And how are you going to figure out whether the command comes from aO, your own fanciful imagination, LSD flashbacks and other marijuana effects, human deception, or Lucifer?

Because if Jesus of Nazareth exists and other supernatural stuff, then so do demons and angels.

The Eastern ascetic tradition undergoes years of fasting and self discipline, in order to personally discern good from evil spirits. Are Leftist pleasure seekers often found in the company of self disciplined, ever improving humans.

That’s the problem with humans. People think that their gospel and knowledge is the truth. Lucifer understands how to work those people.

To understand anti matter, one must understand matter. To understand light, one must understand darkness, even dark matter. To understand who Jesus of Nazareth was, one must under who Lucifer was. The theory of yin and yang. This ascetic tradition is almost unknown in Western eyes, even after the Enlightenment. They have to get high on decadent drugs or watch Hollywood movies or go to India, to get some.

To Brian,

One of the key questions for me concerning Jesus’ sacrifice for our atonement is why does God require such a sacrifice for the reconciliation between Him and mankind?

You should read the Book of Enoch concerning the Genesis line about when the fallen angels transgressed. To aO, not even the angels are pure and trustworthy. Yet angels are supposed to serve mankind, not the other way around. Ever wonder why it said in the 10 commandments that you should not worship other gods. Those other gods were angels placed over humans who wanted to be free thinkers and go their own way. aO accomodated them.

The Old Testament tells ‘without the shedding of blood their is no remission of sin’. Why?

It’s a way for aO to demonstrate the ability to see things of the future without pre determining it. It also prepares his chosen people, the seed of Abraham, for what happens later. Justice requires that imperfect humans will never become the family and loved ones of the aO. They don’t deserve it. Only an intercessor, someone that takes on the debt and punishment who is worthy, can pay the penalty Justice demands. There are certain rules aO cannot violate, such as violating his word or causing evil to happen. This has to do with something later on, concerning space and time.

“And the sacrifice must be innocent.” There would be no point, since the lesson was to teach the Israelis that every time they sinned, an innocent would die as their scapegoat and they would have to kill the animal themselves, which isn’t something people with a conscience can easily do. If killing evil humans would be enough of a punishment, then the Divine Flood would have made it unnecessary to further punish humans. Just go back to eye for an eye.

“But why can’t that sacrifice be universally applied? Why does it only become active in us when we, in faith, accept the gift?”

A spirit did propose that humanity could be saved without any sacrifices. By some accounts, that spirit was Lucifer. His plan was rejected, however, due to it requiring unholy practices. If you don’t accept Jesus of Nazareth’s plan, you are given a fallback which would be Lucifer’s plan, thus you are now his to do with as he wishes. People have free will, so they can choose whatever. But they are sheep, so they have no real idea of what they are choosing. Lucifer guaranteed that he could save all of humanity, so long as he had the power of the creator. He would most likely have made humans with a biological hardwire switch that made them slaves, unable to think or even do anything that is against divine laws.

Jesus knew in Gethsemane exactly what would happen, but Caias and the Jewish judges didn’t have to be the ones that did it. But they chose to do it, just as predicted.

One of the reasons why Lucifer was said to say “Better to rule in hell than serve in Heaven”. That is because to Lucifer, he began to doubt that any of his choices was actually his, since aO already knew about it before hand. That sneaking suspicion that he isn’t actually in control, wore at him, until he just decided to rebel and do his own free thinking thing. As Alinsky and Ayers once might have mentioned, Lucifer was the first Rebel.

Ever hear of Schroedinger’s Cat? The scriptures are testimonies of various holy prophets, who sprinkle a bunch of predictions around, but nobody knows when it will come true until they open the box. And if the cat isn’t dead in the first one, time has a quadrillion more boxes to open.

A spirit as intelligent as Lucifer would naturally begin to believe that aO was merely manipulating him, after all that is what Lucifer would do to the ignorant and pathetic humans after all. One third of the host of heaven believed in the cause of Lucifer, they wanted to be saved irrespective of what they did in mortality. That would be fair, that would be equal, that would be non discriminatory… sound familiar.

And is this any harder to accept than the concept of dark energy, without which, the universe doesn’t exist?

Astronomers, philosophers, and Einstein believed that the universe had always been there. No creation, no end. Einstein’s equations of relativity made it inevitable to show that the universe was expanding. If the universe was expanding, then what caused it to expand? What caused the universe to become a singularity and then expand? They go backwards in time and find that there is a First Cause, before time and space.

Einstein didn’t want to believe it, since he was an atheist. Find out too much about the universe and about humanity, and being an atheist is pretty difficult.

Jewish atheist does not want to find out that Abraham’s Covenant was real and that Genesis is correct. So he tried to redo the equations to make it come out the right way. It didn’t come out the right way, it came out the true way, and here we are. Big Bang Theory. Dark Matter. For an entity to know what is in the future, it has to be independent of our space and time axis or dimension. That is pretty easy, if it was the First Cause of the verse itself, all the physical laws, fine tuning for life, and space/time creation.

Cornhead: I could look it up, but as I recall this is a bet Hillary lost.

I was just telling a friend how the Jesuits are half-responsible for today’s popularity of the Enneagram, which in verifiable historical terms only goes back to Gurdjieff, the peculiar 20th century, Armenian mystic cum cult leader, who ensnared Ouspensky and Frank Lloyd Wright, and by some accounts was responsible for the death of writer, Katherine Mansfield.

My good Catholic friend goes nuts over the open-borders stuff pushed by the Catholic Church. Yes, there’s the Social Gospel rationalization, but also a naked hope to get immigrant asses in American pews.

A big part of why I didn’t seek a new Christian church was because American churches are almost all either red or blue.

I’m looking for a refuge from the American cultural wars, not an opportunity to be on one front or the other.

I googled an article just now and see what you are talking about. It reminded me of the Benjamin Creme people going on about the Maitreya/Christ incarnation who is supposedly alive and living in East End London and about to rescue humanity and usher in some kind of theosophical utopia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Creme

Once you grant God intervenes in human affairs, anything is possible, but that doesn’t mean that anything which is possible is real.

I don’t know what to make of Christianity. My freethinking self is right. Quite a lot of what passes for Christianity today is standard human BS. Nothing terrible by that standard, but not at all that enlightening either.

However, there is a there there, I can’t deny. If you invoke Jesus, you are taking a chance your life will never be the same.

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?
Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown?
Will you let my name be known,
Will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o469PRLdbHU

The Jesuits are very liberal but – in my experience – they avoid direct political appeals. Homilies based in the Gospel.

I just completely discount the religion-politics nexus. I was shocked to learn how Christian pastors in Iowa are such a political force. Naive of me. Cruz sought them out.

I think it is a GIANT mistake when the Catholic Church endorses open borders. That encourages law breaking.

I was amused to read Shoeman had some initial spiritual experiences in which he asked God what to do. I’ll be a Buddhist if you want. I’ll be a Hindu if you want. But he was thinking, anything, but please not a Christian.

Well, no disrespect to any Christians reading here. After going to parochial school, 7th-12th grades, I hated Christianity. If I was sure of one thing about myself, I was sure I was not and never would be a Christian.

But then I saw a good/bad movie, “The Messenger,” about Joan of Arc and it captivated me. I started reading about Joan of Arc and the more I read, the weirder it got. Then I asked the question, “What would it be like to have the faith of Joan of Arc?” My life became magical and charged with meaning for two weeks.

From that I decided I had some unfinished business with Christianity. So I started going to a “safe” Episcopal church. By myself I walked the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday as an experiment. What could go wrong? It wasn’t like I was at a revival meeting led by snake handlers.

Then boom!

I became a committed Christian. Unfortunately, under the gun of 9-11, I also became a conservative at about the same time. Being conservative at a progressive Episcopal church is no fun. I often found myself taking on the entire church in the mailing list discussions. Eventually I realized I was wasting my time and theirs. So I left.

I considered finding another church but I was weary and just didn’t. It was a relief to stop trying to be a Christian — it is hard work to be a Christian — and return to my American freethinker self.

I feel a bit guilty sometime, but I figure when God has further instructions for me, He will let know.