out a biblical deliverance ministry, girl, ya got demonic "oppression". The devil is jerking your chain, and ya don't even know it!!! Ya need to get with a solid Bible preach-en God fear-en Holy Ghost church family, and praise and worship this junk out of your life!! Alleluia!!!Seriously, I'm part of a spiritual warfare team, and God is get-ten ready to bring the "house' down. Seeker friendly, prosperity preach-en churches are starting to empty out, and God done with the devil running most of the church, He's taking them back! Praise God! Amen! And he wants YOU on His team, so , get that junk off your backside, and get going! The spiritual world is very real, and the demonic is very manipulating. If you do not know where to go, check with a Bible book store, they will know where to seek deliverance. Been there, done this, The Word never fails!! Here is a book that is an excellent book on this subject. Healing through Deliverance, by Peter Horrobin, www.chosenbooks.org, your Bible book store SHOULD have it. it was very insight full, and has proven to be a valuable tool." Where on earth do these types get the idea that attacking someone in pain is going to make them feel better? 'Cause that's what Jesus would do?

Christians: Do you need prayers against Spiritual Warfare? Daily Prayers of Protection Pray them in this order. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command a hedge of protection to be around my home and property today and I ask that warrior angels would be placed to stand guard at any holes that might be in that hedge. *Holes in the hedge can be caused by yet to be dealt with sin, trauma or wounding in the lives of the people who dwell in the home. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command any free, unbound, or wandering spirits to get out beyond that hedge of protection now. In the name of Jesus Christ, I ask that warrior angels be placed at the doorways and access points to my home and property today that would keep out any free, unbound or wandering spirits that would try to access my home and property today. I ask for warrior angels that would bind and separate from their functions any demons attached to any individuals entering my home and property today. * An access point could be cable TV, internet, telephone or other communication devices in the home, power hookup, water supply or heat source. Father God, I ask for a spiritual umbrella of protection over me and a spiritual hedge of protection around me. I place the full armour of God on me, and I ask that the light of the Lord Jesus shine through me this day. Note: I strongly recommend praying Ephesians 6 daily over yourself and meditating on the scripture often. Eph 6: 13-17 Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. If you are plagued by nightmares, restless nights sleeping and a sense of uneasiness in your bedroom, pray this before going to bed each night. Father God, I ask that you would send warrior angels at the bedposts of my bed. (Alternatively, the corners of your bed if you don't have a bedpost) and I declare that YOU are the Lord of my nights. Praying for Children/spouse Daily pray: 1. Father God, I ask that you would send your angels to bind up any and all demons which have rights and grounds to my children and that you do that right now. 2. I command that all demons that have rights and grounds to my children be completely separated from all their functions, now. I command that any demons that have any business to do with my wife/children/husband today that you come through me first. (In other words, if the enemy has a bone to pick, go pick on someone his own size). 3. Father God, please place a barrier of protection around each one of my children right now and Lord Jesus, I ask that you would come today, at any time necessary, to deal with any and all spirit beings which might attempt to harass my children/spouse. 4. Pray Ephesians 6 over your children. Another Prayer for Daily Protection for Christians Dear Heavenly Father, I pray this prayer in the power of the Holy Spirit In the name of Jesus Christ, I bind, rebuke and bring to no effect, all division, discord, disunity, strife, anger, wrath, murder, criticism, condemnation, pride, envy, jealousy, gossip, slander, evil speaking, complaining, lying, false teaching, false gifts, false manifestations, lying signs and wonders, poverty, fear of lack, fear spirits, murmuring spirits, hindering spirits, retaliatory spirits, deceiving spirits, religious spirits, occult spirits, witchcraft spirits (including Jezebel, Delilah and Apollyon) and spirits of antichrist I bind all curses that have been spoken against me. I bless those who curse me, and pray blessings on those who despiteful use me. I bind all spoken judgment made against me and judgments I have made against others I bind the power of negative words from others, and I bind and render useless all prayers not inspired by the Holy Spirit; whether psychic, soul force, witchcraft or counterfeit tongues that have been prayed against me. I am God's child. I resist the devil. No weapon formed against me shall prosper. I put on the whole armor of God. I take authority over this day, in Jesus' name. Let it be prosperous for me, let me walk in your love, Lord. The Holy Spirit leads and guides me today, I discern between the righteous and the wicked. I take authority over Satan and all his demons, and those people who are influenced by them. I declare Satan is under my feet and remain there all day. I am the righteous of God in Christ Jesus. I am God's property. Satan you are bound from my family, my mind, my body, my home and my finances. I confess that I am healed and whole. I flourish, I am long lived, stable, durable, incorruptible, fruitful, virtuous, full of peace, patience and love. Whatsoever I set my hand to do shall prosper, for God supplies all my needs. I have all authority over Satan, all demons, and beasts of the field. God, I pray for the ministry that you have for me. Anoint me, God, for all you have called me to do for you. I call forth divine appointments, open doors of opportunity, God ordained encounters and ministry positions. I claim a hedge of protection around myself, spouse and children throughout this day and night. I ask you God, in the name of Jesus to dispatch angels to surround me, my spouse and my children today, and to put them throughout my house and around our cars, souls and bodies. I ask angels to protect my house from any intrusion and to protect me and my family from any harmful demonic or other physical or mental attacks. I ask this prayer in the name of Jesus AMEN.

found a new psychic forum? hiya ive found a new psychic forum, discussion group tarot. spirituality. readings. spiritual healing. meditation. psi balls. hypnotherapy. dreams. astrology. auras. chakras. spirit guides. philosophy. pendulums. downloads. blogs. & probably more it was a yahoo group that i once went to that has moved & looks better & its FREE jenny http://www.holisticpathstowisdom.co.uk/ opps sorry forgot link lol

I think i may be an empath? hello my name is Gerald Watson, i am 15 years old, and my life has been drastically changing ever since I hit this age. My thought have become more abstract to explain to others, it is even making it difficult as i write this post. Ever since about age 12 ive always been enthralled by spirituality, i read my bible in class and discussed it with my close friend david often. however after my dad died when i was thirteen i lost my faith in christ and went on as an athiest, as an athiest i felt a sense of hoplessness and i often made others feel bad, to make myself feel better. When I started 9th grade these impulses reached an alltime high for me, untill another friend of mine introduced me to buddhisim, and gave me a book to read called "insight meditation- the practice of freedom" as i read i started meditating daily and for the first time became more intune with my emotions, i made it a daily activity to analyze every single emotion i felt and find its true source, i dont know why i did this the book didnt call for it, yet it always made me calm and return to a peaceful state where i could remain until i felt another emotion to be analyzed thus allowing me to retain peace of mind. through this practice i became intune with all my emotions and i came to the conclusion that all emotions i felt merely stem from 2 main emotions LOVE and FEAR. does anyone else share this view? FOR EXAMPLE: I would feel sad at times when my mom or other adults would tell me what to do, i analyzed this feeling to the root cause i found as "fear of being controlled" EXAMPLE 2: i would feel a burst of happyness when i helped a friend of mine or did something good, i found the root of this emotion was "love of helping" My story: on december 12 2008 i was caught buying weed at school ( i used it for meditation) when the officer at my school put me in cuffs i didnt panic, i let the initial fear of getting introuble phase through my body and pass, as opposed to holding on to it and keeping it in my subconsious mind. i learned this ability through constant insight meditation, and analization of my emotions,after getting put up for expulsion the next 2 weeks of my life were spend in constant deppression, it was a depression that i thought i was sound enought to combat, however i couldnt, it was at this time i beleive the dormant empath in me was awakened. i wasnt just feeling my own sadness, unaware i was feeling the emotions from my mom, and she is diagnosed with a depression that has plauged her mind for years. (Could this be an empathic ability?) I infer that the reason i couldnt shake this depression was because i was taking on so many emotions from my family, that i couldnt differ them from my own, i can always control my own emotions but i couldnt control and stop the ones that surrounded me because i am a completly different person then them. In my depression, i found myself taking hikes and being outside more, i felt this weird tranquility from nature, i can only describe it as a comforting blanket i could use to cope with all the negative emotions i was feeling, i felt at peace when i was in nature and depressed at home. when i finnaly got admitted to an alternative school the depression subsided and i was free again. i felt as if it was a godsend! At this time i was still unaware of what an empath was, however at my new school i spread peace and love to everyone i met,ive always never had trouble making friends but it was alot easier here, i felt as if people were drawn to me, for insight on there problems. I began couseling the other students on how they felt, and what got them sent to this alternative program. As a part of the alternative program each student is assigned a social worker, to help get us back on the right track i suppose... my social worker sent me to a rehab program near where i lived. when the time came and my mom took me to the clinic i was told to wait in a waiting area untill my assigned counselor came for me. As i waited i saw this poor looking woman who appeared to be addicted to things much worse then weed. I remember being overcome by a overwhelming mix of sadness and fear, i struggled to find out where this feeling came from i had nothing to fear or be afraid of, i only felt it when i looked at this woman. As i kept waiting the lady began to speak to a man sitting next to her, she told him how her addiction to crack had affected her baby and, how she was doing rehab to get her baby back. I felt another wave of sadness in my body, at this time my mind opened, and my dormant empath had been awakened. I realized the source of my sadness came from this woman, i thought this was an ability of my mind from reading all the buddist texts i had read earlier, but my gut told me it was something far more radiant! 2 days later i was reasearching psychology, and came across a link named "spiritual healing" i went with my intuition and clicked it, it took me to a new page with a list of couseling

What do you think of worship of the Earth,or these prayers,...? Gaia ~ a Living Prayer Wheel! E-mail this Global Event to a Friend Join our newsletter for news and updates THE 14th Annual SOLAR WAVE 2008 ~ Phase Two The Living Gaia Prayer Wheel Activation! Equinox ~ September 22nd, 2008 ~ 1 to 3 PM your local time all across the Earth. This is a Joyful Invitation to the Awakening Masses of Gaia to come together in ONE UNIFIED HEART to Activate our Planet as a LIVING GAIA PRAYER WHEEL! We Invite all to join together with like-minded, heart-centered souls to create an Unstoppable Tidal Solar Wave of Light and Positive Mass Awareness, to harmonize all discordant energy on Gaia, and to initiate a spontaneous Awakening of Humanity! With the Power and Light of the Creator that is within each of us, we can usher in the age of PEACE, HARMONY, LOVE, COMPASSION & IMPECCABILITY, that has been prophesized by many ancient traditions. This will all occur during the powerful window of unlimited opportunity at Equinox, and is combined with the multiplying potential of 13:30 LOCAL SIDEREAL TIME, and the grace filled rotation of the Earth as a living Prayer Wheel. "Again and again some people in the crowd wake up. They have no ground in the crowd . . . they emerge according to much broader laws . . . and carry strange customs with them . . . and demand room for bold gestures. The future speaks ruthlessly through them". - Rilke What is the catch you ask? Does it sound to good to be true? The fact is . . . that there is no catch. This opportunity is free, green and supports all living things! There is a powerful time each day on the planetary grid where our 6th sense abilities are 400% times more effective. When we use this knowledge and join together at this powerful time, our efforts will be multiplied within the harmonizing effects of Equinox. We can heal the Earth and Awaken Humanity! Have you ever felt like you were here on the Earth for a Special Purpose? Do you feel that you are potentially . . . THE VERY ONE . . . that could help tip the balance of our dimension back into the LIGHT? You are RIGHT! You are the ONE! . . . but do you want proof? You will not have proof unless you are willing to go out on a limb, be bold, and believe in the light that you know we are. Are you ready to prove that you are that powerful, and that we can heal the Earth and Awaken humanity? Keep reading ~ The Ancient one and the Earth have a plan. Ancient traditions understand that the EQUINOX is a powerful time to initiate changes in our material world and shift into a new reality. On Equinox, the Earth and the Sun are in perfect balance and harmony, as the sun is centered between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, and centered between Heaven and Earth. This creates a sacred cross of balancing energy that naturally harmonizes the planet and humanity. For 24 hours, the Earth heals itself in this balancing energy of a Solar Wave. The Tibetans understand the power of spinning the Prayer Wheel to send healing energy across the planet. Could it be that the Prayer wheel is a representation of the spinning Earth? Native American cultures know that the medicine wheel is a reflection of the Earth. The medicine wheel is used for ceremony to heal and bring balance back to the Earth. So why not use the Earth herself? Equinox Graphic courtesy of Mid-Atlantic Geomancy (MAG) http://www.geomancy.org For the last 14 years, thousands upon thousands of light workers, peacekeepers, shamans, healers, gods and goddesses, angels and saints from around the globe have joined together to work with powerful Equinox energy in a 24 hour Solar Wave of Light and creative potential. But this event is nothing new. Ancient ones knew about this powerful time and have used it to balance and harmonize discordant energy for eons. The fact that the masses are now becoming aware of this time of great potential is a huge sign that we are, in fact, on the brink of planetary awakening. This year a group of ancient ones called the Star Elders, say that we are ready to evolve this year's Solar Wave to a Stellar Wave! This year the Star Elders call us to work with the Equinox but to also add a hugely multiplying potential . . . a specific local sidereal time (LST a.k.a. Star Time) to synchronize our global efforts to reclaim paradise. Are you in? What is (LST) Local Sidereal Time you ask? Local Sidereal Time (LST) is an Astronomy term, referring to how the planet is oriented relative to the position of the stars. It is a measure of the passing of the center of our galaxy (the Milky Way) overhead. Sidereal time is STELLAR TIME and is approximately 3 minutes, 56 seconds shorter than a solar day. LST is a measure of time independent of the Sun's cycles. Thus, Local Sidereal Time (LST) moves backward in solar time about four minutes a day, two hours a month and one day a year. Anywhere you are on the planet, at the same LST time you will see the same stars overhead. Example . . . your favorite star will set 4 minutes earlier each night. So why do you care about this? Read on and you will! The Cognitive Sciences Laboratory in Palo Alto, California, made some exciting discoveries. They studied a group that had natural clairvoyant, clairsentient, clairaudient, ESP abilities. They discovered that during a specific window of time, that their test group was more accurate by 400% and more in their abilities to "see" or predict events. When scientists examined the accuracy of thousands of ESP predictions, along with the documented times that these anomalous cognitions took place, they were stunned. The precognitive cycle coincided with a particular Local Sidereal Time or LST. Scientists discovered that peak efficiency for ESP was repeatedly at 13:30 LST. Working with 13:30 LST could lead to more efficient uses of one's psychic talents and energy work. This means that every 23 hours and 56 minutes, humanity has a unique doorway open to them to see through and work with energies that could heal the world! The Star Elders say that if we can "see" through this doorway, we can also "project light and healing energy" through the doorway and can radically change our world. When we project visions of a brilliant future and send healing energies, we can change the world and reclaim paradise. The peak of the 13:30 LST window of opportunity is about 2-3 hours long (see chart). When we consciously work with the energy of heightened harmonious Equinox energies, and combine it with 13:30 LST, we have an immeasurable amount of potential to make our dreams come true for ourselves, our communities, and our planet. It is only a couple of hours! Do you have time to change the world? It sounds great doesn't it? But why stop there? What if we could make this event even more powerful? The Star Elders say that enough people are working in the light that we have pushed their ancient Mayan prophesies up by 4 years . . . making 2008 the year that we can shift the world and humanity back into the light. So here is how the Star Elders suggest that we create a 24 hour "Living Gaia Prayer Wheel" where we have a 400% more stellar potential to change the world and reclaim paradise. WHAT CAN YOU DO? . . . because the EARTH NEEDS YOU! This is why YOU are so important. What do you think the potential would be if we got the entire light worker / energy healer community working with 13:30 LST on Equinox? Are you ready to go out on that limb yet? What The Star Elders are asking us to do is to synchronize our local planetary family with major global action. What they are suggesting is that together, we use the harmonizing effects of Equinox, and combined it with 13:30 LST potential, and send a Solar Wave out over the Earth over a 24 hour period. It sounds impossible, but it is not. Let me explain . . . Somewhere on the planet, right now, it is 13:30 LST. Every single moment there is a place on Earth that is in the window of the LST time of 13:30. When we each work with our local LST time window, we will create a 24 hour wave of light across the planet filled with powerful healing energy. Just as the prayer wheel spins to send out it prayers, we will be doing the same thing but by using the spin of the Earth instead. We will create a 24 hour tidal wave of powerful, transforming, healing light, creating a positive vision for a brilliant future. This is YOUR TIME to put to action all the healing talents and spiritual truths you have taken such great care to learn and develop. At your local time window of 1 to 3 PM on September 22nd, give the world ALL the LIGHT and LOVE and COMPASSION you have! Send your HEART out to humanity, the planet, and all life. Send your knowingness that paradise is here right now, and act as if that vision has been realized. Use your highest, purest intentions, and remember that the truth is not out there . . . it is within YOU. It is time to quit dreaming and hoping that the world will change and suffering will stop. As Gandhi said . . . "We must BE the change that we want to see in the world!" KNOW that it is so . . . And it will be. By using the Earth as a living prayer wheel, combined with the intensified powerful of the 13:30 LST time window, inside the thinned veils of harmonizing Equinox, there is nothing that can stop us now. Remember "We are made of Stars" (a song by Moby) This is where YOU and all of your networking comes into play. On September 22nd, plan your modest gathering, or dream big and plan a huge event with all your like minded family. Work within the 2 hour time window and do your work as Spirit guides you. Remember to act locally, but think globally. ~~ That's it! ~~ On September 22nd, 2008 with your masterful networking help, we can encourage the entire global population of healers and light workers to catch the Solar Wave to manifest the Earth as a Living Gaia Prayer Wheel. Are we ready to enter Paradise on Earth and Awaken as Living Masters? OH YES WE ARE! We were born for this day! NETWORK THIS EVENT! Please send this invitation to all your relations everywhere. Network the Solar Wave. Talk about the Solar Wave. Plan an event in your living room, or fill a stadium! Remember we are only separated by 6 degrees of separation. So if you send this to 6 people, we can reach the entire conscious community of the planet! Or if you are a hard core net worker, and want to leave no room for doubt, send this to everyone you know, and let's get the entire world unified and working together to reclaim paradise! Remember . . . when two or more are gathered together in a common focus, the power to change the world is multiplied a thousand times more than if one person was doing it alone. Dream BIG! Source, Apparent Association between Effect Size in Free Response Anomalous Cognition Experiments and Local Sidereal Time, by S. James P. Spottiswoode, published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. II, No. 2, 1997. You can find it at www.jsasoc.com/library.html . There is an excellent sidereal time clock for Windows PC at http://www.radiosky.com/sidclockdownload.html UPDATES Did you notice that we are CHANGING THE WORLD? The illusionary powers of the world know they are loosing the battle! Light will and is prevailing. Since "Phase One" of the Solar Wave 2008 in March, in which we began to incorporate the use of the 13:30 LST times to increase our effectiveness in manifesting light on Earth by 400%, the web sites that helped us discover each of our 13:30 LST times were mysteriously taken down (Hmmmm. Very interesting). Most of these were government based sites. It is apparent that they have become aware that light workers were using the same techniques that they are. The big difference here is that light workers are using the 13:30 LST times to awaken and set free the hearts, and minds of humanity. Because these sites have shut down, we do not have the convenience of easily obtaining the exact 13:30 LST time conversions for our areas. There are ways of finding the exact peak 13:30 moment, but it is complicated. So were are opting out for an easy 13:30 LST time window . . . 1 to 3 PM your local time, where everyone can work to create a WAVE of POWERFUL LIGHT across the EARTH. Since our March/Equinox 2008 Solar Wave Event, we have felt a HUGE acceleration in our personal lives and in the global community! The Star Elders say that the power we felt in March was just a warm-up for what we will feel this September on Equinox. So here we go . . . we invite you to join in on phase two of the 13:30 LST light and love blast that will bring the balance and harmony back to our dimension once again. Blessing to you all ~ With Love ~ Aluna Joy Our favorite play list right now is ... "Raise Your Hands" by Pat Monahan ... "We Are All Made of Stars" by Moby, and a softer one, "Let Me" by Paul Schwartz. You can still downloaded this free LST clock to watch for your 13:30 each day. http://www.radiosky.com/sidclockdownload.html You can listen to an interview The 2012 Chronicles ~ Equinox and the SOLAR WAVE. (needs Quick Time or another media player) THANK YOU TO ALL THE AWESOME SUPPORTERS OF THE SOLAR WAVE 2008 Patti Cota-Robles of ERA OF PEACE www.eraofpeace.org for her impeccable message and great support. DaVid of the THE LIGHT PARTY www.lightparty.com/ Over the years, DaVid has been a great supporter of the Solar Wave with his HUGE network base. My Ol' Bliss Buddy and Inca Addict… STAR of STAR FLOWER ESSENCES ~ http://www.starfloweressences.com Who has been with the Solar Wave from the beginning, 14 years ago, and gives from her heart! Her essences are amazing! Daniel and CIRCLE OF SOUND http://www.circleofsound.org/ Daniel is a amazing being of impeccable trust and light. The Circle of Sound will be in ceremony with their seasonal Global Harmonization Ceremony which they do every Equinox and Solstice. They will be priming the energy for the Solar Wave, on Equinox, March 20th. CHILDREN OF THE SUN http://www.childrenofthesun.tv are new additions to the Solar Wave this year. They work with moon cycles to re-connect the planet and humanity. They will also be working with the 13:30 time on March 21st! They have been a huge help in networking. We are looking forward to getting to know them better. THANK YOU ONE AND ALL ACROSS THE PLANET, IN ADVANCE… for all your work and dedication to making a real difference in the advancement of the LIGHT on this beautiful planet! There are no words of gratitude great enough for YOU! A message from Patti Cota-Robles... This is a critical time, and the forces of imbalance are desperately trying to block Earth's Ascension into the 5th-Dimensional Realms of Light. They know that Lightworkers aren't dumb, so they do not say "I am the sinister force, and I have come to ruin your life." They say "I am god, follow me." Their misinformation and disinformation uses terminology that Lightworkers are familiar with in order to confuse and block activities of Light. Their attempts to block the influx of Light that took place during the Fire the Grid event failed miserably. Much to their dismay, the Lightworkers redoubled their efforts and the influx of Light transcended the greatest expectations of Heaven. Beloved Saint Germain has said that the greatest means of sorcery occurring on Earth at this time is people drawing the attention of the masses to the negativity taking place around the world. Where our attention is, there we are. Whatever we focus on, we empower. Do not empower those thoughtforms by addressing them or disputing them. Just let them go and invoke the I AM Presence of the souls involved to fill them with God Illumination and Divine Truth. That fear-based information has absolutely NO power over the Light, unless we choose to focus on it and empower it with our fears. It is the Divine Intention with which Lightworkers invoke the Light that determines the outcome. When millions of people around the world participate in the Solar Wave with the Divine Intention of Healing discordant energy and lifting Humanity into a higher level of Divine Consciousness, that is exactly what will take place. Remember, THE LIGHT OF GOD IS ALWAYS VICTORIOUS, AND YOU ARE THAT LIGHT. Keep shining your magnificent Light! God Bless ~ Patti Cota-Robles www.eraofpeace.org "We live in an age of prophecy, during which humanity has the opportunity to re-awaken to timeless, inter-dependent relationship with the cosmos. Without a doubt, we are here at this special time to help fulfill an awesome and delicately orchestrated plan to align Earth with the cosmos and humanity with the universal heart. We are here to awaken to the full potential of being authentic aware human beings. It's time to drop your cosmic remote control, get out of that visualization chair, and get to work. Spirit helps those who help themselves. Spirit works right NOW . . . not yesterday . . . not tomorrow. Quit watching what is going on and take action. Use your power to do something about the imbalances in your world." - The Star Elders "One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes Peace is not something you wish for, it is something you make, something you do, something you are and it is something you give away. EVERYTHING is a PLACEBO! Your belief in it determines the effect Armand "I am only one, but I AM ONE. I cannot do it all, but I will not refuse to do what I can. and what I can do, by the grace of the Creator, I will do." - unknown Please network this invitation all over the Earth. E-mail this Global Event to a Friend Join our newsletter for updates SOLAR WAVE Responses from Phase One. "You who have the light, what are you doing with it?" ~ Paul Claudel We invite all the Guides, Guardians, Angels, Ascended Masters, Shamans and Sages of the LIGHT to assist in this Healing and Awakening of Humanity, Earth and Cosmos. May the shifts be completed in all ~time~space~dimension~past~present~future~body~mind~spirit, 7 days a week ~ 24 hours a day ~ 365 days year! Solar Wave History - Where it all began.... The Solar Wave was an idea born in 1990 while Aluna Joy was on a pilgrimage to Palenque, Mexico. In an amazing overnight stay in the Temple of the Sun, she was taught, or better yet, downloaded with a vision. Aluna Joy was shown a new energy that was coming to the planet that was going to come in energy waves in multiplying voltage. Today, 18 years after the initial vision, the waves are getting too big to ignore. You can read about this experience by reading A PALENQUE STORY

Will the so called Christian bashers stop now please??? Subject: What the Bible Says about Homosexuality Homosexuality & Christianity by Rev. Michael S. Piazza, Dean of the Cathedral The Bible In our Judeo-Christian society, the documents collectively known as the Bible serve as the primary guide on most issues. It is interesting that many Christians take literally the references to homosexual acts, while interpreting other text with great flexibility. One person reported listening to a nationally-known woman speak in her campaign against homosexuality. She spent quite a bit of time quoting impressively from Leviticus. The listener accepted much of what the speaker said until he realized that, by Levitical standards, the crusader herself had broken many biblical laws – she spoke in church (1 Corinthians 14:34), she taught men (1 Timothy 2:12), she was wearing a dress made of cotton and polyester (Deuteronomy 22:11), and others of which he was probably unaware. What does the Bible really say about homosexuality? Actually, very little. Most significantly, Jesus said nothing at all. Considering the relatively small amount of attention the Bible pays to the subject, we must ask ourselves why this is such a volatile issue. Other subjects about which the scriptures say a great deal (e.g. judgment, pride, hypocrisy) receive much less passionate attention. Before looking at specific passages, it is important to note that everyone understands the scriptures based on, and through, the light of what they have been taught. The Bible was not written in a cultural void, and many of its instructions and laws are simply classified as less relevant today (e.g. prohibition against eating pork). Nowhere does the Bible actually address the idea of persons being lesbian or gay. The statements are, without exception, directed to certain homosexual acts. Early writers had no understanding of homosexuality as a psychosexual orientation. That truth is a relatively recent discovery. The biblical authors were referring to homosexual acts performed by persons they assumed were heterosexuals. The Sodom Story A chief text used to condemn homosexuality is the Sodom story (Genesis 19:1-29), often interpreted as showing God's abhorrence of homosexuality. In the story, two angels, in the form of men, are sent to the home of Lot in Sodom. While they are there, the men of the city “both young and old, surrounded the house - everyone without exception” and demanded that the visitors be brought out “so that we might know them.” (Genesis 19: 4-5) Lot begged the men to leave his guests alone and take his daughters instead. The men of the city became angry and stormed the door. As a result, they were all struck blind by the angels. There are several problems with the traditional interpretation of this passage. Whether or not the intent of the men of Sodom was sexual, the inhospitality and injustice coming from the mob, and that generally characterized the community, were “the sin of Sodom.” (Ezekial 16:49-50, Isaiah 13:19, Jeremiah 49:18; 50:40) Jesus himself refers to the inhospitality of Sodom. (Luke 10:10-13) If the men were indeed homosexuals, then why would Lot offer them his daughters? What is threatened here is rape. The significant point, then, is that all rape is considered horrible by God. The story deserves another reading. It should be noted that not all of the men of Sodom could have been homosexual or there would have been no need to destroy them. If they had all been homosexuals, they would have all died off leaving no heirs. Quite likely, they were a mixed group of evil men attempting to be abusive to people who were different. Ironically, lesbian and gay people are often the victim of that same sin. Although the traditional interpretation of the Sodom story fails as an argument against homosexuality, there are several other Old Testament passages that do condemn homosexual acts. Again, it should be noted that these passages do not deal with same-sex orientation nor is there any reference to genital love between lesbian or gay persons. Homosexual Acts Of thousands of Old Testament passages, only two make explicit reference to homosexual acts: Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13. Both of these passages are a part of the Levitical holiness code, which is not kept by any Christian group. If it was enforced, almost every Christian would be excommunicated or executed. It has been logically argued that science and progress have made many of the Levitical laws irrelevant. For example, fundamentalist author Tim LaHaye states that, although Levitical laws prohibit intercourse during menstruation, medical authorities do not view it as harmful, and, therefore, it should not be viewed as sinful. He further explains, “Those laws were given 3,500 years ago before showers and baths were convenient, before tampons, disinfectants and other improved means of sanitation had been invented.” (The Act of Marriage, p.275) With that, LaHaye makes this law irrelevant and rightly so. Ironically, though, in his book, The Unhappy Gay, the Levitical laws are one of the chief cornerstones of his arguments. Much of the holiness code is now irrelevant for us as moral law. Thus, having children, which was of exceptional importance to the early Hebrews, is now made less relevant by overpopulation, just as the prohibition against eating pork and shellfish has been made irrelevant by refrigeration. The Bible never addresses the issue of homosexual love, yet it does have several beautiful examples of same-sex love. David's love for Jonathan was said to exceed his love for women. (2 Samuel 1:26) Ruth's relationship with Naomi is an example of a deep, bonding love, and Ruth’s words of covenant to Naomi are often used in heterosexual wedding ceremonies. (Ruth 1:16-17) The Bible clearly values love between persons of the same sex. Jesus' Attitude In the New Testament there is no record of Jesus saying anything about homosexuality. This ought to strike us as very odd in light of the great threat to Christianity, family life and the American way that some would have us believe homosexuality is. Jesus saw injustice and religious hypocrisy as a far greater threat to the Realm of God. Episcopal priest Dr. Tom Horner has written that the Gospels imply in two places that Jesus' attitude toward lesbians and gays would not have been hostile. (Jonathan Loved David, p. 122) The first is found in the story of Jesus healing the Centurion's servant. (Matthew 8:5-13) The word used for the servant is “pais,” which in the Greek culture referred to a younger lover of an older, more powerful or educated man. Clearly, the story demonstrates an unusually intense love, and Jesus' response was wholly positive. The other hint of Jesus' attitude is seen in his comments about eunuchs. (Matthew 19:10-12) Jesus opposed divorce in opposition to the abuses experienced by women. It is in the context of marriage that Jesus said “some eunuchs were born so; others had been made eunuchs and still others choose to be eunuchs for the Kingdom's sake.” Jesus' remarks about celibacy and castration are clear, but a male child being born without testicles is a rare birth defect. It is only in our day that the Kinsey Institute has demonstrated that sexual orientation is likely determined prior to birth. It could well be that those to whom Jesus refers as being “born eunuchs” are the people we call lesbian or gay. Jesus' attitude toward eunuchs differed greatly from the fundamentalist Pharisees of his day. To them, eunuchs should have been excluded from the covenant and barred from worship and participating in the community of faith. Jesus' graceful approach to eunuchs is beautifully pictured in the promise of the prophecy of Isaiah, “To the eunuchs...I will give them an everlasting name that will not be taken away.” (56:4-8) In Jesus' day there were three types of persons called eunuchs: celibates, those who were slaves and were castrated so that children would not be born to them, and those who were “born eunuchs,” or homosexuals. Royal and wealthy households used castrated slaves to work with and guard the concubines and female slaves. However, when assigning slaves to female members of the royal family, they would choose homosexual slaves. With female members, the concern was not just unwanted pregnancies but also rape. It is against this background that we must read the story found in Acts 8:26-40. In this passage, the Holy Spirit sends Philip the Deacon to witness to and baptize an Ethiopian eunuch of Queen Candace of Ethiopia. One of the earliest converts to Christianity was a person excluded for sexual reasons from the Old Testament community. Paul's References Paul's statement in Romans 1:18-32 has been taken as the strongest New Testament rejection of homosexuality. He is concerned about the influence of the pagan culture on the Roman Christians. After giving a detailed description of a world that “exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator,” he continues, “Therefore, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lusts for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty of their perversion.” A complete reading of these passages, in their original context, clearly shows that what Paul was actually referring to was homosexual temple prostitution, which was performed by various cults (though far more cults used heterosexual prostitution). Again, Paul is not referring to same-sex love, and he clearly has no concept of persons for whom this lifestyle is “natural.” Paul's other reference to homosexual acts in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 is similar to 1 Timothy 1:8-11. These two passages contain lists of persons to be excluded from the Realm of God. The interpretation of these passages depends on two Greek words that have always presented a problem for translators. In the King James Version, they are translated “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind.” In the Revised Standard Version, they were combined and rendered as “homosexuals,” however, these are not the Greek words for homosexual, so these translations reflects the scholars' bias. The New International Version illustrates the difference in these two words by translating them “male prostitute” and “homosexual offenders.” The Jerusalem Bible uses the terms “catamites and “sodomites.” Catamites were youth kept especially for sexual purpose, who were usually paid large sums of money. Neither passage refers to persons of same-sex orientation but to people who used their sexuality for personal gain. The Love of Christ Jesus did a great deal to change many social customs and ideas. He elevated the position of women, and, ultimately, they were his best and most faithful disciples. He did this by example and by commandments that were absolutely inclusive of the rights of all people. Yet, in the name of the Christ whose love encompassed all, the Church has been the most homophobic of all institutions. This should not be surprising when we realize that the Church is still the largest institution which is primarily racially segregated. The final, and central, message of the New Testament is that ALL persons are loved by God so much that God's Son was sent as a means of redemption from a disease by which we are all afflicted. The cure for this disease cannot be found in any set of actions. Neither homosexuality nor heterosexuality is redemptive. God's love through Christ was given to all people. The Theological Reflection For the Christian, sin must be understood as a disease that results FROM a broken relationship with God and that results IN a broken relationship with one another and with ourselves. Hence, Jesus' supreme command is to love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Christianity is not a religion with new rules and laws but rather is a new relationship with God. Those things that the legalists are fond of labeling “sins” are actually just symptoms of the much deeper disease of alienation and estrangement. Much of the energy of the Church has been spent dealing with symptoms while leaving the disease intact. Jesus did not seem overly concerned about the legal transgressions of those to whom he ministered. Rather, he was much more concerned with healing the physical, spiritual, emotional and relational brokenness of people. Perhaps if the Church would again give itself to the healing/reconciling ministry of Jesus, then some of the symptoms about which we are so concerned would begin to disappear. That brings us to the question: Is homosexuality a symptom of brokenness? In a very few cases, perhaps. Yet, pointing fingers of blame and accusation is not Christ's way. Rather, Jesus accepted people as they were and allowed love and acceptance to work its miracle. However, most lesbians and gays have been lesbian or gay for as long as they can remember. For them, it is a much a natural characteristic as their eye color or their handedness. Kinsey Institute research (University of Indiana, 1981) has suggested that homosexuality may well be genetic or, at least, linked to some prenatal factors. (Sexual Preference, Bell &Weinberg) Certainly most competent psychologists would concur that sexual orientation is set prior to the age of five in most persons. It is, therefore, not a matter of choice, so it cannot be a moral or ethical issue. Many Christians insist that God can change/cure the homosexual. In the book The Third Sex there are six reported cases of homosexuals whom God has “cured.” Of these six, at least four are known to have returned to their gay lifestyle. (Christianity Today, February 1981) Many lesbians and gays spend most of their lives trying, with no success, to persuade God to change them. It is like trying to get God to change your eye color. What option, then, is left to these persons? They have been told that they can't be gay and Christian. Since all efforts have failed in their struggle not to be gay or lesbian, then their only recourse, according to the Church, is that they can't be Christian. So, the Church has discounted or discarded as much as 10% of the population. If they are excluded from the life of the Christian community, who, then, will tell them of God's inclusive love and of Jesus' reconciling death? Are they left to assume that God is so narrow-minded as to exclude them for something over which they have no control and for a choice they did not make? When will the Church finally be brave enough to say with Paul, “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female,” gay or straight? God has enough love for all, I found this on the web. I hope this will help people really understand; also, I hope it will allow us all to get along and care for each other. Why is Dr. Doris afraid to let his/her email address be shown? Give it up! This is not my sermon. It was written by a minister, and I feel that he know the Bible very well. It doesn't matter if you believe in the Bible or not, but it should show the bashers that they are wrong and everyone should be non-judgemental. Jesus loves EVERYONE not just a selected few. BSUG----- I am NO virgin by any means, and anyway, we are not talking about virginity. also check out visionsofdaniel.net for more info regarding this topic.

What is the shortest prayer? Prayer is Not Optional" A layman, at the St Vladimir's Seminary Summer Institute, wrote this sentence as the most important thing he learned all week. Which Words The classical form of the Jesus Prayer is, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." The actual words of our short prayers can vary. We might say the classic version of the Jesus Prayer, or we might say, "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me." We may say, "Lord Jesus, have mercy." Or, we might say a Psalm verse, or a Bible quote, or some other prayer. Monks of old said, "Lord, make haste to help me. Lord, make speed to save me," all day long. The history of the Jesus Prayer goes back, as far as we know, to the early sixth century, with Diadochos, who taught that repetition of the prayer leads to inner stillness. Even earlier John Cassian recommended this type of prayer. In the fourth century Egypt, in Nitria, short "arrow" prayers were practiced. Abba Macarius of Egypt said there is no need to waste time with words. It is enough to hold out your hands and say, "Lord, according to your desire and your wisdom, have mercy." If pressed in the struggle, say, "Lord, save me!" or say, "Lord." He knows what is best for us, and will have mercy upon us. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pray Ceaselessly We are all called to pray without ceasing, says St. Paul in 1 Thess 5:17. The real questions is, how. The Jesus Prayer provides one good way to pray constantly. In fact, the Jesus Prayer is the most widespread and most specifically Orthodox spiritual prayer, according to Metropolitan Corneanu. Our task is to draw nearer to God. St. Isaac of Syria says that it is impossible to draw near to God by any means other than increasing prayer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Power of the Name Biblically, knowing a person's name gave power over that person. Name was linked with being. In the Old Testament, God would not disclose His name. In the New Testament, Jesus explicitly gives us God's name, Father, and tells us to use the name in prayer. Jesus gives us access to the Godhead through the name. Jesus told His Apostles that they hadn't really used His Name in prayer enough. "Hitherto you have asked nothing in My Name; ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full" (Jn 16:23). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hidden Martyrdom Trying to pray repetitively is an inner asceticism. According to St Ignatius Brianchaninov, trying to pray without ceasing is a "hidden martyrdom." A casual, but profound, example of this came to a small group of high school students. They were visiting a home for unwed mothers. The woman who directs the home spoke to them for a half hour. Because the woman sensed that the students were wondering about her own faith commitment, she said, "Well, you have been here 30 minutes and I have prayed 15 times." She hadn't been out of their sight, nor out of their conversation. Yet, during the active interchange, this woman found the desire, attention, and time, to shoot 15 "arrow" prayers to God. That's keen vigilance. That's a hidden martyrdom, especially when attempted all day long. Prayer requires super-human courage, given the atmosphere of the world today. The whole ensemble of natural energies is in opposition. So says Sophrony. Lions may not eat us for the sake of the Gospel. Rather, our call to martyrdom takes the form of being attentive to the present moment, relying upon God's power always, and doing His will. Our call to martyrdom may not be any easier than death by violence. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Who can Say the Prayer Clearly, the Jesus Prayer is not only for monks. We are told that the prayer is for cab drivers, social workers, business persons, teachers, professional baseball players (not necessarily used to win a game), psychiatrists. We use the Jesus Prayer to do God's will, not our own bidding. Anyone, everyone can say the Jesus Prayer. The only prerequisites are a keeping of the Commandments, be living member of the Church, and to have a guide. Bishop Kallistos Ware has sound advice for those who simply can't find a suitable guide. "But those who have no personal contact with starets my still practice the Prayer without any fear, so long as they do so only for limited periods - initially, for no more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time - and so long as they make no attempt to interfere with the body's natural rhythms." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When to Pray The Jesus Prayer is recommended in the morning, following our prayer rule, for some period of time, perhaps 10 or 15 minutes. If that is impossible, then sometime before noon, or in the evening. This might be called "formal" use of the prayer. The second form of the Jesus Prayer is the "free" use of the prayer. This means at any and all other times of the day, or night. This is especially true for the semi-automatic tasks such as driving, doing dishes, walking, being unable to sleep, etc. The Jesus Prayer is notably useful in time of extreme concern or upset. When alone, we might find it helpful to pray the Jesus Prayer, out loud. This can help lower the distraction level. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prayer of the Heart The Jesus Prayer is also called the Prayer of the Heart. In Orthodoxy, the mind and heart are to be used as one. St Theophan tells us to keep our "mind in the heart" at all times. Heart means the physical muscle pumping blood, and emotions/feelings, and the innermost core of the person, the spirit. Heart is associated with the physical organ, but not identical with it. Heart means our innermost chamber, our secret dwelling place where God lives. "The heart is but a small vessel; and yet dragons and lions are there, and there poisonous creatures and all the treasures of wickedness; rough, uneven paths are there, and gaping chasms. There likewise is God, there are the angles, the heavenly cities and the treasures of grace; all things are there." So says St. Macarius. Someone said the heart is a dimension of interior consciousness, awareness, where we come in touch with an inner space, a space of no dimensions. This consciousness is timeless, the place where tears reside and deep contact with the present moment abide, and from which restful movement comes. Acting out of our heart means to act lightly, with vigor and enthusiasm. When not in that inner awareness, we are restless, agitated and self-concerned. There is within us a space, a field of the heart, in which we find a Divine Reality, and from which we are called to live. The mind, then, is to descend into that inner sanctuary, by means of the Jesus Prayer or wordless contemplation, and to stay there throughout our active day, and evening. We descend with our mind into our heart, and we live there. The heart is Christ's palace. There, Christ the King comes to take His rest. The photo at the top of the page is a seventeen year old girl [Bethany] who said that, when this was taken, she felt like she was walking "into the silence of the hills." To reach the field of the heart we need outer, and inner, silence, rather like one might experience while gazing upon this scene. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Silence Silence is a choice. We choose the things we want to do. These things, then, order and measure our lives. Someone said that Christians "order and measure" their lives from communion to communion. We might also say the Christians "order and measure" their lives from silence to silence. Silence, at its best, is God-awareness. We quiet down our outer and inner lives, and listen to God speak. Someone said that when God speaks, His words are like the sound of a flutter of a bird's wings. We need to be attentive if we are to hear anything. Outer silence is a choice. When my son, in his teen years, rode with me in the family car, we cut a deal. He had the car radio half the time, and I had the car radio half the time. He always chose his half at the beginning of the trip. Like most teens, he wanted his jollies up front. For my half of the ride, I sometimes chose silence, because I like silence. I really didn't do it to cause him pain. He, however, did sometimes have a restless and difficult time of it. Later he did tell me that he enjoyed our quiet evening rides together. Outer silence calms the senses. By contrast, sensory overload and excitement can be addictive. Inner silence can usually be achieved only by substituting one thought for another. Hence, the Jesus Prayer overrides our usual compulsive stream of consciousness about our own anxieties. Beginning with this form of prayer, then we might be led to deeper inner stillness, prayer without words. The caution here is that prayer without words is not heaviness, semi-sleep dullness. Rather, wordless prayer is alive, vigorous God-awareness. A seventeen year old said she learned recently that, "Silence is my friend." Abba Pastor tells us that any trial which comes to us can by conquered by silence. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contemplation Contemplation has been described as clear awareness without words. Contemplation is a "seeing clearly." We lay aside thoughts, not to lead to a vacuum or drowsiness, but to inner plenitude. We deny to affirm. Wordless contemplation is not an absence, but a presence, a God-awareness. The aim is to bring us into a direct meeting with a personal God, on God's terms. Inner silence, inner stillness, called hesychia, is experienced by wordless sitting, imageless contemplation. When consciousness strays, a phrase like "Lord Jesus" can be used to bring the mind back, and then the person sits quietly in the presence of the Lord. The desire of wordless sitting awareness is to open oneself to God, to listen to God. Some teachers suggest that if we are able, we spend a half hour of wordless sitting, begun by asking God to teach us to pray, or a Bible quote. Usually this is best done in the morning, upon rising or before noon. If the person is able, a block of the some quiet time is also recommended for the evening. Hopefully, all this is worked out with the direction of a spiritual guide. Both the Jesus Prayer and contemplation make us single-centered, concentrating upon the here and now, focused, one-pointed. The point is God. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Changing the Universe Every prayer changes the entire universe. Our every prayer, each prayer, actually changes history, the way God created the world, and all else. God is outside time. God is not "waiting up there" for our prayer, and then He acts. All has already occurred in God. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Intercessory Prayer St Therese, a Roman Catholic saint, had difficulty knowing that God heard her prayers for others. As a youth, she decided to put God "to the test" once and for all. Perhaps only a saint can "test" God. She prayed fervently for the salvation of a callused serial killer of women, Henri Pranzini. Pranzini was caught, found guilty and sentenced to the guillotine. During this time, Therese prayed that he be saved, and that she be given a sign that a conversion took place. Pranzini became more arrogant. Therese persisted. On the execution day, Pranzini walked up the steps, put his head onto the block, still jeering. Then, unexpectedly, he lifted up, grabbed the crucifix hanging from the side of the nearby priest, and Pranzini kissed the feet of Christ three times. Pranzini publicly repented. He then put his head back down onto the block, and the guillotine fell. Therese claimed that her prayers were answered. She claimed that her intercessory prayers saved a hardened criminal. Is this really the way intercessory prayer works? In a word, yes. How? The answer to that rests somewhere in God's mysterious ways. What we do know, for certain, is that every prayer for someone else is heard, and in God's goodness, answered, for the other person's good. Every single prayer for another helps that other person, and helps us. The lives of the saints are replete with examples. St Monica, mother of St Augustine, prayed day and night for her son when he was living a wild life. Augustine had, among other activities, fathered a child out of wedlock. Monica was told by her Bishop that "no child of so many tears (prayers) could be lost." Monica's prayers were instrumental in saving Augustine. We are each called to pray, ardently, for our children, family, priest, the Church, country, world. We have a noble and royal vocation, to pray and make an untold difference in the entire cosmos. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How Does It Work? Like swimming, we are to "jump in" and just begin. There is a world of difference between thinking, or talking, about quiet prayer, and actually praying. Like beginning swimmers , we only learn by getting wet. The Fathers tell us that, often, the first thing that happens is an experience of darkness and resistance. Then, when we persist, peace begins to replace the darkness. The temptations may become more severe, even temptations to stop the praying, but we sin less. The Fathers tell us that, as we continue to pray and live the commandments, go to Church and listen to our spiritual Father, we can expect to become freed from indecision, upset and hesitation. Our will becomes stronger. We can expect to be available to others in ways we otherwise would not have been, and we will become more effective and creative. Bishop Kallistos Ware says that by spending only a few moments invoking the Divine Name each day, we actually transform all the other remaining moments of the day. In the beginning, there may be no new insights and no pleasant feelings. Was it a waste of time? Not necessarily. By faith, the Christian believes that spending time wanting to pray, and actually praying, does touch a Merciful God. God hears. And, in turn, Divine Truth is known through direct experience, sometimes called intuition. Something is happening, and changing at a deeper level of consciousness, unnoticed. We can expect invisible, subtle snares, sent from Satan, precisely because we have upscaled our efforts, and are turning to God. In a sense, we rouse the enemy to action. St. John Chrysostom says that when we begin to pray we stir the snake (living within us) to action, and that prayer can lay the snake low. There is no ascetic effort more difficult, more painful, than the effort to draw close to God, Sophrony tells us. When we begin to pray, we expend desire and effort. The results are up to God. Real prayer is a gift from God, not the payment for our perspiration. Prayer works in the Unseen Warfare as a power/gift from Jesus, given as a function of our ability to receive it. We increase our ability to receive by asking for the increase, and God grants it as He sees fit, in His tender, all sweet and merciful manner. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not Yoga Sitting, saying the Jesus Prayer, or in wordless contemplation, is not Yoga or any far Eastern practice. The difference is the Christian encounter with the living God, Jesus. The postures, techniques and outer form may be similar, but the content is unique in Christian prayer. The content of Christian prayer is Jesus. Sometimes the difference is likened to a priceless painting. We might admire the exquisite frame of the painting, and rightly so. But the frame is not the masterpiece. The similarities of Eastern Yoga and Sufi practice in prayer are the frame, but Christ is the masterpiece, the insides, of the prayer of the Christian. And, that is all the difference in the world. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Techniques & Psychosomatic Issues The Orthodox understanding of the role of the body in prayer rests upon a sound anthropology. The body, soul and spirit act as a single unit, not divided or split up. Therefore, the body has a role in prayer. How we involve the body can be understood in three ways. Sometimes this is called psychotechniques. 1. Breathing, 2. Inner Exploration, and 3. Posture. Across the centuries, these issues have been explosive. Breathing. Bishop Kallistos Ware says that if we pray the Jesus Prayer for short periods, ten or fifteen minutes at the beginning, then there is no problem matching the words of the prayer to our breath. We are to breath naturally, without playing with the rhythm of the breath. On the inhale, we can say, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God." On the exhale, we can say, "have mercy on me, a sinner." We are to breath and pray slowly and reverently and attentively. Inner Exploration. Inner exploration usually means following our breath into the nostrils, down into the lungs, around the insides, and out. This is unquestioningly, forbidden. The dangers involved in all this cannot be exaggerated. Posture. The usual position, as recommended by Bishop Kallistos Ware, is a comfortable sitting position in a chair. Sometimes standing is recommended. Usually the eyes are kept closed. Posture can take many forms, as long as the postures are reverent. Modern serious and enlightened authors, such as Bishop Ware, St Igantius Brianchaninov and Sophrony all agree that "the fullness of the Jesus Prayer can by practiced without any physical methods at all." In summary, it can be said that physical methods are optional and not at all necessary. Physical techniques are more suitable for beginners, says St Gregory Palamas. Physical techniques are potentially dangerous, and not to be used without a guide. St Theophan suggests, "Make a habit of having the intellect stand in the heart, but not in a physical way." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prayer Rope Orthodox prayer ropes are usually soft and made of wool. The purpose is to help us concentrate, not necessarily to count. In the famous book, The Way of the Pilgrim, the pilgrim said the prayer 2,000, then 6,000, then 12,000 times. Is 12,000 Jesus Prayers better than 2,000? Absolutely not. Quantity has nothing to do with love, and a living relationship with Jesus. The pilgrim did 12,000, no more and no less, as an act of obedience to his spiritual father, not because he was "making progress." He also prayed much because that was his "heart's desire." Every prayer is an act of love, made to the Author of Love, Who is waiting expectantly for our desire, and our acceptance of His Love. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Jesus Prayer as Psychotherapy As medicine, the Jesus Prayer is destructive of the passions and altering of conduct. Just as a doctor places a dressing on a patient's wound, and the dressing works without the patient's knowing how, calling on the Name of God "removes the passions" without our knowing how and why, according to Barsanupius and John. The Holy Name, when repeated quietly, penetrates the soul rather like a drop of oil, spreading out and impregnating a cloth. Our modern translation of "mercy" is limited and insufficient. "Mercy" comes from the Greek eleison. Eleison has the same root as elaion which means olive and olive oil. In the Middle East, olive oil provides physical healing for many sicknesses, particularly respiratory. "Have mercy" means to have "healing oil" on my soul. The Fathers tell us that praying the Sacred Name changes our personality, from overstrain to joy. "Hitherto you have asked nothing in my Name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full" (Jn 16:24). The Jesus Prayer functions as therapy, much like healing oil, transforming our personality from overstrain to joy, and by continuing to pray, these changes become permanent. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Results of Prayer We don't say the Jesus Prayer, or enter wordless contemplation, to get "some benefit." We don't pray to reduce our stress, or strengthen our immune system, or lose weight, or add years to our life. On the contrary, we enter prayer to follow Christ, to become open to Him. His way is the Way of the Cross.

There is a story about a creator who made the Universe. Have you considered that you are made in God's image? Furthermore, don't you know that you are in the middle of a war for your soul, whether to be spent in God's Kingdom or Satan's? God is Love. Satan is the Author of Confusion. Consider these things. God desires a real relationship with you and because you are made in His image, you are to be accountable for your actions. There is a way to know Him and it is through His Son, Jesus. We are in the Last Days before His return, so you should start considering Him before its too late. His character is good. He delivered the Jews out of Egypt and slavery, He created the Heavens and the Earth, He cast the Devil out of Heaven as fast as lightning, The Son of God, Jesus had saved the life of a prostitute who was about to be killed by hypocritical, hateful men. He had healed the blind, freed the oppressed, and challenged an empire. He layed His life down in order that we would be united with the Holiest and Most Pure Creator. Without His sacrifice we'de never be able to obtain that right as we were born into sin and lawlessness. As the scientist understands the laws of science, that it is impossible for some elements to be mixed or joined with others, God also is impossible to see without Jesus. For the spiritual, Jesus said, "I am the Way the Truth, and the Life, and no man can come unto the Father except through Me." For the bitter, Jesus said, "Come unto me, all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest." For the skeptical, Jesus said, "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God'."

Should we keep the Feast Days of the Lord forever? The High and Holy Days Broken Down We at United Hebrew Nation hope that you will have a blessing of the reading and the hearing of Gods true word. Please take notes and read for understanding because the world has so many lies out there to fool you and to get you killed by God. Thank you for taking out time to hear the word of The Most High God. Holy Days: Passover Today well learned that God reveals His plan of salvation for mankind in His commanded holy days. The first step in that plan is shown in the observance of the Passover. The world around us is filled with sin and evil of every kind, and it has been that way since Adam and Eve disobeyed God's command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For God to fulfill His plan of reproducing Himself, He had to provide a way to redeem man from his sinful condition and implement a means of forgiveness. God is holy and will not tolerate sin in any form, even in human beings. Because He will not allow sinful people into His Kingdom, humans must be "justified." By this, God forgives a person's sins, brings him into a right relationship with Himself and imputes Christ's righteousness to him. Only after being forgiven can people take the additional steps of character development and overcoming to qualify to enter the Kingdom of God. Our annual keeping of the Passover reminds us of this initial step in fulfilling the plan of God. 1. When God called the children of Israel out of Egypt, did He have to show them when the year began? Exodus 12:1-2. Comment: During their long sojourn in Egypt, the Israelites lost track of time—they even forgot which day was the Sabbath. God had to show Israel when His year began so that they could begin observing His holy days. Israel's calling out of Egypt symbolizes God calling us out of this evil world. 2. Is Passover one of God's festivals? Leviticus 23:4-5. Comment: Passover is a feast of the Lord, not a feast of Israel or the Jews. He instituted it and commands us to keep it. 3. How was Israel to observe the Passover? Exodus 12:3-11. Comment: God told each Israelite family to choose an unblemished lamb on the 10th day of the month Abib. On the 14th day at twilight (just after sundown as the 14th began), they killed the lamb, putting its blood on the doorpost and lintel of their homes. Then they roasted and ate the lamb. 4. Why did they put the blood on their doorposts and lintels? Exodus 12:12-13. Comment: The blood was a sign to the death angel to "pass over" their homes when it went through Egypt. Because of it, Israel's firstborn were saved, while Egypt's firstborn died. 5. What did killing the lamb and putting its blood around the door represent? Isaiah 53:7; John 1:29; Acts 8:32; Revelation 7:14; I Peter 1:18-19. Comment: These yearly rituals represented the death of Jesus Christ, who was God in the flesh. The innocent lamb had to be without blemish because it represented the only Man who ever lived a perfect, sinless life. Jesus Christ was the Lamb of God who gave His life and shed His blood so that we may be saved from eternal death by paying the penalty for our sins. Through faith in His sacrifice, we receive forgiveness of sin and come into a right relationship with God. Because His life was worth more than all human life combined, His sacrifice paid the price for all sin. He redeemed us from the penalty that the breaking of God's law imposes and freed us to live righteously. 6. Was Jesus crucified on Passover? John 18:39; 19:13-18. Comment: Our Savior was crucified in the early afternoon of the day of the Passover. This further confirms He was the One who was to give His life as a ransom for many. Even to the very day, He completely fulfilled the symbolism of the lamb. 7. Did Jesus observe the Passover during His life on earth? Luke 2:40-42; John 2:13, 23. Comment: Jesus kept the Passover as a man because God had commanded it as a festival. In this, He set us a perfect example, showing us that we should observe this festival too. 8. Are New Testament Christians commanded to keep the Passover? I Corinthians 5:7-8. Comment: The apostle Paul instructed the Corinthian Christians to observe the Passover as a memorial of the death of Christ, our Passover, who was sacrificed for us. 9. What did Jesus teach is the first step in observing the New Testament Passover? John 13:1-5, 14-15. Comment: While His disciples ate the Passover meal, Jesus arose and washed the disciples' feet. Considered a very lowly responsibility in that culture, foot washing was performed by servants when visitors entered a house. By performing this act of humility, Jesus showed us how we should serve each other. He commands Christians everywhere and throughout all ages to follow His example. 10. What else did Jesus teach His disciples to do in observing the Passover? Matthew 26:26-29; Luke 22:19-20. Comment: Jesus told His disciples to partake of unleavened bread and wine during the New Testament Passover service. Through this command, He charged His followers to observe it as a memorial of His death for all time. Since Christ's death completely fulfilled the symbolism of killing a lamb, we no longer need to slaughter a lamb in keeping the Passover. 11. Must all converted Christians observe the New Testament Passover every year? John 6:48, 51-54. Comment: Unless we eat His flesh (represented by the unleavened bread) and drink His blood (symbolized by the wine), we have no life in us and will not inherit eternal life. How vital it is for us to keep the Passover every year. 12. Did the New Testament church of God continues to keep the Passover yearly? Acts 12:4. Comment: Some translations grossly mistranslate the Greek word pascha as "Easter." It always means "Passover." 13. Did the apostles teach the Gentiles to observe the Passover? I Corinthians 11:23-26. Comment: The apostle Paul carefully taught the Gentile Corinthians to keep the Passover using the symbols of bread and wine that Jesus had instituted. These scriptures teach us to keep the Passover "till He comes," and the true church of God will still be observing the Passover as He commanded. All those who have accepted His redemption eagerly anticipate His return to share the eternal life He makes possible by His sacrifice. Holy Days: Unleavened Bread Passover pictures the first major step in God's plan of salvation, justification through the forgiveness of sin by faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The Days of Unleavened Bread explain and memorialize the second major step in salvation, sanctification. When God sanctifies us, He separates us for holy use. After cleansing us at Passover, He sets us apart and considers us to be holy. The problem is, though, that our human nature remains intact and resists holiness. When the Israelites passed through the Red Sea, a type of baptism, they were symbolically washed and sanctified as a holy people to God. However, they began to murmur and rebel almost immediately. Why? Because they still had their slave mentality; they were not yet accustomed to providing for themselves. They were frightened and intimidated, and they voiced their desire to return to their bondage in Egypt. We also find it very easy to return to old, sinful habits and erroneous ways of thinking. God commands us to keep the Days of Unleavened Bread yearly to remind us to continue to fight free of the bondage to Satan's world and our own carnal nature so that we can truly escape slavery with a high hand. 1. After such a solemn observance as Passover, how does the Night To Be Much Observed fit in with the Days of Unleavened Bread? Exodus 12:42; 14:8; Numbers 33:3. Comment: Israel, a nation of slaves, began to glimpse the possibility of freedom through Moses. Their anticipation roller-coasted from high expectation to dread after each plague. How their emotions must have soared when they walked away from the brickyards with their firstborn alive, laughing and playing. They left Egypt with a high hand or as we might say "on a real high". The Night To Be Much Observed memorializes our own freedom from spiritual bondage. We left spiritual Egypt, the world, behind, and in great hope and zeal, began our trek toward God's Kingdom. 2. Why did God tell the Israelites to eat unleavened bread and put leaven out of their homes? Exodus 12:19-20, 39. Comment: The Exodus involved a great deal of urgency and haste. With Egypt virtually destroyed, the Egyptians urged the Israelites to leave lest further devastation occur. However, God knew Egypt would not long tolerate the loss of her slaves or delay in seeking vengeance. The window of opportunity for escape would quickly close. They did not even have time to let their bread rise! Biblically, leaven represents sin. Once we are converted, we must diligently endeavor to rid ourselves of sin and live God's pure way of life (I Corinthians 5:8). Like the Israelites, we must flee from sin, lest it pursue and destroy us (Matthew 12:43-45). 3. How does leavening demonstrate the effect of sin in our lives? I Corinthians 5:6; James 2:10-11. Comment: Just as a little leaven in bread quickly spreads completely through the dough, one "little" sin affects our whole being. As James points out, if we break one commandment, we are guilty of breaking the whole law. One sin begets another unless the chain is broken through repentance. 4. How does sin puff us up? I Corinthians 5:2, 6-8. Comment: The Corinthian congregation had serious problems with sexual sins, but instead of feeling terrible, people were "glorying" in it. They did not comprehend the slavery imposed by profligate lifestyles: broken marriages, ruined health and alienation from God and man. They did not realize true liberty is in keeping the law. 5. Does leaven represent false doctrine as well? Matthew 16:6-12; I Corinthians 5:8. Comment: Jesus points out the error of the Pharisees' doctrines, and Paul advises the Corinthians to partake of the bread of sincerity and truth. False doctrine causes us to think more highly of ourselves than we ought. True doctrine promotes sincerity, humility and obedience to the Sovereign of the Universe, the overall lesson of this festival. 6. Why do we now keep these days? What is their spiritual significance? Exodus 13:8-9; I Corinthians 5:1-13. Comment: These days are a memorial to God's law and to His powerful deliverance from Egypt and bondage. Paul explains this significance to the Corinthians and the urgency attached to cease sinning. He says we should not even keep company with a brother involved in flagrant sin. Also, by ridding our homes of sin, we realize that overcoming sin is hard work. 7. Why are there seven days of Unleavened Bread but only one day of Passover, Pentecost, Trumpets and Atonement? Exodus 12:19; Hebrews 12:1; I Corinthians 9:27; 10:12-13; Romans 7:14-25. Comment: God knows that we tend to change slowly. He gives us seven days each year to concentrate on our duty to rid our lives of sin. Those acts that are God's responsibility the sacrifice of one for all sin, the sending of His Spirit, the resurrection of the dead or the binding of Satan He can accomplish in one day. The part that involves mankind's participation overcoming sin requires more time and attention. The Days of Unleavened Bread represent a period of judgment when man is required to overcome. To us, overcoming a deep-seated sin can seem to take an eternity. The obvious lesson is that we must draw much nearer to the Source of the power to overcome. 8. This world's Christianity has perverted Passover into Easter and completely dismissed the Days of Unleavened Bread. What have they lost by avoiding these days? Revelation 3:12; 22:14-15; Hebrews 6:4-6; 12:14-17. Comment: It has lost a vital step in salvation: Sanctification. God sets us aside for a lifetime of overcoming sin so that we might enter His Kingdom. By their "once saved, always saved" doctrine, worldly Christians deny the whole process of putting sin out of their lives. They believe that once they "accept Christ," their salvation is secure they cannot lose it no matter what lifestyle they choose to live. This directly contradicts God's holy Word in Hebrews six and twelve. God has chosen to reveal this festival to us so that we will overcome, pursue holiness and secure eternal life in His Kingdom. Holy Days: Pentecost Feast of Weeks As we study the meaning of God's holy days, a logical pattern surfaces that unlocks truths that remain a mystery to the vast majority of the world's people. The day of Pentecost symbolizes a major key to spiritual understanding because upon this day God sent His Holy Spirit to His church, providing Christ's disciples with the power, love and understanding to carry out the work of the church. This happens by the Holy Spirit, the key to understanding the spiritual principles of God's Word, opens our understanding of the plan that God is working out among humanity. God established His holy days around the two major harvests of the year, a small one in the spring and a larger one in the fall. These harvest seasons typify two spiritual harvests. Pentecost, occurring in late spring, symbolizes the first spiritual harvest and reveals that this is not the only day of salvation. Those whom God calls now are merely a "pilot group" that He has specifically selected to be His "first fruits." This day is also the anniversary of God's church—the beginning of the portion of God's master plan in which He calls people out of this evil world to create in them His holy, perfect, spiritual character. 1. During what three periods of the year did God command Israel to appear before Him? Exodus 23:14-16. Comment: The "three times" are three general periods during which God's holy days fall. Passover and Unleavened Bread occur in early spring, the "Feast of Harvest" in late spring and the "Feast of Ingathering" in the fall. 2. How did the spring harvest begin? Leviticus 23:10-11, 14. Comment: Before the Israelites could reap the spring crop, God commanded them to bring a sheaf of grain to the priest, who waved it before God for acceptance. This "wave sheaf offering" occurred on "the day after the Sabbath" that falls during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. 3. How do we determine when to observe Pentecost, also called "the Feast of Weeks"? Leviticus 23:15-16, 21. Comment: This late spring holy day must be counted. God instructs us to count fifty days from the day that the wave sheaf was offered. This explains why this day is commonly called Pentecost, which means "count fifty." The Sabbath (verse 15), the day after which we start to count, is not an annual holy day, but the weekly Sabbath that falls during Unleavened Bread. We know this because Pentecost must be counted every year. If this Sabbath were an annual Sabbath, Pentecost would always fall on a fixed date. It always falls on the same day of the week the first day, Sunday—because one begins to count on a Sunday. 4. What special offering did God command to be offered on Pentecost in the Old Testament? Leviticus 23:17. Comment: God commanded that two loaves of bread be offered as first fruits to God. These two loaves represent the Old and New Testament churches. 5. Are the members of God's church regarded as first fruits? James 1:18; Revelation 14:4. Comment: Pentecost, the Feast of First fruits, represents the first part of God's spiritual harvest. God is now calling a small number of people, the first fruits, into His church. These people, who live in the world but are not part of it (John 17:15-16), are training to be the leaders in the World Tomorrow when God will work to save the whole world. 6. Is the end time a spiritual harvest? Matthew 13:24-30, 37-43. Comment: "End of the age" (verse 39) refers to the time of Christ's second coming and the resurrection of the dead when God will reap the first fruits of His harvest. The fifty days between the wave sheaf offering and Pentecost symbolize the time from the founding of the church to the end of the age when the small harvest of the first fruits occurs. 7. What did the wave sheaf offering symbolize? I Corinthians 15:20-23. Comment: Jesus Christ, the first of the first fruits, willingly gave His life so others may receive forgiveness of sin. He was a holy, sinless sacrifice, and three days later, He was the first person resurrected to eternal life. In this, He fulfilled the symbolism of the wave sheaf offering. 8. Did Jesus have to be accepted just as the wave sheaf offering was? John 20:17. Comment: Jesus was crucified on the day of the Passover in AD 31, which fell that year on a Wednesday. God resurrected Him at the end of the weekly Sabbath (Saturday). He appeared to Mary Magdalene the next morning, the day after the weekly Sabbath during Unleavened Bread, when the priests presented the wave sheaf offering. He did not permit her to touch Him because He had not yet ascended to the Father. Just as the High Priest had to wave the sheaf of grain before the spring harvest began, so our Savior had to ascend to the Father that day to be accepted before Him. Once this happened, He allowed His disciples to touch Him (cf. Matthew 28:9; John 20:20-28). 9. Did Christ's disciples observe Pentecost? Acts 2:1. Comment: This was the Day of Pentecost exactly fifty days after Christ ascended to heaven to be accepted by the Father on the day the sheaf of grain was waved. 10. What happened then to fulfill a promise that Jesus had made to His disciples? Acts 2:2-4; John 14:16, 26. 11. Was the Holy Spirit to be in the disciples as contrasted to dwelling with them? John 14:17. Comment: During Jesus' life on earth, the Holy Spirit was with the disciples. After the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost, the Spirit was within them as it had been in Christ. At this time, the disciples were begotten by the Holy Spirit, marking the beginning of the church of God. 12. Did the early church continue to keep Pentecost after the Holy Spirit came? Acts 20:16; I Corinthians 16:8. Comment: About 25 years after Christ's ascension into heaven, Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, hurried to be in Jerusalem in time for Pentecost. Just as the early church kept Pentecost every year, so the true church of God continues to keep it today as a continual reminder of our part in God's great master plan of salvation. Holy Days: Feast of Trumpets Normally, church members approach Passover and Unleavened Bread very somberly. The enormity of what our Father and His Son risked for us is sobering, especially as we examine ourselves in comparison to the perfection of Jesus Christ. At Pentecost, the mood lightens as we contemplate the coming of God's Holy Spirit as a comforter and guide during our journey toward the Kingdom of God. It is a thrill to realize that God has chosen us to be part of the first harvest of His creation. This exuberant mood stays with us as we approach the Feast of Trumpets. We tend to focus on the return of Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords and on our resurrection to glory as this festival depicts. What a joyous day that will be. Though Trumpets does ultimately focus on these events, we should consider other sobering even terrifying meanings as we near the Feast of Trumpets, for it also depicts a terrible time of judgment upon the people of this world. 1. Why do we call this holy day "the Feast of Trumpets"? Leviticus 23:23-25. Comment: God commands us to keep this holy day each year so we will remember something about the "blowing of trumpets." 2. What do trumpets symbolize in Scripture? Isaiah 58:1; Jeremiah 4:5; 6:1; Ezekiel 33:3; Joel 2:1, 15; Amos 3:6. Comment: Trumpets symbolize a loud, warning cry of impending danger. These verses from the prophets impart a dire warning to those living in the end time: The day of the Lord is at hand, a day of darkness, gloominess and clouds over man's society. The prophets strongly admonish the ministry to raise their voices as trumpets to warn of sudden, terrifying destruction. 3. Are these warnings just for the world, or are they for God's people too? Same verses. Comment: Though originally intended for Israel, these warnings apply specifically to the called-out children of God since we are the ones living in the end time with the understanding of God's plan. In fact, we have the most to lose by ignoring these stern prophecies of death and destruction. They are admonishments to prepare us Spiritually for the tumult ahead. Notice that these verses stress repentance, fasting and prayer, and who but God's elect truly understand them? 4. How do these warnings apply to the Feast of Trumpets? Revelation 8-9; 11:15-19. Comment: The seventh seal, which includes the seven trumpets, announces the Day of the Lord and the return of Jesus Christ. I Corinthians 15:52 says that the resurrection will occur "at the last trumpet," and in I Thessalonians 4:16 Paul writes that Christ "will descend from heaven with a shout, . . . with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first." These proofs lead unmistakably to the conclusion that the Feast of Trumpets represents this step in the plan of God. 5. Why must God pour out His wrath on humanity? I Corinthians 13:9-13. Comment: We do not know all the reasons why such destruction and death must occur, but we do know that God will do it in love. It may be that He sends these plagues in just retribution for their sin, or He may be saving their character from permanent rebellion against Him. He desires all to repent and attain His Kingdom (II Peter 3:9), so He will do whatever is necessary to bring that to pass. 6. Does God's church have a responsibility in preparing for Christ's return? II Peter 3:10-18; Revelation 19:7-9. Comment: It is one thing to celebrate a joyous meeting with Christ it is quite another to ensure that we are a fitting bride for Him. The church must do its part in cooperating with God to prepare us as holy, righteous, godly saints who are worthy to marry His Son. 7. Revelation 10:7 says that when the seventh angel "is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished." What is this mystery? I Corinthians 15:50-58. Comment: The great mystery is that we can and will become immortal and incorruptible spirit beings at Christ's return. This is the part of the Feast of Trumpets that we rejoice in—for good reason—for vision of what We will be is a great motivator. I John 3:2 says we will be just like the returning Christ, who is very God, "the firstborn among many brethren" (Romans 8:29; see Philippians 3:20-21; Colossians 1:18). 8. Is God's plan finished when Christ returns? I Corinthians 15:23-28; Revelation 20. Comment: The resurrection at Christ's second coming is only the beginning of God's reign on the earth. In the proper time and order, all who have lived will be given an opportunity to repent and enter God's glorious Kingdom as sons of God. These events are more fully contemplated in the Feast of Tabernacles and the Last Great Day. 9. Will Jesus return on the Feast of Trumpets? Comment: The church of God has supposed this to be true for many years and the biblical material seems to support His second coming On that day some time soon. However, no verse specifically, unequivocally states this. The Feast of Trumpets pictures His return, but we cannot blindly assume that He will in fact come on that day. The odds are no worse than 1 in 365, however. Because we know that He will return soon, we can be prepared for it. If we learn to love each other fervently which is the basis of His judgment of us (Matthew 25:31-46) we will qualify to help perfect others. We will be prepared to help others as they recover from the terrible times of the Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord. We will be trained to teach and guide others as they strive to enter God's Kingdom. For us, Being Ready is much more important than When Christ returns. As the prophets advised, we need to be busy repenting, overcoming, praying and fasting as Christ's return approaches. Holy Days: The Day of Atonement In our continuing study on the holy days, we have seen the plan of God broaden from our personal redemption and removal of sin in Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread to the founding of the church and giving of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Trumpets picture the return of Christ, the changing of the saints into immortal spirit beings and God's judgment on all mankind. But one more hurdle must be overcome before salvation can be made available to everyone. God must remove the archenemy, Satan the Devil, to produce unity between Him and humanity. The Day of Atonement depicts the accomplishment of this step in God's purpose. Though this prodigious feat deserves our joyous praise and thanksgiving to God, Atonement is the most solemn of the seven festivals. On this day, Christians fast afflict their souls to show that only when man sees himself in proper comparison to God will he have the right attitude to be truly at one with Him. When Satan is bound and men live humbly before God, then God's Word and Spirit will work wonders among the people of the world. 1. Is Atonement a commanded feast of God? Leviticus 23:26-32. Comment: God emphasizes this day's solemnity by threatening death to those who fail to afflict their souls or who do any work on this day. Nothing is more important than being at one with Him. 2. What is it to "afflict your souls"? Isaiah 58:3. Comment: Fasting puts us in a proper attitude to submit to God. When we deprive ourselves of the necessities of life, we see how dependent we are upon God's providence. This is why in a true, spiritual fast we neither eat nor drink anything for the whole 24 hours of the day (Deuteronomy 9:18; Esther 4:16). God desires such a humble spirit in us so that we can walk in harmony with Him (Micah 6:8; Isaiah 66:2). 3. What are we trying to accomplish when we fast? Isaiah 58:3-12. Comment: The members of Isaiah's audience were fasting for all the wrong reasons. They fasted to get things from God and hypocritically appear righteous. God says, though, that we should fast to free others from their sins, to intercede with God for their healing, to help provide for their needs and to understand His will. Fasting is a tool of godly love we are to use for the good of others, and any benefits we derive from it are wonderful blessings. On the Day of Atonement, we fast to implore God to bring to pass the greatest blessing of all upon the world and ourselves: unity, oneness, with Him. 4. Did the early church keep this Fast? Acts 27:9. Comment: Luke, writing this over 30 years after Christ's death, makes it very clear that the early church observed this holy day. 5. What unusual ritual did the ironic high priest perform on the Day of Atonement? Leviticus 16. Comment: This lengthy, involved ritual depicts all of the steps that must be accomplished before mankind can truly be at one with God. In short, the following must occur: You a high priest must be pure and sinless to mediate between God and man (verse 4). Christ, having lived a sinless life, is our eternal High Priest. You the high priest must enter God's presence with blood to open the way between God and man (verses 3, 14-16). Christ, by His own sacrifice, gains us entrance before God's throne, having rent the veil (Matthew 27:51). The sins of men must be covered by the offering of an innocent victim (verses 9, 15). Christ's blood covers our sins, and God grants us forgiveness. The cause of man's sins must be removed (verses 10, 20-22). After Christ returns, Satan the being who first sinned and has been broadcasting his sinful, rebellious nature to all mankind will be imprisoned so he cannot deceive men. 6. How long will Satan be bound? Revelation 20:1-3. Comment: Mankind will have a thousand years of freedom from the Devil's attitudes of pride, rebellion, vanity and strife. What a peaceful, blessed time the Millennium will be. 7. What will be the result of Satan's removal? Acts 3:19-21. Comment: Once the Deceiver is neutralized, refreshing and restitution can begin. Christ and the saints will immediately work to restore the earth to its beauty and productivity (Isaiah 35). God's perfect government and laws will be reinstituted , bringing peace and prosperity to all who submit to them (Isaiah 2:1-4). In a spirit of harmony, everyone will pitch in to rebuild the waste places and ruins caused by man's and Satan's sins (Isaiah 58:12; 61:4; Amos 9:14). This is the wonderful World Tomorrow that all of God's people have looked toward since the Garden of Eden. All that is good very good (Genesis 1:31) will be restored. Holy Days: Feast of Tabernacles In these studies on the holy days, we have seen God's plan unfolding. The process of salvation, revealed in the spring festivals, culminates in the Feast of Trumpets, picturing Christ returning to earth in power to crush Satan's end-time attempt to subjugate the world. Saints from all ages will be resurrected, or if alive, changed to immortality. For the first time in history, man will be totally at one with his Creator. Satan will then be bound for a thousand years, and his evil, destructive influence will be totally cut off. The Feast of Tabernacles pictures the ensuing Millennium when the whole earth will rest. In Hebrews 4, the writer discusses the Sabbath as a day of rest. He uses Israel entering the Promised Land as a type of our entering into rest when Christ returns. If the week typifies the length of God's plan, we are now living on "Friday," the sixth day, as almost 6,000 years—a thousand years as a day—have elapsed since Adam's creation. Christians should be busy preparing for Christ's return and His coming Sabbath rest. 1. What will life be like in the World Tomorrow? Isaiah 11:5-16; 29:18; 35:1-10. Comment: Man is proud of his powerful computers, satellites, modern scientific labs and medical discoveries. In spite of this, he fights with nature and other men. Crime, drug abuse, sexual perversions and all sorts of other evils escalate. The deaf and blind go unhealed. Man pollutes his air, water and soil because he does not know how to manage a civilization. With all his technological advances, man cannot get along with his neighbor. 1.The earth being "full of the knowledge of the Lord" means far more than "everyone will go to the right church". God's knowledge is vast; He knows how to make a civilization work even a high-tech one. In the Millennium, man will be at peace. Nations, neighbors and even spouses will not fight. Cancer, diabetes, heart disease, blindness and deafness will be eradicated. Eyeglasses and braces will be found only in museums. The deserts will produce bountiful harvests. The animal kingdom will peacefully co-exist with humanity. All this will be the result of an unprecedented explosion of knowledge in how to do things right. 2. What will be the Millennial job of those who are glorified at Christ's return? Revelation 5:10; 20:4, 6; Isaiah 30:20-21. Comment: As King of kings, Christ will appoint His faithful followers as kings and priests over the earth. They will have abilities as God has today. If a person considers an action that would hurt himself or someone else, the glorified children of God will teach them to choose a better course. At that time, people "shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain" (Isaiah 11:9). 3. Over whom will the saints rule? Isaiah 11:11-16; 66:14-21; Zechariah 14:9-19. Comment: After Jesus Christ returns, the survivors of all the nations will be gathered, and He will appoint the resurrected saints to rule over them. If they initially rebel against His rule, He will cut off all rain until they submit and keep the Feast of Tabernacles. 4. How will their keeping of the Feast of Tabernacles show submission to God? Zechariah 14:16-19. Comment: During the Millennium, people will be required to go to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles to worship the King, Jesus Christ. The Feast will be their primary reminder of where they are in God's plan and when they must secure their salvation. If they fail to keep it, they will reveal their refusal to accept Christ as sovereign and to cooperate with Him in His purpose. 5. What occurs at the end of the Millennium? Revelation 20:7-10. Comment: God will release Satan for a short time when the thousand years end. The people, familiar with Christ and His kings and priests, will have lived in unprecedented peace, happiness and prosperity. They will have learned and lived God's way from birth. Surely, Satan could have no influence on them. Almost instantly, however, he will raise an army of people "as the sand of the sea" out of "the four corners of the earth". His arguments will persuade them that they should and can destroy Christ and his throne in Jerusalem. The Most High God, however, will annihilate them all in a blinding flash of fire from heaven and cast the Devil into the Lake of Fire, never to be freed again. 6. What can we learn from this? I Peter 5:8-11; Revelation 12:7-12. Comment: This rebellion at the end of the Millennium is often overlooked in the joy of considering Christ's wonderful rule. Satan's influence is so powerful he can influence millions of people to follow him seemingly overnight. Having drawn away a third of the angels from God (Revelation 12:4; Isaiah 14:12-14) and overcome Adam and Eve, he has wielded almost total control over man. His present power will be greatly magnified very shortly when he is cast down to earth to begin the Great Tribulation. He would deceive the very elect if it were possible (Matthew 24:24). It is no wonder Peter instructs us to be sober, to be vigilant, to resist Satan in faith that Christ might establish us in the end. Holy Days: Last Great Day This study concludes the series on God's annual holy days. We have seen that Passover, the first festival, memorializes Jesus' sacrifice for man. The Days of Unleavened Bread instruct Christ's disciples in holy conduct. Pentecost pictures God's Holy Spirit given to His church. The Feast of Trumpets warns mankind of impending war and the return of Jesus Christ. Atonement depicts Satan being restrained and man finally becoming one with God. The Feast of Tabernacles pictures Christ's thousand-year reign of unprecedented peace and prosperity. The final festival is the Last Great Day. It looks forward to a time after the Millennium when an awesomely wonderful period of salvation will take place. During this time the majority of mankind rich and poor, young and old, men and women will be resurrected and have an opportunity to inherit eternal life. Billions will qualify to enter the God Family. On the other hand, those who will not repent, who will not submit to God and His way, will be cast into the Lake of Fire and die the second eternal death. What a fair and merciful God we have. 1. Why is this festival called "the eighth day" and "the last day, that great day of the feast"? Leviticus 23:34-36, 39; Numbers 29:35; John 7:37. Comment: This seventh holy day is observed immediately following the Feast of Tabernacles. Biblically, seven symbolizes perfection. It is also the eighth day of the Feast, and the Hebrew word for "eight" is related to another meaning "fatness," implying abundance, fertility even resurrection and regeneration. According to Hebrew Israelite tradition, on the Last Great Day, they finished reading what they started when Tabernacles began. Though intimately connected to the Feast of Tabernacles, it holds a distinct meaning of its own. It is part of it, yet separate. The offerings required on this day in the Old Testament were the largest of all, typifying Israel's thankfulness to God for all He provided. Today, God's people keep this day with praise and thankfulness spiritual sacrifices (Hebrews 13:15) for His abundant spiritual gifts. 2. What does the Last Great Day foreshadow? Isaiah 65:20-25; Revelation 20:11-15. Comment: This holy day represents the Great White Throne Judgment period. The prevalent conditions of the Millennium God's government, peace, prosperity, etc. will continue into this time, just as the Last Great Day follows the Feast of Tabernacles. From Isaiah 65:20, some speculate that this judgment will last a hundred years, the life span of a healthy individual. 3. What resurrections will occur during this period? Revelation 20:4-6, 11-15. Comment: The first part of verse 5 inserts a parenthetical statement that refers to a second resurrection, described in verses 11-15. After the Millennium, God will raise up to physical life all those who have never had an opportunity for salvation. Christ will judge all those who lived throughout human history yet have not been called. Ezekiel 37:1-14 prophesies of God resurrecting all Israel. At the same time (see Matthew 12:41-42), He will raise all the Gentiles and extend to them the same offer He does to Israel (Romans 2:7-11; I Timothy 2:4). If they satisfy God's judgment, He will at some point grant them eternal life and give them spiritual bodies (I Corinthians 15:44-49). After all have had his or her opportunity, God still wants to save everyone that will come to him. Those who will not repent of their rebellion against the Almighty will be raised to physical life and cast into the Lake of Fire, which provides a merciful, permanent death (see Matthew 25:41). 4. Does God judge everyone by the same standard? I Peter 4:17-18; Romans 14:10-12; I Corinthians 3:8, 13; II Corinthians 5:10. Comment: God judges true Christians today by how well they live by His Word, and He will judge those who rise in the second resurrection exactly the same way. They will be given enough time to live a life of overcoming and obedience, just as God's first fruits are doing in this age. 5. Why is this a great day? John 7:37. Comment: As the God of the Old Testament (John 1:1-3, 14), Jesus personally instituted the Last Great Day to symbolize the Great White Throne Judgment. As Judge of mankind, Christ is great in all His attributes; He is the perfect Judge of all (John 5:22, 24-30). We can also see the greatness of this period in the huge number of people who will be mercifully and lovingly judged and granted eternal life. 6. Why did Christ speak of the Holy Spirit during His proclamation on the Last Great Day? John 7:37-39. Comment: His words revealed that a day the White Throne Judgment would come when all humanity would have free access to the "living water" of God's Holy Spirit (John 4:13-14; Matthew 5:6; Revelation 22:17). Jesus is not only Judge of all, but also the One who dispenses the Holy Spirit to all of His disciples. 7. What occurs after this period? Revelation 21:1-4. Comment: Following this time of judgment, God will create "a new heaven and a new earth" a clean, pure world fit for God the Father Himself. For all eternity, "there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying; and there shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away." All those who have accepted God's way will have been glorified as members of the God Family, and they will live forever. Like God, they will create, beautify and spread God's rule over the entire universe. With this wonderful potential ahead of us, we can eagerly echo the apostle John's words in Revelation 22:20: "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

The Lost Holy Day: Is it Christmas or Easter? Holy Days: Passover Last month, we learned that God reveals His plan of salvation for mankind in His commanded holy days. The first step in that plan is shown in the observance of the Passover. The world around us is filled with sin and evil of every kind, and it has been that way since Adam and Eve disobeyed God's command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For God to fulfill His plan of reproducing Himself, He had to provide a way to redeem man from his sinful condition and implement a means of forgiveness. God is holy and will not tolerate sin in any form, even in human beings. Because He will not allow sinful people into His Kingdom, humans must be "justified." By this, God forgives a person's sins, brings him into a right relationship with Himself and imputes Christ's righteousness to him. Only after being forgiven can people take the additional steps of character development and overcoming to qualify to enter the Kingdom of God. Our annual keeping of the Passover reminds us of this initial step in fulfilling the plan of God. 1. When God called the children of Israel out of Egypt, did He have to show them when the year began? Exodus 12:1-2. Comment: During their long sojourn in Egypt, the Israelites lost track of time—they even forgot which day was the Sabbath! God had to show Israel when His year began so that they could begin observing His holy days. Israel's calling out of Egypt symbolizes God calling us out of this evil world. 2. Is Passover one of God's festivals? Leviticus 23:4-5. Comment: Passover is a feast of the LORD , not a feast of Israel or the Jews! He instituted it and commands us to keep it. 3. How was Israel to observe the Passover? Exodus 12:3-11. Comment: God told each Israelite family to choose an unblemished lamb on the 10th day of the month Abib. On the 14th day at twilight (just after sundown as the 14th began), they killed the lamb, putting its blood on the doorpost and lintel of their homes. Then they roasted and ate the lamb. 4. Why did they put the blood on their doorposts and lintels? Exodus 12:12-13. Comment: The blood was a sign to the death angel to "pass over" their homes when it went through Egypt. Because of it, Israel's firstborn were saved, while Egypt's firstborn died. 5. What did killing the lamb and putting its blood around the door represent? Isaiah 53:7; John 1:29; Acts 8:32; Revelation 7:14; I Peter 1:18-19. Comment: These yearly rituals represented the death of Jesus Christ, who was God in the flesh. The innocent lamb had to be without blemish because it represented the only Man who ever lived a perfect, sinless life. Jesus Christ was the Lamb of God who gave His life and shed His blood so that we may be saved from eternal death by paying the penalty for our sins. Through faith in His sacrifice, we receive forgiveness of sin and come into a right relationship with God. Because His life was worth more than all human life combined, His sacrifice paid the price for all sin. He redeemed us from the penalty that the breaking of God's law imposes and freed us to live righteously. 6. Was Jesus crucified on Passover? John 18:39; 19:13-18. Comment: Our Savior was crucified in the early afternoon of the day of the Passover. This further confirms He was the One who was to give His life as a ransom for many. Even to the very day, He completely fulfilled the symbolism of the lamb. 7. Did Jesus observe the Passover during His life on earth? Luke 2:40-42; John 2:13, 23. Comment: Jesus kept the Passover as a man because God had commanded it as a festival. In this, He set us a perfect example, showing us that we should observe this festival too. 8. Are New Testament Christians commanded to keep the Passover? I Corinthians 5:7-8. Comment: The apostle Paul instructed the Corinthian Christians to observe the Passover as a memorial of the death of Christ, our Passover, who was sacrificed for us. 9. What did Jesus teach is the first step in observing the New Testament Passover? John 13:1-5, 14-15. Comment: While His disciples ate the Passover meal, Jesus arose and washed the disciples' feet. Considered a very lowly responsibility in that culture, footwashing was performed by servants when visitors entered a house. By performing this act of humility, Jesus showed us how we should serve each other. He commands Christians everywhere and throughout all ages to follow His example. 10. What else did Jesus teach His disciples to do in observing the Passover? Matthew 26:26-29; Luke 22:19-20. Comment: Jesus told His disciples to partake of unleavened bread and wine during the New Testament Passover service. Through this command, He charged His followers to observe it as a memorial of His death for all time. Since Christ's death completely fulfilled the symbolism of killing a lamb, we no longer need to slaughter a lamb in keeping the Passover. 11. Must all converted Christians observe the New Testament Passover every year? John 6:48, 51-54. Comment: Unless we eat His flesh (represented by the unleavened bread) and drink His blood (symbolized by the wine), we have no life in us and will not inherit eternal life! How vital it is for us to keep the Passover every year! 12. Did the New Testament church of God continue to keep the Passover yearly? Acts 12:4. Comment: Some translations grossly mistranslate the Greek word pascha as "Easter." It always means "Passover." 13. Did the apostles teach the Gentiles to observe the Passover? I Corinthians 11:23-26. Comment: The apostle Paul carefully taught the Gentile Corinthians to keep the Passover using the symbols of bread and wine that Jesus had instituted. These scriptures teach us to keep the Passover "till He comes," and the true church of God will still be observing the Passover as He commanded. All those who have accepted His redemption eagerly anticipate His return to share the eternal life He makes possible by His sacrifice! Holy Days: Unleavened Bread Passover pictures the first major step in God's plan of salvation, justification through the forgiveness of sin by faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The Days of Unleavened Bread explain and memorialize the second major step in salvation, sanctification. When God sanctifies us, He separates us for holy use. After cleansing us at Passover, He sets us apart and considers us to be holy. The problem is, though, that our human nature remains intact and resists holiness. When the Israelites passed through the Red Sea, a type of baptism, they were symbolically washed and sanctified as a holy people to God. However, they began to murmur and rebel almost immediately. Why? Because they still had their slave mentality; they were not yet accustomed to providing for themselves. They were frightened and intimidated, and they voiced their desire to return to their bondage in Egypt. We also find it very easy to return to old, sinful habits and erroneous ways of thinking. God commands us to keep the Days of Unleavened Bread yearly to remind us to continue to fight free of the bondage to Satan's world and our own carnal nature so that we can truly escape slavery with a high hand! 1. After such a solemn observance as Passover, how does the Night To Be Much Observed fit in with the Days of Unleavened Bread? Exodus 12:42; 14:8; Numbers 33:3. Comment: Israel, a nation of slaves, began to glimpse the possibility of freedom through Moses. Their anticipation roller-coasted from high expectation to dread after each plague. How their emotions must have soared when they walked away from the brickyards with their firstborn alive, laughing and playing! They left Egypt with a high hand or as we might say "on a real high"! The Night To Be Much Observed memorializes our own freedom from spiritual bondage. We left spiritual Egypt, the world, behind, and in great hope and zeal, began our trek toward God's Kingdom. 2. Why did God tell the Israelites to eat unleavened bread and put leaven out of their homes? Exodus 12:19-20, 39. Comment: The Exodus involved a great deal of urgency and haste. With Egypt virtually destroyed, the Egyptians urged the Israelites to leave lest further devastation occur. However, God knew Egypt would not long tolerate the loss of her slaves or delay in seeking vengeance. The window of opportunity for escape would quickly close! They did not even have time to let their bread rise! Biblically, leaven represents sin. Once we are converted, we must diligently endeavor to rid ourselves of sin and live God's pure way of life (I Corinthians 5:8). Like the Israelites, we must flee from sin, lest it pursue and destroy us (Matthew 12:43-45). 3. How does leavening demonstrate the effect of sin in our lives? I Corinthians 5:6; James 2:10-11. Comment: Just as a little leaven in bread quickly spreads completely through the dough, one "little" sin affects our whole being. As James points out, if we break one commandment, we are guilty of breaking the whole law. One sin begets another unless the chain is broken through repentance. 4. How does sin puff us up? I Corinthians 5:2, 6-8. Comment: The Corinthian congregation had serious problems with sexual sins, but instead of feeling terrible, people were "glorying" in it. They did not comprehend the slavery imposed by profligate lifestyles: broken marriages, ruined health and alienation from God and man. They did not realize true liberty is in keeping the law. 5. Does leaven represent false doctrine as well? Matthew 16:6-12; I Corinthians 5:8. Comment: Jesus points out the error of the Pharisees' doctrines, and Paul advises the Corinthians to partake of the bread of sincerity and truth. False doctrine causes us to think more highly of ourselves than we ought. True doctrine promotes sincerity, humility and obedience to the Sovereign of the Universe, the overall lesson of this festival. 6. Why do we now keep these days? What is their spiritual significance? Exodus 13:8-9; I Corinthians 5:1-13. Comment: These days are a memorial to God's law and to His powerful deliverance from Egypt and bondage. Paul explains this significance to the Corinthians and the urgency attached to cease sinning. He says we should not even keep company with a brother involved in flagrant sin! Also, by ridding our homes of sin, we realize that overcoming sin is hard work! 7. Why are there seven days of Unleavened Bread but only one day of Passover, Pentecost, Trumpets and Atonement? Exodus 12:19; Hebrews 12:1; I Corinthians 9:27; 10:12-13; Romans 7:14-25. Comment: God knows that we tend to change slowly. He gives us seven days each year to concentrate on our duty to rid our lives of sin. Those acts that are God's responsibility—the sacrifice of one for all sin, the sending of His Spirit, the resurrection of the dead or the binding of Satan—He can accomplish in one day. The part that involves mankind's participation—overcoming sin—requires more time and attention. The Days of Unleavened Bread represent a period of judgment when man is required to overcome. To us, overcoming a deep-seated sin can seem to take an eternity! The obvious lesson is that we must draw much nearer to the Source of the power to overcome! 8. This world's Christianity has perverted Passover into Easter and completely dismissed the Days of Unleavened Bread. What have they lost by avoiding these days? Revelation 3:12; 22:14-15; Hebrews 6:4-6; 12:14-17. Comment: It has lost a vital step in salvation: SANCTIFICATION! God sets us aside for a lifetime of overcoming sin so that we might enter His Kingdom. By their "once saved, always saved" doctrine, worldly Christians deny the whole process of putting sin out of their lives. They believe that once they "accept Christ," their salvation is secure—they cannot lose it no matter what lifestyle they choose to live. This directly contradicts God's holy Word in Hebrews 6 and 12! God has chosen to reveal this festival to us so that we will overcome, pursue holiness and secure eternal life in His Kingdom. Holy Days: Pentecost As we study the meaning of God's holy days, a logical pattern surfaces that unlocks truths that remain a mystery to the vast majority of the world's people. The day of Pentecost symbolizes a major key to spiritual understanding because upon this day God sent His Holy Spirit to His church, providing Christ's disciples with the power, love and understanding to carry out the work of the church. This begettal by the Holy Spirit, the key to understanding the spiritual principles of God's Word, opens our understanding of the plan that God is working out among humanity. God established His holy days around the two major harvests of the year, a small one in the spring and a larger one in the fall. These harvest seasons typify two spiritual harvests. Pentecost, occurring in late spring, symbolizes the first spiritual harvest and reveals that this is not the only day of salvation. Those whom God calls now are merely a "pilot group" that He has specifically selected to be His "firstfruits." This day is also the anniversary of God's church—the beginning of the portion of God's master plan in which He calls people out of this evil world to create in them His holy, perfect, spiritual character. 1. During what three periods of the year did God command Israel to appear before Him? Exodus 23:14-16. Comment: The "three times" are three general periods during which God's holy days fall. Passover and Unleavened Bread occur in early spring, the "Feast of Harvest" in late spring and the "Feast of Ingathering" in the fall. 2. How did the spring harvest begin? Leviticus 23:10-11, 14. Comment: Before the Israelites could reap the spring crop, God commanded them to bring a sheaf of grain to the priest, who waved it before God for acceptance. This "wavesheaf offering" occurred on "the day after the Sabbath" that falls during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. 3. How do we determine when to observe Pentecost, also called "the Feast of Weeks"? Leviticus 23:15-16, 21. Comment: This late spring holy day must be counted. God instructs us to count 50 days from the day that the wavesheaf was offered. This explains why this day is commonly called Pentecost, which means "count fifty." The Sabbath (verse 15), the day after which we start to count, is not an annual holy day, but the weekly Sabbath that falls during Unleavened Bread. We know this because Pentecost must be counted every year. If this Sabbath were an annual Sabbath, Pentecost would always fall on a fixed date. It always falls on the same day of the week—the first day, Sunday—because one begins to count on a Sunday. 4. What special offering did God command to be offered on Pentecost in the Old Testament? Leviticus 23:17. Comment: God commanded that two loaves of bread be offered as firstfruits to God. These two loaves represent the Old and New Testament churches. 5. Are the members of God's church regarded as firstfruits? James 1:18; Revelation 14:4. Comment: Pentecost, the Feast of Firstfruits, represents the first part of God's spiritual harvest. God is now calling a small number of people, the firstfruits, into His church. These people, who live in the world but are not part of it (John 17:15-16), are training to be the leaders in the World Tomorrow when God will work to save the whole world. 6. Is the end time a spiritual harvest? Matthew 13:24-30, 37-43. Comment: "End of the age" (verse 39) refers to the time of Christ's second coming and the resurrection of the dead when God will reap the firstfruits of His harvest! The fifty days between the wavesheaf offering and Pentecost symbolize the time from the founding of the church to the end of the age when the small harvest of the firstfruits occurs. 7. What did the wavesheaf offering symbolize? I Corinthians 15:20-23. Comment: Jesus Christ, the first of the firstfruits, willingly gave His life so others may receive forgiveness of sin. He was a holy, sinless sacrifice, and three days later, He was the first person resurrected to eternal life! In this, He fulfilled the symbolism of the wavesheaf offering. 8. Did Jesus have to be accepted just as the wavesheaf offering was? John 20:17. Comment: Jesus was crucified on the day of the Passover in AD 31, which fell that year on a Wednesday. God resurrected Him at the end of the weekly Sabbath (Saturday). He appeared to Mary Magdalene the next morning, the day after the weekly Sabbath during Unleavened Bread, when the priests presented the wavesheaf offering. He did not permit her to touch Him because He had not yet ascended to the Father. Just as the High Priest had to wave the sheaf of grain before the spring harvest began, so our Savior had to ascend to the Father that day to be accepted before Him. Once this happened, He allowed His disciples to touch Him (cf. Matthew 28:9; John 20:20-28). 9. Did Christ's disciples observe Pentecost? Acts 2:1. Comment: This was the Day of Pentecost exactly fifty days after Christ ascended to heaven to be accepted by the Father on the day the sheaf of grain was waved. 10. What happened then to fulfill a promise that Jesus had made to His disciples? Acts 2:2-4; John 14:16, 26. 11. Was the Holy Spirit to be IN the disciples as contrasted to dwelling WITH them? John 14:17. Comment: During Jesus' life on earth, the Holy Spirit was with the disciples. After the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost, the Spirit was within them as it had been in Christ. At this time, the disciples were begotten by the Holy Spirit, marking the beginning of the church of God. 12. Did the early church continue to keep Pentecost after the Holy Spirit came? Acts 20:16; I Corinthians 16:8. Comment: About 25 years after Christ's ascension into heaven, Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, hurried to be in Jerusalem in time for Pentecost! Just as the early church kept Pentecost every year, so the true church of God continues to keep it today as a continual reminder of our part in God's great master plan of salvation! Holy Days: Trumpets Normally, church members approach Passover and Unleavened Bread very somberly. The enormity of what our Father and His Son risked for us is sobering, especially as we examine ourselves in comparison to the perfection of Jesus Christ! At Pentecost, the mood lightens as we contemplate the coming of God's Holy Spirit as a comforter and guide during our journey toward the Kingdom of God. It is a thrill to realize that God has chosen us to be part of the first harvest of His creation! This exuberant mood stays with us as we approach the Feast of Trumpets. We tend to focus on the return of Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords and on our resurrection to glory as this festival depicts. What a joyous day that will be! Though Trumpets does ultimately focus on these events, we should consider other sobering—even terrifying—meanings as we near the Feast of Trumpets, for it also depicts a terrible time of judgment upon the people of this world! 1. Why do we call this holy day "the Feast of Trumpets"? Leviticus 23:23-25. Comment: God commands us to keep this holy day each year so we will remember something about the "blowing of trumpets." 2. What do trumpets symbolize in Scripture? Isaiah 58:1; Jeremiah 4:5; 6:1; Ezekiel 33:3; Joel 2:1, 15; Amos 3:6. Comment: Trumpets symbolize a loud, warning cry of impending danger! These verses from the prophets impart a dire warning to those living in the end time: The day of the Lord is at hand, a day of darkness, gloominess and clouds over man's society! The prophets strongly admonish the ministry to raise their voices as trumpets to warn of sudden, terrifying destruction! 3. Are these warnings just for the world, or are they for God's people too? Same verses. Comment: Though originally intended for Israel, these warnings apply specifically to the called-out children of God since we are the ones living in the end time with the understanding of God's plan! In fact, we have the most to lose by ignoring these stern prophecies of death and destruction. They are admonishments to prepare ourselves SPIRITUALLY for the tumult ahead. Notice that these verses stress repentance, fasting and prayer, and who but God's elect truly understand them? 4. How do these warnings apply to the Feast of Trumpets? Revelation 8-9; 11:15-19. Comment: The seventh seal, which includes the seven trumpets, announces the Day of the Lord and the return of Jesus Christ! I Corinthians 15:52 says that the resurrection will occur "at the last trumpet," and in I Thessalonians 4:16 Paul writes that Christ "will descend from heaven with a shout, . . . with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first." These proofs lead unmistakably to the conclusion that the Feast of Trumpets represents this step in the plan of God. 5. Why must God pour out His wrath on humanity? I Corinthians 13:9-13. Comment: We do not know all the reasons why such destruction and death must occur, but we do know that God will do it in love. It may be that He sends these plagues in just retribution for their sin, or He may be saving their character from permanent rebellion against Him. He desires all to repent and attain His Kingdom (II Peter 3:9), so He will do whatever is necessary to bring that to pass! 6. Does God's church have a responsibility in preparing for Christ's return? II Peter 3:10-18; Revelation 19:7-9. Comment: It is one thing to celebrate a joyous meeting with Christ—it is quite another to ensure that we are a fitting bride for Him! The church must do its part in cooperating with God to prepare us as holy, righteous, godly saints who are worthy to marry His Son. 7. Revelation 10:7 says that when the seventh angel "is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished." What is this mystery? I Corinthians 15:50-58. Comment: The great mystery is that we can and will become immortal and incorruptible spirit beings at Christ's return! This is the part of the Feast of Trumpets that we rejoice in—for good reason—for vision of what WE WILL BE is a great motivator! I John 3:2 says we will be just like the returning Christ, who is very God, "the firstborn among many brethren" (Romans 8:29; see Philippians 3:20-21; Colossians 1:18)! 8. Is God's plan finished when Christ returns? I Corinthians 15:23-28; Revelation 20. Comment: The resurrection at Christ's second coming is only the beginning of God's reign on the earth! In the proper time and order, all who have lived will be given an opportunity to repent and enter God's glorious Kingdom as sons of God. These events are more fully contemplated in the Feast of Tabernacles and the Last Great Day. 9. Will Jesus return on the Feast of Trumpets? Comment: The church of God has supposed this to be true for many years—and the biblical material seems to support His second coming ON that day some time soon. However, no verse specifically, unequivocally states this. The Feast of Trumpets pictures His return, but we cannot blindly assume that He will in fact come on that day. The odds are no worse than 1 in 365, however! Because we know that He will return soon, we can be prepared for it! If we learn to love each other fervently—which is the basis of His judgment of us (Matthew 25:31-46)—we will qualify to help perfect others. We will be prepared to help others as they recover from the terrible times of the Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord. We will be trained to teach and guide others as they strive to enter God's Kingdom. For us, BEING READY is much more important than WHEN Christ returns. As the prophets advised, we need to be busy repenting, overcoming, praying and fasting as Christ's return approaches! Holy Days: Atonement In our continuing study on the holy days, we have seen the plan of God broaden from our personal redemption and removal of sin in Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread to the founding of the church and giving of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Trumpets pictures the return of Christ, the changing of the saints into immortal spirit beings and God's judgment on all mankind. But one more hurdle must be overcome before salvation can be made available to everyone. God must remove the archenemy, Satan the Devil, to produce unity between Him and humanity. The Day of Atonement depicts the accomplishment of this step in God's purpose. Though this prodigious feat deserves our joyous praise and thanksgiving to God, Atonement is the most solemn of the seven festivals. On this day, Christians fast—afflict their souls—to show that only when man sees himself in proper comparison to God will he have the right attitude to be truly at one with Him. When Satan is bound and men live humbly before God, then God's Word and Spirit will work wonders among the people of the world! 1. Is Atonement a commanded feast of God? Leviticus 23:26-32. Comment: God emphasizes this day's solemnity by threatening death to those who fail to afflict their souls or who do any work on this day. Nothing is more important than being at one with Him! 2. What is it to "afflict your souls"? Isaiah 58:3. Comment: Fasting puts us in a proper attitude to submit to God. When we deprive ourselves of the necessities of life, we see how dependent we are upon God's providence. This is why in a true, spiritual fast we neither eat nor drink anything for the whole 24 hours of the day (Deuteronomy 9:18; Esther 4:16). God desires such a humble spirit in us so that we can walk in harmony with Him (Micah 6:8; Isaiah 66:2). 3. What are we trying to accomplish when we fast? Isaiah 58:3-12. Comment: The members of Isaiah's audience were fasting for all the wrong reasons! They fasted to get things from God and hypocritically appear righteous. God says, though, that we should fast to free others from their sins, to intercede with God for their healing, to help provide for their needs and to understand His will. Fasting is a tool of godly love we are to use for the good of others, and any benefits we derive from it are wonderful blessings! On the Day of Atonement, we fast to implore God to bring to pass the greatest blessing of all upon ourselves and the world: unity, oneness, with Him! 4. Did the early church keep this Fast? Acts 27:9. Comment: Luke, writing this over 30 years after Christ's death, makes it very clear that the early church observed this holy day. 5. What unusual ritual did the Aaronic high priest perform on the Day of Atonement? Leviticus 16. Comment: This lengthy, involved ritual depicts all of the steps that must be accomplished before mankind can truly be at one with God. In short, the following must occur: u A high priest must be pure and sinless to mediate between God and man (verse 4). Christ, having lived a sinless life, is our eternal High Priest. u The high priest must enter God's presence with blood to open the way between God and man (verses 3, 14-16). Christ, by His own sacrifice, gains us entrance before God's throne, having rent the veil (Matthew 27:51). u The sins of men must be covered by the offering of an innocent victim (verses 9, 15). Christ's blood covers our sins, and God grants us forgiveness. u The cause of man's sins must be removed (verses 10, 20-22). After Christ returns, Satan—the being who first sinned and has been broadcasting his sinful, rebellious nature to all mankind—will be imprisoned so he cannot deceive men. 6. How long will Satan be bound? Revelation 20:1-3. Comment: Mankind will have a thousand years of freedom from the Devil's attitudes of pride, rebellion, vanity and strife! What a peaceful, blessed time the Millennium will be! 7. What will be the result of Satan's removal? Acts 3:19-21. Comment: Once the Deceiver is neutralized, refreshing and restitution can begin! Christ and the saints will immediately work to restore the earth to its beauty and productivity (Isaiah 35). God's perfect government and laws will be reinstituted, bringing peace and prosperity to all who submit to them (Isaiah 2:1-4). In a spirit of harmony, everyone will pitch in to rebuild the waste places and ruins caused by man's and Satan's sins (Isaiah 58:12; 61:4; Amos 9:14). This is the wonderful World Tomorrow that all of God's people have looked toward since the Garden of Eden! All that is good—very good (Genesis 1:31)—will be restored! Holy Days: Feast of Tabernacles In these studies on the holy days, we have seen God's plan unfolding. The process of salvation, revealed in the spring festivals, culminates in the Feast of Trumpets, picturing Christ returning to earth in power to crush Satan's end-time attempt to subjugate the world. Saints from all ages will be resurrected, or if alive, changed to immortality. For the first time in history, man will be totally at one with his Creator! Satan will then be bound for a thousand years, and his evil, destructive influence will be totally cut off. The Feast of Tabernacles pictures the ensuing Millennium when the whole earth will rest. In Hebrews 4, the writer discusses the Sabbath as a day of rest. He uses Israel entering the Promised Land as a type of our entering into rest when Christ returns. If the week typifies the length of God's plan, we are now living on "Friday," the sixth day, as almost 6,000 years—a thousand years as a day—have elapsed since Adam's creation. Christians should be busy preparing for Christ's return and His coming Sabbath rest. 1. What will life be like in the World Tomorrow? Isaiah 11:5-16; 29:18; 35:1-10. Comment: Man is proud of his powerful computers, satellites, modern scientific labs and medical discoveries. In spite of this, he fights with nature and other men. Crime, drug abuse, sexual perversions and all sorts of other evils escalate. The deaf and blind go unhealed. Man pollutes his air, water and soil because he does not know how to manage a civilization. With all his technological advances, man cannot get along with his neighbor. The earth being "full of the knowledge of the LORD" means far more than "everyone will go to the right church"! God's knowledge is vast; He knows how to make a civilization work—even a high-tech one! In the Millennium, man will be at peace. Nations, neighbors and even spouses will not fight. Cancer, diabetes, heart disease, blindness and deafness will be eradicated. Eyeglasses and braces will be found only in museums. The deserts will produce bountiful harvests. The animal kingdom will peacefully co-exist with humanity. All this will be the result of an unprecedented explosion of knowledge in how to do things right! 2. What will be the Millennial job of those who are glorified at Christ's return? Revelation 5:10; 20:4, 6; Isaiah 30:20-21. Comment: As King of kings, Christ will appoint His faithful followers as kings and priests over the earth. They will have abilities as God has today. If a person considers an action that would hurt himself or someone else, the glorified children of God will teach them to choose a better course. At that time, people "shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain" (Isaiah 11:9). 3. Over whom will the saints rule? Isaiah 11:11-16; 66:14-21; Zechariah 14:9-19. Comment: After Jesus Christ returns, the survivors of all the nations will be gathered, and He will appoint the resurrected saints to rule over them. If they initially rebel against His rule, He will cut off all rain until they submit and keep the Feast of Tabernacles. 4. How will their keeping of the Feast of Tabernacles show submission to God? Zechariah 14:16-19. Comment: During the Millennium, people will be required to go to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles to worship the King, Jesus Christ. The Feast will be their primary reminder of where they are in God's plan and when they must secure their salvation. If they fail to keep it, they will reveal their refusal to accept Christ as sovereign and to cooperate with Him in His purpose. 5. What occurs at the end of the Millennium? Revelation 20:7-10. Comment: God will release Satan for a short time when the thousand years end. The people, familiar with Christ and His kings and priests, will have lived in unprecedented peace, happiness and prosperity. They will have learned and lived God's way from birth. Surely, Satan could have no influence on them! Almost instantly, however, he will raise an army of people "as the sand of the sea" out of "the four corners of the earth"! His arguments will persuade them that they should and can destroy Christ and his throne in Jerusalem. God, however, will annihilate them all in a blinding flash of fire from heaven and cast the Devil into the Lake of Fire, never to be freed again! 6. What can we learn from this? I Peter 5:8-11; Revelation 12:7-12. Comment: This rebellion at the end of the Millennium is often overlooked in the joy of considering Christ's wonderful rule. Satan's influence is so powerful he can influence millions of people to follow him seemingly overnight. Having drawn away a third of the angels from God (Revelation 12:4; Isaiah 14:12-14) and overcome Adam and Eve, he has wielded almost total control over man. His present power will be greatly magnified very shortly when he is cast down to earth to begin the Great Tribulation. He would deceive the very elect if it were possible (Matthew 24:24). It is no wonder Peter instructs us to be sober, to be vigilant, to resist Satan in faith that Christ might establish us in the end Holy Days: Last Great Day This study concludes the series on God's annual holy days. We have seen that Passover, the first festival, memorializes Jesus' sacrifice for man. The Days of Unleavened Bread instruct Christ's disciples in holy conduct. Pentecost pictures God's Holy Spirit given to His church. The Feast of Trumpets warns mankind of impending war and the return of Jesus Christ. Atonement depicts Satan being restrained and man finally becoming one with God. The Feast of Tabernacles pictures Christ's thousand-year reign of unprecedented peace and prosperity. The final festival is the Last Great Day. It looks forward to a time after the Millennium when an awesomely wonderful period of salvation will take place. During this time the majority of mankind—rich and poor, young and old, men and women—will be resurrected and have an opportunity to inherit eternal life. Billions will qualify to enter the God Family! On the other hand, those who will not repent, who will not submit to God and His way, will be cast into the Lake of Fire and die the second—eternal—death. What a fair and merciful God we have! 1. Why is this festival called "the eighth day" and "the last day, that great day of the feast"? Leviticus 23:34-36, 39; Numbers 29:35; John 7:37. Comment: This seventh holy day is observed immediately following the Feast of Tabernacles. Biblically, seven symbolizes perfection. It is also the eighth day of the Feast, and the Hebrew word for "eight" is related to another meaning "fatness," implying abundance, fertility—even resurrection and regeneration. According to Jewish tradition, on the Last Great Day, they finished reading what they started when Tabernacles began. Though intimately connected to the Feast of Tabernacles, it holds a distinct meaning of its own. It is part of it, yet separate. The offerings required on this day in the Old Testament were the largest of all, typifying Israel's thankfulness to God for all He provided. Today, God's people keep this day with praise and thankfulness—spiritual sacrifices (Hebrews 13:15)—for His abundant spiritual gifts. 2. What does the Last Great Day foreshadow? Isaiah 65:20-25; Revelation 20:11-15. Comment: This holy day represents the Great White Throne Judgment period. The prevalent conditions of the Millennium—God's government, peace, prosperity, etc.—will continue into this time, just as the Last Great Day follows the Feast of Tabernacles. From Isaiah 65:20, some speculate that this judgment will last a hundred years, the life span of a healthy individual. 3. What resurrections will occur during this period? Revelation 20:4-6, 11-15. Comment: The first part of verse 5 inserts a parenthetical statement that refers to a second resurrection, described in verses 11-15. After the Millennium, God will raise up to physical life all those who have never had an opportunity for salvation. Christ will judge all those who lived throughout human history yet have not been called. Ezekiel 37:1-14 prophesies of God resurrecting all Israel. At the same time (see Matthew 12:41-42), He will raise all the Gentiles and extend to them the same offer He does to Israel (Romans 2:7-11; I Timothy 2:4). If they satisfy God's judgment, He will at some point grant them eternal life and give them spiritual bodies (I Corinthians 15:44-49). After all have had their opportunity, God will perform still a third resurrection. Those who will not repent of their rebellion against the Almighty will be raised to physical life and cast into the Lake of Fire, which provides a merciful, permanent death (see Matthew 25:41). 4. Does God judge everyone by the same standard? I Peter 4:17-18; Romans 14:10-12; I Corinthians 3:8, 13; II Corinthians 5:10. Comment: God judges true Christians today by how well they live by His Word, and He will judge those who rise in the second resurrection exactly the same way. They will be given enough time to live a life of overcoming and obedience, just as God's firstfruits are doing in this age. 5. Why is this a great day? John 7:37. Comment: As the God of the Old Testament (John 1:1-3, 14), Jesus personally instituted the Last Great Day to symbolize the Great White Throne Judgment. As Judge of mankind, Christ is great in all His attributes; He is the perfect Judge of all (John 5:22, 24-30). We can also see the greatness of this period in the huge number of people who will be mercifully and lovingly judged and granted eternal life. 6. Why did Christ speak of the Holy Spirit during His proclamation on the Last Great Day? John 7:37-39. Comment: His words revealed that a day—the White Throne Judgment—would come when all humanity would have free access to the "living water" of God's Holy Spirit (John 4:13-14; Matthew 5:6; Revelation 22:17). Jesus is not only Judge of all, but also the One who dispenses the Holy Spirit to all of His disciples. 7. What occurs after this period? Revelation 21:1-4. Comment: Following this time of judgment, God will create "a new heaven and a new earth"—a clean, pure world fit for God the Father Himself. For all eternity, "there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying; and there shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away." All those who have accepted God's way will have been glorified as members of the God Family, and they will live forever. Like God, they will create, beautify and spread God's rule over the entire universe! With this wonderful potential ahead of us, we can eagerly echo the apostle John's words in Revelation 22:20: "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!"

How many of you can't read this? The Unthinkable Thought "Jesus said, 'It is to those who are worthy of my Mysteries that I tell my Mysteries.'" The Gospel of Thomas On the site where the Vatican now stands there once stood a Pagan temple. Here Pagan priests observed sacred ceremonies which early Christians found so disturbing that they tried to erase all evidence of them ever having been practised. What were these shocking Pagan rites? Gruesome sacrifices or obscene orgies perhaps. This is what we have been led to believe. But the truth is far stranger than this fiction. Where today the gathered faithful revere their Lord Jesus Christ, the ancients worshipped another godman who, like Jesus, had been miraculously born on 25 December before three shepherds. In this ancient sanctuary Pagan congregations once glorified a Pagan redeemer who, like lesus, was said to have ascended to heaven and to have promised to come again at the end of time to judge the quick and the dead. On the same spot where the Pope celebrates the Catholic mass, Pagan priests also celebrated a symbolic meal of bread and wine in memory of their saviour who, just like Tesus, had declared: "He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation." When we began to uncover such extraordinary similarities between the story of Jesus and Pagan myth we were stunned. We had been brought up in a culture which portrays Paganism and Christianity as entirely antagonistic religious perspectives. How could such astonishing resemblances be explained? We were intrigued and began to search further. The more we looked, the more resemblances we found. To account for the wealth of evidence we were unearthing we felt compelled to completely review our understanding of the relationship between Paganism and Christianity, to question beliefs that we previously regarded as unquestionable and to imagine possibilities which at first seemed impossible. Some readers will find our conclusions shocking and others heretical, but for us they are merely the simplest and most obvious way of accounting for the evidence we have amassed. We have become convinced that the story of Jesus is not the biography of an historical Messiah, but a myth based on perennial Pagan stories. Christianity was not a new and unique revelation but actually a Jewish adaptation of the ancient Pagan Mystery religion. This is what we have called 'the Jesus Mysteries Thesis.' It may sound farfetched at first, just as it did initially to us. There is, after all, a great deal of unsubstantiated nonsense written about the 'real' Jesus, so any revolutionary theory should be approached with a healthy dose of scepticism. But although this book makes extraordinary claims, it is not just entertaining fantasy or sensational speculation. It is firmly based upon the available historical sources and the latest scholarly research. Whilst we hope to have made it accessible to the general reader, we have also included copious notes giving sources, references and greater detail for those who wish to analyse our arguments more thoroughly. Although still radical and challenging today, many of the ideas we explore are actually far from new. As long ago as the Renaissance, mystics and scholars saw the origins of christianity in the ancient Egyptian religion. Visionary scholars at the turn of the nineteenth century also made com-paxable conjectures to our own. In recent decades, modern academics have repeatedly pointed towards the possibilities we consider. Yet few have dared to boldly state the obvious conclusions which we have drawn. Why? Because to do so is taboo. For 2,000 years the West has been dominated by the idea that Christianity is sacred and unique, whilst Paganism is primitive and the work of the Devil. To even consider that they could be parts of the same tradition has been simply unthinkable. Therefore, although the true origins of Christianity have been obvious all along, few have been able to see them, because to do so requires a radical break with the conditioning of our culture. Our contribution has been to dare to think the unthinkable and to present our conclusions in a popular book rather than some dry academic tome. This is certainly not the last word on this complex subject, but we hope it may be a significant call for a complete reappraisal of the origins of Christianity. THE PAGAN MYSTERIES In Greek tragedies the chorus reveals the fate of the protagonists before the play begins. Sometimes it is easier to understand the journey if one is already aware of the destination and the terrain to be covered. Before diving deeper into detail, therefore, we would like to retrace our process of discovery and so provide a brief overview of the book. We had shared an obsession with world mysticism all our lives which recently had led us to explore spirituality in the ancient world. Popular understanding inevtitably lags a long way behind the cutting edge of scholarly research and, like most people, we initially had an inaccurate and out-dated view of Paganism. We had been taught to imagine a primitive superstition which indulged in idol worship and bloody sacrifice, and dry philosophers wearing togas stumbling blindly towards what we today call 'science.' We were familiar with various Greek myths which showed the partisan and capricious nature of the Olympian gods and goddesses. All in all, Paganism seemed primitive and fundamentally alien. After many years of study, however, our understanding has been transformed. Pagan spirituality was actually the sophisticated product of a highly developed culture. The state religions, such as the Greek worship of the Olympian gods, were little more than outer pomp and ceremony. The real spirituality of the people expressed itself through the vibrant and mystical 'Mystery religions.' At first underground and heretical movements, these Mysteries spread and flourished throughout the ancient Mediterranean, inspiring the greatest minds of the Pagan world, who regarded them as the very source of civilization. Each Mystery tradition had exoteric Outer Mysteries, consisting of myths which were common knowledge and rituals which were open to anyone who wanted to participate. There were also esoteric Inner Mysteries, which were a sacred secret only known to those who had undergone a powerful process of initiation. Initiates of the Inner Mysteries had the mystical meaning of the rituals and myths of the Outer Mysteries revealed to them, a process which brought about personal transformation and spiritual enlightenment. The philosophers of the ancient world were the spiritual masters of the Inner Mysteries. They were mystics and miracle-workers, more comparable to Hindu gurus than dusty academics. The great Greek philosopher Pythagoras, for example, is remembered today for his mathematical theorem, but few people picture him as he actually was a flamboyant sage who was believed to be able to miraculously still the winds and raise the dead. At the heart of the Mysteries were myths concerning a dying and resurrecting godman, who was known by many different names. In Egyp he was Osiris, in Greece Dionysus, in Asia Minor Attis, in Syria Adonis, in Italy Bacchus, in Persia Mithras. Fundamentally all these godmen are the same mythical being. As was the practice from as early as the third century BCE, in this book we will use the combined name "Osiris-Dionysus" to denote his universal and composite nature, and his particular names when referring to a specific Mystery tradition. From the fifth century BCE philosophers such as Xenophanes and Empedocles had ridiculed taking the stories of the gods and goddesses literally. They viewed them as allegories of human spiritual experience. The myths of Osiris-Dionysus should not be understood as just intriguing tales, therefore, but as a symbolic language which encodes the mystical teachings of the Inner Mysteries. Because of this, although the details were developed and adapted over time by different cultures, the myth of Osiris-Dionysus has remained essentially the same. The various myths of the different godmen of the Mysteries share what the great mythologist Joseph Campbell called 'the same anatomy', just as every human is physically unique yet it is possible to talk of the general anatomy of the human body, so with these different myths it is possible to see both their uniqueness and fundamental sameness. A helpful comparison may be the relationship between Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Bernstein's West Side Story. One is a sixteenth-century English tragedy about wealthy Italian families, whilst the other is a twentieth-century American musical about street gangs. On the face of it they look very different, yet they are essentially the same story. Similarly, the tales told about the godmen of the Pagan Mysteries are essentially the same, although they take different forms. The more we studied the various versions of the myth of Osiris-Dionysus, the more it became obvious that the story of Jesus had all the characteristics of this perennial tale. Event by event, we found we were able to construct Jesus' supposed biography from mythic motifs previousl3 relating to Osiris-Dionysus: - Osiris-Dionysus is God made flesh, the saviour and 'Son of God'. - His father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin. - He is born in a cave or humble cowshed on 25 December before three shepherds. - He offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites ot baptism. - He miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony. - He rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while people wave palm leaves to honour him. - He dies at Eastertime as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. - After his death he descends to hell, then on the third day he rises from the dead and ascends to heaven in glory. - His followers await his return as the judge during the Last Days. - His death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine which symbolize his body and blood. These are just some of the motifs shared between the tales of Osiris-Dionysus and the 'biography' of Jesus. Why are these remarkable similarities not common knowledge? Because, as we were to discover later, the early Roman Church did everything in its power to prevent us perceiving them. It systematically destroyed Pagan sacred literature in a brutal programme of eradicating the Mysteries -- a task it performed so completely that today Paganism is regarded as a 'dead' religion. Although surprising to us now, to writers of the first few centuries CE these similarities between the new Christian religion and the ancient Mysteries were extremely obvious. Pagan critics of Christianity, such as the satirist Celsus, complained that this recent religion was nothing more than a pale reflection of their own ancient teachings. Early 'Church fathers,' such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Irenaeus, were understandably disturbed and resorted to the desperate claim that these similarities were the result of 'diabolical mimicry.' Using one of the most absurd arguments ever advanced, they accused the Devil of 'plagiarism by anticipation,' of deviously copying the true story of Jesus before it had actually happened in an attempt to mislead the gullible! These Church fathers struck us as no less devious than the Devil they hoped to incriminate. Other Christian commentators have claimed that the myths of the Mysteries were like pre-echoes of the literal coming of Jesus, somewhat like premonitions or prophecies. This is a more generous version of the'diabolical mimicry' theory, but seemed no less ridiculous to us. There was nothing other than cultural prejudice to make us see the Jesus story as the literal culmination of its many mythical precursors. Viewed impartially, it appeared to be just another version of the same basic story. The obvious explanation is that as early Christianity became the dominant power in the previously Pagan world, popular motifs from Pagan mythology became grafted onto the biography of Jesus. This is a possibility that is even put forward by many Christian theologians. The virgin birth, for example, is often regarded as an extraneous later addition that should not be understood literally. Such motifs were 'borrowed' from Paganism in the same way that Pagan festivals were adopted as Christian saints' days. This theory is common amongst those who go looking for the 'real' Jesus hidden under the weight of accumulated mythological debris. Attractive as it appears at first, to us this explanarion seemed inadequate.We had collated such a comprehensive body of similarities that there remained hardly any significant elements in the biography of Jesus that we did not find prefigured by the Mysteries. On top of this, we discovered that even Jesus' teachings were not original, but had been anticipated by the Pagan sages! If there was a 'real' Jesus somewhere underneath all this, we would have to acknowledge that we could know absolutely nothing about him, for all that remained for us was later Pagan accretions! Such a position seemed absurd. Surely there was a more elegant solution to this conundrum. THE GNOSTICS Whilst we were puzzling over these discoveries, we began to question the received picture of the early Church and have a look at the evidence for ourselves. We discovered that far from being the united congregation of saints and martyrs that traditiona! history would have us believe, the early Christian community was actually made up of a whole spectrum of different groups. These can be broadly categorized into two different schools. On the one hand there were those we will call 'Literalists', because what defines them is that they take the Jesus story as a literal account of historical events. It was this school of Christianity that was adopted by the Roman Empire in the fourth century CE, becoming Roman Catholicism and all its subsequent offshoots. On the other hand, however, there were also radically diffejent Christians known as 'Gnostics.' These forgotten Christians were later persecuted out of existence by the Literalist Roman Church with such thoroughness that until recently we knew little about them except through the writings of their detractors. Only a handful of original Gnostic texts survived, none of which were published before the nineteenth century. This situation changed dramatically, however, with a remarkable discovery in 1945 when an Arab peasant stumbled upon a whole library of Gnostic gospels hidden in a cave near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. This gave scholars access to many texts which were in wide circulation amongst early Christians, but which were deliberately excluded from the canon of the New Testament -- gospels attributed to Thomas and Philip, texts recording the acts of Peter and the 12 disciples, apocalypses attributed to Paul and James, and so on. It seemed to us extraordinary that a whole library of early Christian documents could be discovered, containing what purport to be the teachings of Christ and his disciples, and yet so few modem followers of Jesus should even know of their existence. Why hasn't every Christian rushed out to read these newly discovered words of the Master? What keeps them confined to the small number of gospels selected for inclusion in the New Testament? It seems that even though 2,000 years have passed since the Gnostics were purged, during which time the Roman Church has split into Protestantism and thousands of other alternative groups, the Gnostics are still not regarded as a legitimate voice of Christianity. Those who do explore the Gnostic gospels discover a form of Christianity quite alien to the religion with which they are familiar. We found ourselves studying strange esoteric tracts with titles such as Hypostasis of the Archons and The Thought of Norea. It felt as if we were in an episode of Star Trek -- and in a way we were. The Gnostics truly were 'psychonauts' who boldly explored the final frontiers of inner space, searching for the origins and meaning of life. These people were mystics and creative free-thinkers. It was obvious to us why they were so hated by the bishops of the Literalist Church hierarchy. To Literalists, the Gnostics were dangerous heretics. In volumes of anti-Gnostic works -- an unintentional testimony to the power and influence of Gnosticism within early Christianity -- they painted them as Christians who had 'gone native.' They claimed they had become contaminated by the Paganism that surrounded them and had abandoned the purity of the true faith. The Gnostics, on the other hand, saw themselves as the authentic Christian tradition and the orthodox bishops as an 'imitation church.' They claimed to know the secret Inner Mysteries of Christianity which the Literslists did not possess. As we explored the beliefs and practices of the Gnostics we became convinced that the Literalists had at least been right about one thing: the Gnostics were little different from Pagans. Like the philosophers of the Pagan Mysteries, they believed in reincarnation, honoured the goddess Sophia, and were immersed in the mystical Greek philosophy of Plato. 'Gnostics' means 'Knowers', a name they acquired because, like the initiates of the Pagan Mysteries, they believed that their secret teachings had the power to impart 'Gnosis' -- direct experiential 'Knowledge of God.' Just as the goal of a Pagan initiate was to become a god, so for the Gnostics the goal of the Christian initiate was to become a Christ. What particularly struck us was that the Gnostics were not concerned with the historical Jesus. They viewed the Jesus story in the same way that the Pagan philosophers viewed the myths of Osiris-Dionysus -- as an allegory which encoded secret mystical teachings. This insight crystallized for us a remarkable possibility. Perhaps the explanation for the similarities between Pagan myths and the biography of Jesus had been staring us in the face the whole time, but we had been so caught up with traditional ways of thinking that we had been unable to see it. THE JESUS MYSTERIES THESIS The traditional version of history bequeathed to us by the authorities of the Roman Church is that Christianity developed from the teachings of a Jewish Messiah and that Gnosticism was a later deviation. What would happen, we wondered if the picture were reversed and Gnosticism viewed as the authentic Christianity, just as the Gnostics themselves claimed? Could it be that orthodox Christianity was a later deviation from Gnosticism and that Gnosticism was a synthesis of Judaism and the Pagan Mystery religion? This was the beginning of the Jesus Mysteries Thesis. Boldly stated, the picture that emerged for us was as follows. We knew that most ancient Mediterranean cultures had adopted the ancient Mysteries, adapting them to their own national tastes and creating their own version of the myth of the dying and resurrecting godman. Perhaps some of the Jews had likewise adopted the Pagan Mysteries and created their own version of the Mysteries which we now know as Gnosticism. Perhaps initiates of the Jewish Mysteries had adapted the potent symbolism of the Osiris-Dionysus myths into a myth of their own, the hero of which was the Jewish dying and ~surreeting godman Jesus. If this was so, then the Jesus story was not a biography at all but a consciously crafted vehicle for encoded spiritual teachings created by Jewish Gnostics. As in the Pagan Mysteries, initiation into the Inner Mysteries would reveal the myth's allegorical meaning. Perhaps those uninitiated into the Inner Mysteries had mistakenly come to regard the Jesus myth as historical fact and in this way Literalist Christianity had been created. Perhaps the Inner Mysteries of Christianity, which the Gnostics taught but which the Literalists denied existed, revealed that the Jesus story was not a factual account of God's one and only visit to planet Earth, but a mystical teaching story designed to help each one of us become a Christ. The Jesus story does have all the hallmarks of a myth, so could it be that that is exactly what it is? After all, no one has read the newly discovered Gnostic gospels and taken their fantastic stories as literally true; they are readily seen as myths. It is only familiarity and cultural prejudice which prevent us from seeing tlae New Testament gospels in the same light. If those gospels had also been lost to us and only recently discovered, who would read these tales for the first time and believe they were historical accounts of a man born of a virgin, who had walked on water and returned from the dead? Why should we consider the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, Mithras and the other Pagan Mystery saviours as fables, yet come across essentially the same story told in a Jewish context and believe it to be the biography of a carpenter from Bethlehem? We had both been raised as Christians and were surprised to find that, despite years of open-minded spiritual exploration, it still felt somehow dangerous to even dare think such thoughts. Early indoctrination reaches very deep. We were in effect saying that Jesus was a Pagan god and that Christianity was a heretical product of Paganism! It seemed outrageous. Yet this theory explained the similarities between the stories of Osiris-Dionysus and Jesus Christ in a simple and elegant way. They are parts of one developing mythos. The Jesus Mysteries Thesis answered many puzzling questions, yet it also opened up new dilemmas. Isn't there indisputable historical evidence for the existence of Jesus the man? And how could Gnosticism be the original Christianity when St Paul, the earliest Christian we know about, is so vociferously anti-Gnostic? And is it really credible that such an insular and anti-Pagan people as the Jews could have adopted the Pagan Mysteries? And how could it have happened that a consciously created myth came to be believed as history? And if Gnosticism represents genuine Christianity, why was it Literalist Christianity that came to dominate the world as the most influential religion of all time? All of these difficult questions would have to be satisfactorily answered before we could wholeheartedly accept such a radical theory as the Jesus Mysteries Thesis. THE GREAT COVER UP Our new account of the origins of Christianity only seemed improbable because it contradicted the received view. As we pushed further with our research, the traditional picture began to completely unravel all around us. We found ourselves embroiled in a world of schism and power straggles, of forged documents and false identities, of letters that had been edited and added to, and of the wholesale destruction of historical evidence. We focused forensically on the few facts we could be confident of, as if we were detectives on the verge of cracking a sensational 'whodunnit', or perhaps more accurately as if we were uncovering an ancient and unacknowledged miscarriage of justice. For, time and again, when we critically examined what genuine evidence remained, we found that the history of Christianity bqueathed to us by the Roman Church was a gross distortion of the truth. Actually the evidence completely endorsed the Jesus Mysteries Thesis! It was becoming increasingly obvious that we had been deliberately deceived, that the Gnostics were indeed the original Christians, and that their anarchic mysticism had been hijacked by an authoritarian institution which had created from it a dogmatic religion - and then brutally enforced the greatest cover-up in history. One of the major players in this cover-up operation was a character called Eusebius, who, at the beginning of the fourth century, compiled from legends, fabrications and his own imagination the only early history of Christianity that still exists today. All subsequent histories have been forced to base themselves on Eusebins' dubious claims, because there has been little other information to draw on. All those with a different perspective on Christianity were branded as heretics and eradicated. In this way falsehoods compiled in the fourth century have come down to us as established facts. Eusebius was employed by the Roman Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the state religion of the Empire and gave Literalist Christianity the power it needed to begin the final eradication of Paganism and Gnosticism. Constantine wanted 'one God, one religion' to consolidate his claim of 'one Empire, one Emperor.' He oversaw the creation of the Nicene creed -- the article of faith repeated in churches to this day -- and christians who refused to assent to this creed were banished from the Empire or otherwise silenced. This 'Christian' Emperor then returned home from Nicaea and had his wife suffocated and his son murdered. He deliberately remained unbaptized until his deathbed so that he could continue his atrocities and still receive forgiveness of sins and a guaranteed place in heaven by being baptized at the last moment. Although he had his 'spin doctor' Eusebius compose a suitably obsequious biography for him, he was actually a monster -- just like many Roman Emperors before him. Is it really at all surprising that a 'history' of the origins of Christianity created by an employee in the service of a Roman tyrant should turn out to be a pack of lies? Elaine PageIs, one of the foremost academic authorities on early Christianity, writes: "It is the winners who write history -- their way. No wonder, then, that the traditional accounts of the origins of Christianity first defined the terms (naming themselves "orthodox" and their opponents "heretics"); then they proceeded to demonstrate -- at least to their own satisfaction -- that their triumph was historically inevitable, or, in religious terms, "guided by the Holy Spirit." But the discoveries [of the Gnostic gospels] at Nag Hammadi reopen fundamental questions." History is indeed written by the victors. The creation of an appropriate history has always been part of the arsenal of political manipulation. The Roman Church created a history of the triumph of Literalist Christianity in much the same partisan way that, two millennia later, Hollywood created tales of 'cowboys and Indians' to relate 'how the West was won' not 'how the West was lost.' History is not simply related, it is created. Ideally, the motivation is to explain historical evidence and come to an accurate understanding of how the present has been created by the past. All too often, however, it is simply to glorify and justify the status quo. Such histories conceal as much as they reveal. To dare to question a received history is not easy. It is difficult to believe that something which you have been told is true from childhood could actually be a product of falsification and fantasy. It must have been hard for those Russians brought up on tales of kindly 'Uncle Joe' Stalin to accept that he was actually responsible for the deaths of millions. It must have strained credibility when those opposing his regime claimed that he had in fact murdered many of the heroes of the Russian revolution. It must have seemed ridiculous when they asserted that he had even had the images of his rivals removed from photographs and completely fabricated historical events. Yet all these things are true. It is easy to believe that something must be true because everyone else believes it. But the truth often only comes to light by daring to question the unquestionable, by doubting notions which are so commonly believed that they are taken for granted. The Jesus Mysteries Thesis is the product of such an openness of mind. When it first occurred to us, it seemed absurd and impossible. Now it seems obvious and ordinary. The Vatican was constructed upon the site of an ancient Pagan sanctuary because the new is always built upon the old. In the same way Christianity itself has as its foundations the Pagan spirituality that preceded it. What is more plausible than to posit the gradual evolution of spiritual ideas, with Christianity emerging from the ancient Pagan Mysteries in a seamless historical continuum? It is only because the conventional history has been so widely believed for so long that this idea could be seen as heretical and shocking. RECOVERING MYSTICAL CHRISTIANITY As the final pieces of the puzzle were falling into place, we came across a small picture tucked away in the appendices of an old academic book. It was a drawing of a third-century CE amulet. We have used it as the cover of this book. It shows a crucified figure which most people would immediately recognize as Jesus. Yet the Greek words name the figure 'Orpheus Bacchus,' one of the pseudonyms of Osiris-Dionysus. To the author of the book in which we found the picture, this amulet was an anomaly. Who could it have possibly belonged to? Was it a crucified Pagan deity or some sort of Gnostic synthesis of Paganism and Christianity? Either way it was deeply puzzling. For us, however, this amulet was perfectly understandable. It was an unexpected confirmation of the Jesus Mysteries Thesis. The image could be that of either Jesus or Osiris-Dionysus. To the initiated, these were both names for essentially the same figure. The 'chance' discovery of this amulet made us feel as though the universe itself was encouraging us to make our findings public. In different ways the Jesus Mysteries Thesis has been proposed by mystics and scholars for centuries, but has always ended up being ignored. It now felt like an idea whose moment had come. We did, however, have misgivings about writing this book. We knew that it would inevitably upset certain Christians, something which we had no desire to do. Certainly it has been hard to be constantly surrounded by lies and injustices without experiencing a certain amount of outrage at the negative misrepresentation of the Gnostics, and to have become aware of the great riches of Pagan culture without feeling grief that they were so wantonly destroyed. Yet we do not have some sort of anti-Christian agenda. Far from it. Those who have read our other works will know that our interest is not in further division, but in acknowledging the unity that lies at the heart of all spiritual traditions -- and this present book is no exception. Early Literalist Christians mistakenly believed that the Jesus story was different from other stories of Osiris-Dionysus because Jesus alone had been an historical rather than a mythical figure. This has left Christians feeling that their faith is in opposition to all others -- which it is not. We hope that by understanding its true origins in the ongoing evolution of a universal human spirituality, Christianity may be able to free itself from this self-imposed isolation. Whilst the Jesus Mysteries Thesis clearly rewrites history, we do not see it as undermining the Christian faith, but as suggesting that Christianity is in fact richer than we previously imagined. The Jesus story is a perennial myth with the power to impart the saving Gnosis which can transform each one of us into a Christ, not merely a history of events that happened to someone else 2,000 years ago. Belief in the Jesus story was originally the first step in Christian spirituality -- the Outer Mysteries. Its significance was to be explained by an enlightened teacher when the seeker was spiritually ripe. These Inner Mysteries imparted a mystical Knowledge of God beyond mere belief in dogmas. Although many inspired Christian mystics throughout history have intuitively seen through to this deeper symbolic level of understanding, as a culture we have inherited only the Outer Mysteries of Christianity. We have kept the form, but lost the inner meaning. Our hope is that this book can play some small part in reclaiming the true mystical Christian inheritance. The Pagan Mysteries "Blest is the happy man Who knows the Mysteries the gods ordain, And sanctifies his life, Joins soul with soul in mystic unity, And, by due ritual made pure Enters the ecstasy of mountain solitudes; Who observes the mystic rites Made lawful by the Great Mother; Who crowns his head with ivy, And shakes his wand in worship ot Dionysus." Euripides Paganism is a 'dead' religion -- or more accurately an 'exterminated' religion· It did not simply fade away into oblivion. It was actively suppressed and annihilated, its temples and shrines desecrated and demolished, and its great sacred books thrown onto bonfires. No living lineage has been left to explain its ancient beliefs. So, the Pagan worldview has to be reconstructed from the archaeological evidence and texts that have survived, like some giant metaphysical jigsaw puzzle. 'Pagan' was originally a derogatory term meaning 'country-dweller,' used by Christians to infer that the spirituality of the ancients was some primitive rural superstition. But this is not true. Paganism was the spirituality which inspired the unequalled magnificence of the Giza pyramids, the exquisite architecture of the Parthenon, the legendary sculptures of Phideas, the powerful plays of Euripides and Sophocles, and the sublime philosophy of Socrates and Plato. Pagan civilization built vast libraries to house hundreds of thousands of works of literary and scientific genius. Its natural philosophers speculated that human beings had evolved from animals. Its astronomers knew the Earth was a sphere which, along with the planets, revolves around the sun. They had even estimated its circumference to within one degree of accuracy? The ancient Pagan world sustained a population not matched again in Europe until the eighteenth century. In Greece, Pagan culture gave birth to the concepts of democracy, rational philosophy, public libraries, theatre and the Olympic Games, creating a blueprint for our modern world. What was the spirituality that inspired these momentous cultural achievements? Most people associate Paganism with either rustic witchcraft or the myths of the gods of Olympus as recorded by Hesiod and Homer. Pagan spirituality did indeed embrace both. The country people practised their traditional shamanic nature worship to maintain the fertility of the land and the city authorities propped up formal state religions, such as the worship of the Olympian gods, to maintain the power of the status quo. It was, however, a third, more mystical, expression of the Pagan spirit which inspired the great minds of the ancient world. The thinkers, artists and innovators of antiquity were initiates of various religions known as 'Mysteries.' These remarkable men and women held the Mysteries to be the heart and soul of their culture. The Greek historian Zosimos writes that without the Mysteries "life for the Greeks would be unlivable" for "the sacred Mysteries hold the whole human race together." The eminent Roman statesman Cicero enthuses: "These Mysteries have brought us from rustic savagery to a cultivated and refined civilisation. The rites of the Mysteries are called "initiations" and in truth we have learned trom them the first principles of life. We have gained the understanding not only to live happily but also to die with better hope." Unlike the traditional rituals of the official state religions, which were designed to aid social cohesion, the mysteries were an individualistic form of.spirituality which offered mystical visions and personal enlightenment. Initiates underwent a secret process of initiation which profoundly trans-r formed their state of consciousness. The poet Pindar reveals that an initiate into the Mysteries "knows the end of life and its God-given beginning." Lucius Apuleius, a poet-philosopher, writes of his experience of initiation as a spiritual rebirth which he celebrated as his birthday, an experience for which he felt a "debt of gratitude" that he "could never hope to repay." Plato, the most influential philosopher of all time, relates: "We beheld the beatific visions and were initiated into the Mystery which may be truly called blessed, celebrated by us in a state of innocence. We beheld calm, happy, simple, eternal visions, resplendent in pure light." The great Pagan philosophers were the enlightened masters of the Mysteries. Although they are often portrayed today as dry 'academic' intellectuals, they were actually enigmatic 'gurus.' Empedocles, like his master Pythagoras, was a charismatic miracle-worker. Socrates was an eccentric mystic prone to being suddenly overcome by states of rapture during which his friends would discover him staring off into space for hours. Heraclitus was asked by the citizens of Ephesus to become a lawmaker, but turned the offer down so that he could continue playing with the children in the temple. Anaxagoras shocked ordinary citizens by completely abandoning his farm to fully devote his life to "the higher philosophy." Diogenes owned nothing and lived in a jar at the entrance of a temple. The inspired playwright Euripides wrote his greatest tragedies during solitary retreats in an isolated cave. All of these idiosyncratic sages were steeped in the mysticism of the Mysteries, which they expressed in their philosophy. Olympiodorus, a follower of Plato, tells us that his master paraphrased the Mysteries everywhere. The works of Heraclitus were renowned even in ancient times for being obscure and impenetrable, yet Diogenes explains that they are crystal clear to an initiate of the Mysteries. Of studying Heraclitus he writes: "It is a hard road to follow, filled with darkness and gloom; but if an initiate leads you on the way, it becomes brighter than the radiance of the sun." At the heart of Pagan philosophy is an understanding that all things are One. The Mysteries aimed at awakening within the initiate a sublime experience of this Oneness. Sallustius declares: "Every initiation aims at uniting us with the World and with the Deity." Plotinus describes the initiate transcending his limited sense of himself as a separate ego and experiencing mystical union with God: "As if borne away, or possessed by a god, he attains to solitude in untroubled stillness, nowhere deflected in his being and unbusied with self, utterly at rest and become very rest. He does not converse with a statue or image but with Godhead itself. And this is no object of vision, but another mode of seeing, a detachment from self, a simplification and surrender of self, a yearning for contact, and a stillness and meditation directed towards transformation. Whoever sees himself in this way has attained likeness to God; let him abandon himself and find the end of his journeying ." No wonder the initiate Sopatros poertcally mused, "I came out of the Mystery Hall feeling like a stranger to myself." THE SACRED SPECTACLE AT ELEUSIS What were these ancient Mysteries that could inspire such reverent awe and heartfelt appreciation? The Mystery religion was practised for thousands of years, during which time it spread throughout the ancient worid, taking on many different forms. Some were frenzied and others meditative. Some involved bloody animal sacrifice, while others were presided over by strict vegetarians, At certain moments in history the Mysteries were openly practised by whole populations and were endorsed, or at least tolerated, by the state. At other times they were a small-scale and secretive affair, for fear of persecution by unsympathetic authorities. Central toall of these forms qf the Mysteries, however, was the myth of a dying and resurrecting godman. The Greek Mysteries celebrated at Eleusis in honour of the Great Mother goddess and the godman Dionysus were the most famous of all the Mystery cults. The sanctuary of Eleusis was finally destroyed by bands of fanatical Christian monks in 396 CE, but up until this tragic act of vandalism the Mysteries had been celebrated there for over 11 centuries. At the height of their popularity people were coming from all over the then known world to be initiated: men and women, rich and poor, slaves and emperors -- even a Brahmin priest from India. Each year some 30,000 Athenian citizens embarked on a 30-kilometre barefoot pilgrimage to the sacred site of Eleusis on the coast to celebrate the autumn Mysteries of Dionysus. For days they would have been preparing for this important religious event by fasting, offering sacrifices and undergoing ritual purification. As those about to be initiated danced along the 'Sacred Way' to Eleusis, accompanied by the frenzied beat of cymbals and tambourines, they were accosted by masked men who abused and insulted them, while others beat them with sticks. At the head of the procession was carried the statue of Dionysus himself, leading them ever onward. After ritual naked bathing in the sea and other purification ceremonies the crowd reached the great doors of the Telesterion, a huge purpose-built initiation hall. Only the chosen few who were already initiated or about to be initiated into the secret Mysteries could enter here. What awesome ceremony was held behind these closed doors that touched the great philosophers, artists, statesmen and scientists of the ancient world so deeply? All initiates were sworn to secrecy and held the Mysteries so sacred that they kept this oath. From large numbers of hints and clues, however, we know that they witnessed a sublime theatrical spectacle. They were awed by sounds and dazzled by lights. They were bathed in the blaze of a huge fire and trembled to the nerve-shattering reverberations of a mighty gong. The Hierophant, the high priest of the Mysteries, was quite literally a 'showman' who orchestrated a terrifyingly transformative dramatic reenactment of sacred myth. He himself was dressed as the central character - the godman Dionysus. A modern scholar writes: "A Mystery Religion was thus a divine drama which portrayed before the wondering eyes of the privileged observers the story of the struggles, sufferings, and victory of a patron deity, the travail of nature in which life ultimately triumphs over death, and joy is born of pain. The whole ritual of the Mysteries aimed especially at quickening the emotional life. No means of exciting the emotions was neglected in the passion-play, either by way of inducing careful predispositions or of supplying external stimulus. Tense mental anticipations heightened by a period of abstinence, hushed silences, imposing processions and elaborate pageantry, music loud and violent or soft and enthralling, delirious dances, the drinking of spirituous liquors, physical macerations, alternations of dense darkness and dazzling light, the sight of gorgeous ceremonial vestments, the handling of holy emblems, auto-suggestion and the promptings of the Hierophant -- these and many secrets of emotional exaltation were in vogue." This dramatization of the myth of Dionysus is the origin of tragedy and theatre. But the initiates were not a passive audience. They were participants who shared in the passion of the godman whose death and rebirth symbolically represented the death and spiritual rebirth of each one of them. As a modern authority explains: "Dionysus was the god of the most blessed ecstasy and the most enraptured love. But he was also the persecuted god, the suffering and dying god, and all whom he loved, all who attended him, had to share his tragic fate." By witnessing the awesome tragedy of Dionysus, the initiates at Eleusis shared in his suffering, death and resurrection, and so experienced a spiritual purification known as 'catharsis.' The Mysteries did not offer religious dogmas to simply be believed, but a myth to be entered into. Initiation was not about learning something, but about experiencing an altered state of awareness. Plutarch, a Pagan high priest, confesses that those who had been initiated could produce no proof of the beliefs that they acquired. Aristotle maintains, "It is not necessary for the initiated to learn anything, but to receive impressions and to be put in a certain frame of mind." The philosopher Produs talks of the Mysteries as evoking a "sympathy of the soul with the ritual in a way that is unintelligible to us and divine, so that some of the initiates axe stricken with panic, being filled with divine awe; others assimilate themselves to the holy symbols, leave their own identity, become at home with the gods, affd experience divine possession." Why did the myth enacted by the Mysteries have such a profound effect? ENCODED SECRET TEACHINGS In antiquity the word mythos did not mean something 'untrue't as it does ( for us today. Superficially a myth was an entertaining story, but to the initiated it was a sacred code that contained profound spiritual teachings. Plato comments, "It looks as if those also who established rites of initiation for us were no fools, but that there is a hidden meaning in their teachings." He explains that it is "those who have given their lives to true philosophy" who will grasp the "hidden meaning" encoded in the Mystery myths, and so become completely identified with the godman in an experience of mystical enlightenment. The ancient philosophers were not so foolish as to believe that the Mystery myths were literally true, but wise enough to recognize that they were an easy introduction to the profound mystical philosophy at the heart of the Mysteries. Sallustius writes: "To wish to teach all men the truth of the gods causes the foolish to despise, because they cannot learn, and the good to be slothful, whereas to conceal the truth by myths prevents the former from despising philosophy and compels the latter to study it." It was the role of the priests and philosophers of the Mysteries to decode the hidden depths of spiritual meaning contained within the Mystery myths. Heliodorus, a priest of the Mysteries, explains: "Philosophers and theologians do not disclose the meanings embedded in these stories to laymen but simply give them preliminary instruction in the form of a myth. But those who have reached the higher grades of the Mysteries they initiate into clear knowledge in the privacy of the holy shrine, in the light cast by the blazing torch of truth." The Mysteries were divided into various levels of initiation, which led an initiate step by step through ever deepening levels of understanding. The number of levels of initiation varied in different Mystery traditions, but essentially the initiate was led from the Outer Mysteries, in which the myths were understood superficially as religious stories, to the Inner Mysteries, in which the myths were revealed as spiritual allegories. First the initiate was ritually purified. Then they were taught the secret teachings on a one-to-one basis. The highest stage was when the initiate understood the true meaning of the teachings and finally experienced what Theon of Smyrna calls "friendship and interior communion with God." THE INTERNATIONAL MYSTERIES The Mysteries dominated the Pagan world. No other deity is represented on the monuments of ancient Greece and Italy as much as Dionysus, godman of the Eleusinian Mysteries. He is a deity with many names: Iacchos, Bassareus, Bromios, Euios, Sabazius, Zagreus, Yhyoneus, Lenaios, Eleuthereus, and so the list goes on. But these are just some of his Greek names! The godman is an omnipresent mythic figure throughout the ancient Mediterranean, known in different ways by many cultures. Five centuries before the birth of Christ, the Greek historian Herodotus, known as 'the father of history', discovered this when he travelled to Egypt. On the shores of a sacred lake in the Nile delta he witnessed an enormous festival, held every year, in which the Egyptians performed a dramatic spectacle before "tens of thousands of men and women," representing the death and resurrection of Osiris. Herodotus was an initiate into the Greek Mysteries and recognized that what he calls "the Passion of Osiris" was the very same drama that initiates saw enacted before them at Eleusis as the Passion of Dionysus. The Egyptian myth of Osiris is the primal myth of the Mystery godman and reaches back to prehistory. His story is so ancient that it can be found in pyramid texts written over 4,500 years ago! In travelling to Egypt Herodotus was following in the footsteps of another great Greek. Before 670 BCE Egypt had been a closed country, in the manner of Tibet, or Japan more recently, but in this year she opened her borders and one of the first Greeks who travelled there in search of ancient wisdom was Pythagoras. History remembers Pythagoras as the first 'scientist' of the Western world, but although it is true that he brought back many mathmatical theories to Greece from Egypt, to his contemporaries he would have seemed anything but 'scientific' in the modern sense. A wandering charismatic sage dressed in white robes and crowned with a gold coronet, Pythagoras was part scientist, part priest and part magician. He spent 22 years in the temples of Egypt, becoming an initiate of the ancient Egyptian Mysteries. On returning to Greece he began to preach the wisdom he had learned, performing miracles, raising the dead and giving oracles. Inspired by Pythagoras, his disciples created a Greek Mystery religion modelled on the Egyptian Mysteries. They took the indigenous wine god Dionysus, who was a minor deity all but ignored by Hesiod and Homer, and transformed him into a Greek version of the mighty Egyptian Osiris, godman of the Mysteries. This initiated a religious and cultural revolution that was to transform Athens into the centre of the civilized world. The followers of Pythagoras were models of virtue and learning, regarded as puritans by their neighbours. Strict vegetarians, they preached non-violence towards all living things and shunned the temple cults that practised the sacrifice of animals. This made it impossible for them to participate in the traditional Olympian religion of Athens. Forced to live on the fringes of acceptability, they often organized themselves into communities that shared all possessions in common, leaving them free to devote themselves to their mystical studies of mathematics, music, astronomy and philosophy. Nevertheless, the Mystery religion spread quickly amongst the ordinary people and within a few generations the Egyptian Mysteries of Osiris, now the Mysteries of Dionysus, inspired the glory of Classical Athens. In the same way that Osiris was synthesized by the Greeks with their indigenous god Dionysus to create the Greek Mysteries, other Mediterranean cultures which adopted the Mystery religion also transformed one of their indigenous deities into the dying and resurrecting Mystery godman. So, the deity who was known as Osiris in Egypt and became Dionysus in Greece was called Attis in Asia Minor, Adonis in Syria, Bacchus in Italy, Mithras in Persia, and so on. His forms were many, but essentially he was the same perennial figure, whose collective identity was referred to as Osiris-Dionysus. Because the ancients recognized that all the various Mystery godmen were essentially the same mythic being, elements from different myths and rites were continually combined and recombined to create new forms of the Mysteries. In Alexandria, for example, a charismatic sage called Timotheus consciously fused Osiris and Dionysus to produce a new deity for the city callled Serapis. He also gave an elaborate account of the myth of the Mystery godman Attis. Lucius Apuleius received his initiation into theMysteries from a high priest named after the Persian godman Mithras. Coins were minted with Dionysus represented on one side and Mithras on the other? One modern authority tells us that "possessed by the knowledge of his own secret rites," the initiate of the Mysteries "found no difficulty in conforming to any religion in vogue." Like the Christian religion which superseded it, the Mysteries reached across national boundaries, offering a spirituality which was relevant to all human beings, regardless of their racial origins or social status. Even as early as the fifth century CE philosophers such as Diogenes and Socrates called themselves "cosmopolitans' -- "citizens of the cosmos" -- rather than of any particular country or culture, which is testimony to the international nature of the Mysteries. One modern scholar, commenting on the merging and combining of different mystery traditions, writes: "This went a long way towards weaning the minds of men from the idea of separate gods from the different nations, and towards teaching them that all national and local deities were but different forms of one great Power. But for the rise of Christianity and other religions, there can be little doubt but that the whole of the Graeco-Roman deities would continually have merged into Dionysus." OSIRIS-DIONYSUS AND JESUS CHRIST Osiris-Dionysus had such universal appeal because he was seen as an 'Everyman' figure who symbolically represented each initiate. Through understanding the allegorical myth of the Mystery godman, initiates could become aware that, like Osiris-Dionysus, they were also 'God made flesh.' They too were immortal Spirit trapped within a physical body. Through sharing in the death of Osiris-Dionysus initiates symbolically 'died' to their lower earthly nature. Through sharing in his resurrection they were spiritually reborn and experienced their eternal and divine essence. This was the profound mystical teaching that the myth of Osiris-Dionysus encoded for those initiated into the Inner Mysteries, the truth of which initiates directly experienced for themselves. Writing of the Egyptian Mystery godman Osiris, Sir Wallis Budge, who was keeper of antiquities in the British Museum, explains: "The Egyptians of every period in which they are known to us believed that Osiris was of divine origin, that he suffered death and mutilation at the hands of the power of evil, that after great struggle with these powers he rose again, that he became henceforth the king of the underworld and judge of the dead, and that because he had conquered death the righteous might also conquer death. "He represented to men the idea of a man who was both God and man, and he typified to the Egyptians in all ages the being who by reason of his sufferings and death as a man could sympathise with them in their own sickness and death. The idea of his human personality also satisfied their cravings and yearnings for communion with a being who, though he was partly divine, yet had much in common with themselves. Originally they looked upon Osiris as a man who lived on the earth as they lived, who ate and drank, who suffered a cruel death, who by help of certain gods triumphed over death, and attained unto everlasting life. But what Osiris did they could also do." These are the key motifs that characterize the myths of all the Mystery godmen. What Budge writes of Osiris could equally be said of Dionysus, Attis, Adonis, Mithras and the rest. It also describes the Jewish dying and resurrecting godman Jesus Christ. Like Osiris-Dionysus, he is also God Incarnate and God of the Resurrection. He also promises his followers spiritual rebirth through sharing in his divine Passion. CONCLUSION The Mysteries were clearly an extremely powerful force in the ancient world. Let's review what we've discovered about them: - The Pagan Mysteries inspired the greatest minds of the ancient world. - They were practised in different forms by nearly every culture in the Mediterranean. - They comprised Outer Mysteries which were open to all and secret Inner Mysteries known only to those who had undergone a powerful process of mystical initiation. - At the heart of the Mysteries was the myth of a dying and resurrecting godman - Osiris-Dionysus. - The Inner Mysteries revealed the myths of Osiris-Dionysus to be spiritual allegories encoding spiritual teachings. The question which intrigued us was whether the Mysteries could have somehow influenced and shaped what we have inherited as the "biography" of Jesus? Unlike the various Pagan Mystery godmen, Jesus is traditionally viewed as an historical rather than a mythical figure, literally a man who was an incarnation of God, who suffered, died and resurrected to bring salvation to all humankind. But could these elements of the Jesus story actually be mythical stories inherited from the Pagan Mysteries? We began investigating the myths of Osiris-Dionysus more closely, searching for resemblances with the Jesus story. We were not prepared for the overwhelming number of similarities that we uncovered. Diabolical Mimicry "Having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that the Christ was to come and that the ungodly among men were to be punished by fire, the wicked spirits put forward many to be called Sons of God, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things that were said with regard to Christ were merely marvellous tales, like the things that were said by the poets." Justin Martyr Although the remarkable similarities between the myths of Osiris-Dionysus agd the supposed "biography" of Jesus Christ are generally unknown today, in the first few centuries CE they were obvious to Pagans and Christians alike. The Pagan philosopher and satirist Celsus criticized Christians for tryingto pass off the Jesus story as a new revelation when it was actually an inferior imitation of Pagan myths. He asks: "Are these distinctive happenings unique to the Christians -- and if so, how are they unique? Or are ours to be accounted myths and theirs believed? What reasons do the Christians give for the distinctiveness of their beliefs? In truth there is nothing at all unusual about what the Christians believe, except that they believe it to the exclusion of more comprehensive truths about God." The early Christians were painfully aware of such criticisms. How could Pagan myths which predated Christianity by hundreds of years have so much in common with the biography of the one and only saviour Jesus? Desperate to come up with an explanation, the Church fathers resorted to one of the most absurd theories ever advanced. From the time of Justin Martyr in the second century onwards, they declared that the Devil had plagiarized Christianity by anticipation in order to lead people astray? Knowing that the true Son of God was to literally come and walk the Earth, the Devil had copied the story of his life in advance of it happening and created the myths of Osiris-Dionysus. The Church father Tertullian writes of the Devil's "diabolical mimicry" in creating the Mysteries of Mithras: "The devil, whose business is to pervert the truth, mimics the exact circumstances of the Divine Sacraments. He baptises his believers and promises forgiveness of sins from the Sacred Fount, and thereby initiates them into the religion of Mithras. Thus he celebrates the oblation of bread, and brings in the symbol of the resurrection. Let us therefore acknowledge the craftiness of the devil, who copies certain things of those that be Divine." Studying the myths of the Mysteries it becomes obvious why these early Christians resorted to such a desperate explanation. Although no single Pagan myth completely parallels the story of Jesus, the mythic motifs which make up the story of the Jewish godman had already existed for centuries in the various stories told of Osiris-Dionysus and his greatest prophets. Let's make a journey through the 'biography' of Jesus and explore some of these extraordinary similarities. SON OF GOD Despite Christianity's claim that Jesus is the "only begotten Son of God." Osiris-Dionysus, in all his many forms, is also hailed as the Son of God. Jesus is the Son of God, yet equal with the Father. Dionysus is the "Son of Zeus, in his full nature God, most terrible, although most gentle to mankind." Jesus is "Very God of Very God." Dionysus is "Lord God of God born." Jesus is God in human form. St John writes of Jesus as "the Word made flesh." St. Paul explains that "God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh? Dionysus was also known as Bacchus, hence the title of Euripides' play The Bacchae, in which Dionysus is the central character. In this play, Dionysus explains that he has veiled his "Godhead in a mortal shape" in order to make it "manifest to mortal men.. He tells his disciples, "That is why I have changed my immortal form and taken the likeness of man." Like Jesus, in many of his myths the Pagan godman is born of a mortal virgin mother. In Asia Minor, Attis' mother is the virgin Cybele. In Syria, Adonis' virgin mother is called Myrrh. In Alexandria, Aion is born of the virgin Kore. In Greece, Dionysus is born of a mortal virgin Semele who wishes to see Zeus in all his glory and is mysteriously impregnated by one of his bolts of lightning. It was a popular tradition, recorded in the most quoted non-canonical text of early Christianity, that Jesus spent only seven months in Mary's womb. The Pagan historian Diodorus relates that Dionysus' mother Semele likewise was said to have also had only a seven-month pregnancy. Justin Martyr acknowledges the similarities between Jesus' virgin birth and Pagan mythology, writing: "In saying that the Word was born for us without sexual union as Jesus Christ our teacher, we introduce nothing beyond what is said of those called the Sons of Zeus." Nowhere was the myth of the 'Son of God' more developed than in Egypt, the ancient home of the Mysteries. Even the Christian Lactantius acknowledged that the legendary Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus had "arrived in some way at the truth, for on God the Father he had said everything, and on the Son." In Egypt, the Pharaoh had for thousands of years been regarded as an embodiment of the godman Osiris and praised in hymns as the Son of God. As an eminent Egyptologist writes, "Every Pharaoh had to be the Son of God and a human mother in order that he should be the Incarnate God, the Giver of Fertility to his country and people." In many legends the great prophets of Osiris-Dionysus are also portrayed as saviours and sons of God. Pythagoras was said to be the son of Apollo and a mortal woman called Parthenis, whose name derives from the word parthenos, meaning "virgin." Plato was also posthumously believed to be the son of Apollo. Philostratus relates in his biography of Apollonius that the great Pagan sage was regarded as the "Son of Zeus." Empedocles was thought to be a godman and saviour who had come down to this world to help confused souls, becoming "like a madman, calling out to people at the top of his voice and urging them to reject this realm and what is in it and go back to their own original, sublime, and noble word." Mythic motifs from the Mysteries even became associated with Roman Emperors who, for political reasons, cultivated legends about their divine nature which would link them to Osiris-Dionysus. Julius Caesar, who did not himself even believe in personal immortality, was hailed as "God made manifest, the common saviour of human life." His successor, Augustus, was likewise the "saviour of the universal human race." and even the tyrannical Nero is addressed on an altar piece as "God the deliverer for ever." In 40 BCE, drawing on Mystery myths, the Roman poet and initiate Virgil wrote a mystical 'prophesy' that a virgin would give birth to a divine child. In the fourth century CE Literalist Christians would claim that it foretold the coming of ]esus, but at the time this myth was interpreted as referring to Augustus, said to be the "Son of Apollo," preordained to rule the Earth and bring peace and prosperity. In his biography of Augustus, Suetonius offers a cluster of 'signs' that indicated the Emperor's divine nature. One modern authority writes: &am