This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother Marcia Wheeler Music, who died March 31. 2019. She was my biggest fan and supporter of all my book projects that I’ve done throughout the years. Until we meet again!
Introduction (audio)
In this book I share a lot of information about my perspective on being a Christian and what it means to me. I go into detail about a number of things, but I do not cover every single aspect or doctrine concerning Christianity. I discuss my journey to Christianity and how my views evolved and changed. I discuss how and why my views changed over time and how I got to where I am and what I believe now.
My goal is not to get people to believe the way I believe. I have no interest in leading others to change their doctrinal beliefs, I simply share my experience and the things that I have believed over time and what led me to change my point of view from time to time. I give a totally open and honest account to the best of my recollection about my journey as a Christian over the past twenty-seven years. My objective for this book is to help motivate others to think critically and to think for themselves, follow the truth wherever it leads them, question everything and be willing to research and discern what God’s will is.
In this book I share many things that may be challenging for the readers, because I have always been inclined to ask very hard questions that are usually thought from outside of the box. Some of the questions that I have asked throughout the years concerning the Bible and religious ideologies are questions that I spent many years seeking the answers to. These questions can make Christians feel very uncomfortable because they can shatter the paradigms that many Christians are “supposed” to stay within, but as deep as the questions may be, I have invested myself in discovering the answers to those questions in search for truth. In this book I discuss those questions and answers that I tangled with over the years, and perhaps these are some things that you the reader may have thought of yourself, or these things may all be new to you. Some of these issues may be things that some people have never had on their radar and may be new to you. In this book I present what led me to asking those questions and what information led me to the conclusions that I discovered. Most of these conclusions that I came to are based upon lots of research and years of thought and pondering.
One will discover in this book that I am not dogmatic about many things, though that has not always been the case, because I spent many years as an ideologue who tried to get everyone to think like me. But I have learned to be open minded and open to all possibilities, open to more information, and open to have my point of view challenged and adjusted if necessary. I have always tried to have the spirit that Augustine of Hippo displayed in a quote by him from the 4th century,
“Advance with me when you share my certainty. Seek with me if you have the same doubts. Accept my analysis if it is you who is in error. And win me over to yours if it is I who am wrong.”
I have absolutely no problem to be stand corrected because truth is my only desire. I am not out to win debates and arguments but to plant the seeds of truth and let them take root and grow wherever they may.
I believe that it is important for all of us to challenge our own beliefs and worldview because many people have never stepped out of their comfort zones and challenged those presuppositions and paradigms, and many people are not even aware that they have been trained to stay within a paradigm that limits understanding, which was designed to have you think only a certain way, not for your benefit, but for an agenda. Oftentimes these paradigms have been created not to protect people from error, but to control people’s perception for religious and geopolitical power. An independent study and research on many religious dogmas and various religious institutions will lead you to discover how Satan and his minions have hijacked and coopted a number of them and funds their so-called ministries and controls their establishment from the top. This by no means takes away the reliability and reality of our Lord, but it does show that His enemies are real and active in this world and not just limited to being an exaggerated Bible story. Satan and his minions are very real, and they control the world the way that Scripture tells us they do.
John 12:31 Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.
John 14:30 I will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me;
Ephesians 2:2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
John 16:11 and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.
2 Corinthians 4:4 in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
It is quite astonishing the level of how many Christians underestimate the adversarial force that their Scriptures clearly warns about. Being an independent researcher myself, and one who has written books about the Satanic Cult that has hijacked the world and controls the global monetary system and leading the world into a one world government and one world religion, it is not uncommon for Christians to brush that off as crazy conspiracy theories, or they are just in denial and cannot face the fact that our way of life is in serious danger. It’s as if they want to just keep playing church and bury their heads deeper in the sand. This is another topic that I discuss in this book, but I have gone into much greater detail in my last two books, Handbook on the Powers That “Should Not” Be and The Antichrist and his Cult.
One will probably notice that I have not added the usual table of contents, something that I have always added in my books. But this book is quite different than the other books that I have written. I started this book and wrote what came to my mind, and what I felt God was leading me to write. I gave it some thought how I was going to divide the chapters, but I decided to just let this book be a running testimony. This book feels more like a conversation that I am having with you the reader, rather than a typical book.
As I conclude this introduction, I want to share a quote that I share in my books, which is a caveat that Mark Passio gives in his presentations, which echoes my sentiments,
“My presentation style is often extremely intense and at times even combative. I won’t, and I don’t sugarcoat my words or my delivery. Some of you may very likely become upset or angered by what I will say during this presentation and so be it. That will never make what I’m about to say here untrue. The truth by its very nature is belligerent because it wages war against all forms of deception and mind control. I don’t present this information to be liked, to be popular, to make money, or to make friends. It’s great if some of those things happen, but that’s not my intention, that’s not why I set out to do this work… Because I recognize that in the crisis that we are in now of overwhelming ignorance and deception, I have a moral obligation to communicate what I know to be taking place in our world to others, in an effort to help them to understand it so then they can take action and do something about it… I am here to try to inspire you to take the action… and you could do it in different ways, not everybody has to do it the same way. But it is about getting on the battlefield. It is about actually actively engaging and taking part in this war for our freedom.”10
Summary of my journey
I have been a Christian since 1996, and I converted to Christianity when I was around twenty-three years old. I never grew up in church and had very little exposure to it, and I knew almost nothing about who Jesus was or what it meant to be a Christian. I was initiated into the Southern Baptist denomination by a profession of faith and water baptism. I took up intense Bible study not very long into being a Christian and it wasn’t long before I started teaching Sunday School classes and becoming involved in various ministries. I was training for pastoral ministry and volunteered as a chaplain at a local hospital, and I also did some preaching in the pulpit. I spent around ten years as a Southern Baptist until I discovered the writings of the Early Church Fathers. This led me to Catholicism because the writings of the Church Fathers showed me that there was an ancient apostolic tradition which helped me to reconcile some of the dilemmas I had with the Southern Baptist (as well as most Protestant) dogma of Solo Scriptura (Bible Alone), which is the belief that the Bible is the sole authority to our faith. At the time it seemed like the Catholic Church provided all the answers that led me to embrace the dogma of Scripture and Tradition and the Magisterium of the Church. I converted to Catholicism and was a Roman Catholic for ten years. Just as with my dilemma as a Baptist, I developed some dilemmas with Catholicism, one example being papal supremacy. After ten years as a Roman Catholic, I then converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church, where I spent two years. During that period of time my mother became terminally ill, and I had to take care of her as well as maintain the responsibility of family-life and full time job. This led me to missing lots of church services. If you are familiar with Catholic and Orthodox dogma on Mass services then you will know that it is considered a mortal sin to miss Mass without a good reason, and the priest at the Orthodox church expressed his concern for my soul because of my church attendance. I never had any harsh feelings over that because I understood that the priest was just doing his job upholding Orthodox dogma, but this did lead me to step back and to think about the big picture for a few years. I often describe this period of time as being in “limbo.”
I spent a few years in “limbo” in what I consider a resetting of my faith and worldview. I spent over twenty years tremendously devoted to those few Christian circles and their hierarchical structures and dogmas, defending their doctrines, and embracing their mission, until I discovered their fallacies. Each group eventually presented to me a different dilemma that caused me to rethink my stance within, such as, with Southern Baptist it was the “Bible Alone” dogma. With Roman Catholicism it was the papacy and other petty binding Dogmas that I began to question. In the Orthodox Church it was the binding dogma of attendance to Mass that could send you to Hell if you missed. The last dilemma was basically the straw the broke the camel’s back and led me to question Christianity. I spent that entire period in Christianity trying to find the “one true Church,” which is why I was sensitively analyzing the truth of their “authority.”
When it comes to these dilemmas, they all had one thing in common, and that was “binding dogma.” Dogma is a belief or set of beliefs that are required. Within those various Christian schools of thought that I came from, it was considered necessary and binding to believe some specific things in order to be considered a member of their flock. This usually means that in order to be considered a Christian (in their eyes), there are a set of provisions that are demanded to be professed and believed. As for Christianity in general, there is a huge spectrum of different sets of beliefs scattered among over forty-five thousand Christian denominations. Unfortunately, this contributes to a lot of unnecessary division within Christianity. It is not that the different sets of beliefs themselves are the cause of such division, but it is the pride that gets attached to ideologies that becomes a cancer that brings so much disunity. Different Christian traditions and doctrines can be a positive thing when people have an open mind and don’t think that they are the only ones that are right about everything. This pride leads people to become ideologues, which oftentimes leads Christians to point the finger at one-another and see the other as their opponent or even the enemy, while the real enemy is Satan and his minions, who are very unified and work 24/7 to destroy Christianity.
Binding Dogma and Infallibility
The roots of binding dogmas come from the belief in infallibility and inerrancy. Infallibility and inerrancy are articulated and defined slightly different depending on what Christian tradition that you consult. The definition of infallibility in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (page 883) says…
INFALLIBILITY: The gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church whereby the pastors of the Church, the pope and bishops in union with him, can definitively proclaim a doctrine of faith or morals for the belief of the faithful. This gift is related to the inability of the whole body of the faithful to err in matters of faith and morals.1
As for many Protestant Christians, they most often do not apply infallibility to their church as being the infallible proclaimer of doctrine, but they often believe that it is the gift of the Holy Spirit who interprets the Bible to them, which is where they develop their doctrines and dogmas. The most common position amongst Christians is that the Bible is inerrant, meaning without errors in relation of the truth of the Christian faith. Many Bible Fundamentalists believe that the Bible is totally infallible and inerrant and perfect in every way. The working definition of inerrancy in the Catechism of the Catholic Church is…
INERRANCY: The attribute of the books of Scripture whereby they faithfully and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to have confided through the Sacred Scriptures.1
The belief in infallibility and inerrancy is the reason why we have so many different binding dogmas and so many Christian denominations. When people take upon the belief that there is a source, whether it is the teaching office of a church or whether it is a book, and project upon those sources as having the authority by God to be infallible and inerrant, then that leads people to holding those things up to a standard that cannot be questioned no matter what. This leads people to keep their way of thinking and their worldviews in a box or paradigms that they cannot or refuse to think outside of, which is basically a prison-cell for their minds.
The Protestant Dilemma
Many Protestant denominations believe that the Bible is infallible and inerrant and is the sole authority to their faith. Protestantism spawned from the rejection of the papal authority of the Catholic Church and the belief that Christians have the authority to read and interpret the Bible themselves without the authority of the Catholic hierarchy. They rejected the authority of the Church and its clergy of being the way to ‘definitively proclaim a doctrine of faith or morals for the belief of the faithful,’ while embracing that the authority being in the Bible itself. As mentioned above, this is called Solo Scriptura, which means the “Bible Alone,” and that there is no authority outside of the Bible. Since I was initiated into Christianity under this belief, I just took for granted that this doctrine was just how it was. I spent some time fully embracing this perception of Solo Scriptura, but as time went on and I began to think a little deeper about my faith and learned a little bit of Church history and about how the Bible was put together, I eventually started asking myself a question that started my dilemma. That question was this… If the Bible is the sole authority to my faith, and that there is no authority outside of the Bible, then who had the authority to decide what books were to be in the Bible? I developed a curiosity of where the Bible actually came from and how it was put together, and what I found was that the development of the Bible, which is called the canonization, was a process that took place over the course of many centuries after the books of the Bible were written. I discovered that there were lists written by Christians from the early centuries of the books of the Bible, and that there was lots of debates and discussions about what books were to be in the Bible and what books to be rejected. The average Bible believing Christian never researches how the Bible was put together and many take for granted where it came from. One reason why they don’t research this area is because unless it is presented to a congregation or unless they go to a Bible college or Bible institute or seminary, then they more than likely will not learn it in church. Another reason many Christians do not discover this is because unless it is presented to you then it means that discovering it is the result of someone who thinks outside of the box, therefore the average person does not think outside of the box because society has been trained to embrace certain boxes of ideologies and dogmas, and by default they do not try to roam outside of those boxes. When someone is brought up in church or initiated into it by conversion, and that church teaches “Bible Alone” and embraces beliefs of Bible Fundamentalism, then they perceive the Bible as if it fell out of the sky from Heaven one day, or that Jesus went around passing out Bibles and said “here, this is all you need.” I am not saying that is what they literally think, but that is how they treat the Bible, as if it did. They understand that humans did write it, but they also believe that every word in the Bible is as if it came straight from the mouth of God because they believe that it is inspired by the Holy Spirit through the pen of the authors. There is nothing erroneous with believing that the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible, but it is quite extreme and problematic when it reaches the Fundamentalist binding dogma of Biblical infallibility and inerrancy, especially mixed with the belief of “Bible Alone.” Because as mentioned above, it took centuries to develop the Bible and to produce an “official canon” of Scripture, with that process being developed and decided by an “ecclesiastical authority” outside of the Bible. It is not as if the Bible came first and then Christianity came from the Bible, but Christianity was established first, and the Bible came after the Christian faith had been around for centuries. I will get into the Bible canon later and the process of how the Bible was decided upon, but I am demonstrating here that the Bible is the result of an already existing religion, not a religion that evolved from the Bible. This is kind of like which came first, the chicken or the egg analogy.
The Catholic Dilemma
In my experience, once I discovered the writings of the Early Church Fathers, my Christian views began to be transformed. When I started reading the writings of the earliest Christians such as the Apostolic Fathers, who lived during and slightly after the times of the Apostles, and I began reading those in following generations as well, I began to see quite clearly that the doctrines of the early Church were much at odds with the Southern Baptist doctrines that I had embraced for years. At this period of time, I had started to question the doctrine of Solo Scriptura and I had a feeling that there had to be some kind of authority beyond just the Bible alone if the Bible was to be infallible and inerrant, therefore the Early Church Fathers was the key to connecting those dots. During those ten years as a Southern Baptist, I had never even heard of the Early Church Fathers mentioned unless it was the information that I found while researching the canonization of the Bible, which was research I did on my own, and it was a time before the internet was widely available, therefore my research was limited to printed books. During that research I was preparing a lesson on how the Bible was put together in order to teach a class for a revival that our church was having, just because it was something that I felt was creative and interesting to teach that I was sure that nobody else had ever heard of. Little did I know that it was going to plant a seed in my mind that would eventually lead me to questioning everything that I believed as a Baptist. I remember reading in a book about the name Athanasius of Alexandria and his list of the New Testament books of the Bible that he produced, which was what many Protestants referred to as an example and a standard to follow. I remember thinking at the time that it was odd that Catholic bishops played a large role in the formation of the Bible that we have today. This seed that was planted from that experience began to make more sense a few years later after I had discovered the writings of the Early Church Fathers.
After lots of reading of the Church Fathers, I felt that I was on the road to finding the Christianity that Christ established because I was discovering what the earliest of the Christians believed about the Bible and Christian doctrine. It was the Early Church Fathers that participated in Church Councils that decided upon dogmas and the canon of Scripture, and many of them were bishops of the Catholic Church. This obviously led me to start looking into Catholicism, and by this time I was very open to hear what they had to say. There were Catholic apologists who persuasively demonstrated how the Catholic Church has an unbroken chain of succession of bishops that lead all the way back to the Apostles themselves, which gives them apostolic authority, therefore giving them the same authority that the Apostles had two-thousand years ago. This was the very connecting dot that I was looking for to justify my belief in the authority of the Bible and the authority behind the belief system of Christianity. I felt that I had finally found the solution to all of the squabbling and disputing that I experienced in Protestantism over doctrinal issues because within Catholicism all the doctrines and dogmas have been all worked out and settled and everything has been meticulously defined over the centuries by the same Apostolic authority that I read about in the Bible that the Apostles exercised. I must give credit to Catholic apologists for having done a very good job presenting the Catholic Church as having preserved the Christian faith in its purest form, because websites like Catholic Answers2 were very convincing to me at the time for providing “proof” that Catholic Doctrines and Dogmas were based upon Scripture and Tradition, with the evidence found in the Early Church Fathers. It seemed as if everything that the Catholic Church taught, the apologists were able to present quotations from the Bible and the Early Church Fathers to show that those teachings can be traced back. And what things that they couldn’t back up by quoting Scripture and the Church Fathers, they used the “grounds of Apostolic authority” to show that the Church has the authority to declare new Doctrines and Dogmas at any point in time. I remember thinking and being convinced that since the Catholic Church was the Church that Christ established, then I had no problem believing what that Church taught. I must admit that not everything that they said was satisfying, but I was so blown away by all the dots that did connect, therefore I took for granted at that time that those dots which appeared dubious and would become clearer later on with further research. So, I put those things on the backburner with the intentions of finding more evidence later in order to confirm those issues. One example is the papacy. The Catholic Church teaches that the papacy is the teaching chair that traces back to the Apostle Peter, and that Peter was declared the Head pastor of the Church by Jesus, and they quote Matthew 16:17-19, which says…
17 Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. 18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. 19 And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
This is the Scriptural evidence to support the papacy, being that this “proves” the primacy of Peter. Many Catholic apologists suggest that this is supported by the Early Church Fathers, and they cite various Church Fathers as proof. But when you read those citations of the Fathers, they are nothing more than Scripture quotations with minor paraphrasing by the Church Fathers of Matthew 16:17-19. But as for concrete evidence that the Church Fathers believed in the papacy the way that the Catholic Church declares the papacy to be is another story, which I sadly discovered as time went on after I converted to Catholicism and started doing apologetic work myself. It just seemed like Catholic apologists would do the usual spin and interpretative acrobatics in order to counter any damning and contradictory proof against papal infallibility and inerrancy, such as pope Honoris being condemned as a heretic in the sixth Ecumenical Council of 680/681. The spinning of Catholic apologists to whitewash and coverup the obvious never did set well with me. Trying to defend the papacy as a Catholic by using the Early Church Fathers was almost identical to trying to defend doctrines as a Southern Baptist by using the Bible, because it became a matter of private interpretation of the Church Fathers and trying to get them to say what I wanted them to say in order to support a doctrine, much like the way that many Protestants try to get the Bible to say what they want it to mean. There simply was not tangible evidence that the Early Church Fathers believed in the papacy the way that the Catholic Church teaches. There were some other Dogmas that I found that did not add up the same way as the papacy, such as Transubstantiation (or the Sacraments for that matter) and the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which was of lesser significance to me because I did take in consideration the concept of “the development of doctrine,” which allows for doctrines to begin like a seed early on in the Church, but over the course of time, the Church through Apostolic authority, developed upon doctrines and expanded upon beliefs that had already existed. I totally get that. But I did not see that being applicable to the Dogma of the papacy because that is an understanding that would have had to be clear-cut from the beginning, whereas I found no evidence of that, only cherry-picked citations of the Fathers that were very bland and made for weak arguments.
My Eastern Orthodox Moment
I spent the last couple of years in Catholicism growing in doubts about the Church’s authority. This was very troubling for me because that was what led me to the Catholic Church in the first place and was the foundation of my belief in Catholicism. A friend of mine who had a very similar experience as I did who converted to Catholicism from Protestantism, was also having the same issues at the same time that I was, though he was a few months ahead of me, and he was considering the Eastern Orthodox church and had been researching it for a little while at that time. He was hesitant to tell me about it, but I insisted that I was interested and was not going to try to dispute with him on the matter and that I was wanting to listen with an open mind about what was leading him to consider Eastern Orthodoxy. I found that his problems with Catholicism was almost identical to mine and his search for a “solution” to his dilemma nearly identical as well. He shared what he had discovered about the Eastern Orthodox church, and he also led me to some good Orthodox information, and I began doing my own research and found that the Orthodox church was very similar to the Roman Catholic church. The Orthodox church shared the same claims about Apostolic succession, therefore claiming that they can trace their succession of bishops back to the Apostles. They held the Early Church Fathers in high esteem, though they seem a bit stand-offish to the Latin Church Fathers. They take their church liturgy very serious. They share the same type of practices of participation in the Sacraments, such as baptism, confession, Eucharist, etc. They also share the same type of belief in the infallibility of Scripture and Tradition, but one of the main divisions between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism is the papacy. The east and the west were united as one church until the schism of 1054AD, and that was brought about for various reasons, and the papacy was one of the main issues. The Eastern Orthodox church recognizes the papacy as having Apostolic succession, but not the belief that the pope has the highest authority over the whole church as supreme pontiff. Another major rift between the east and the west was a small section of the Nicene Creed that is referred to as the “filioque.” Here is an explanation…
“In the ensuing century — though the exact date or party responsible is disputed — the phrase ‘and the Son’ crept into the Nicene Creed’s statement on the Holy Spirit: ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.’ The phrase, known by its Latin translation ‘filioque,’ was incorporated increasingly in Western liturgies. The inclusion of the filioque phrase speaks to a fundamental difference in the Eastern and Western understandings of the Holy Trinity. In the Eastern Church it was the Father from whom both the Son and Holy Spirit flow; the Western Church possessed a flattened hierarchy in which all three are unified by divine essence, which diminishes the role of the Father in the eyes of Easterners.”3
I remember doing lots of research on the Eastern Orthodox church, and I contacted a local Eastern Orthodox priest and I shared with him that I was considering converting to the Eastern Orthodox church and I asked if I could set up an appointment to discuss it with him. To make a long story short I grew more and more convinced that I was on the right path, but I specifically remember thinking to myself and saying in my head, “Okay, this is the end of the road, and there are no more alternatives and no more options for finding the one true church. If this doesn’t work for you then you’ve exhausted your search for finding the church that you have been seeking. You’ve discovered that Protestantism is a dead end. You’ve discovered that Roman Catholicism went off the rails. And if you find something in Orthodoxy that convinces you that it doesn’t work, then there is no other Christian institution that fits the bill. This is the end of the road Jack!” I literally remember thinking this in my head, which made me concerned because Christianity had always been my life and my passion. It was my moral compass and everything I centered my life around. I made large sacrifices for trying to do what I believed was right. I lost friends and caused some issues in my family life by converting to the Catholic church. I knew that if something fell through with Orthodoxy then my Christian faith was going to be “on the ropes” because I knew that there was not going to be another Christian institution that had any legitimate claim to Apostolic authority.
My mother became very sick around the time that I was looking into the Eastern Orthodox church. As she got worse off, it became necessary for me to take care of her. I was also working at my job that was full time, and taking care of my home and family, therefore I was finding myself missing church services (Mass) more and more as my mother got worse off. At first the priest at the church was understanding, but after a while he would check on me and he expressed his concern for my soul (as I mentioned above). This led me to start questioning Christianity in ways I had never done before. I could not imagine that a loving God would go as far as condemning me to Hell to burn for eternity for missing Mass in this circumstance. And then I got to thinking about my mother, who was the most loving and sweetest person you could have ever met, but she had not gone to church for many years, and her religious beliefs were very different from Eastern Orthodoxy. There was no way that I could accept that God sent her to Hell when she passed away. This sent me into a state of what I call “limbo,” where I spent a few years exploring God and seeking the truth of it all.
Limbo (audio)
This term “limbo” is what I had adopted to refer to my experience that I went through after I decided to leave institutionalized Christianity. I would not say that I rejected Christianity, but I had to step away and give myself time to rethink my Christian worldview. I needed time to think and to give myself the space to let my mind untrain itself from the mental defaults that I developed from my life experiences in Christianity and what I learned in Christianity all those previous years. The reason why I felt that I had to do that was so I could allow myself to start examining Christianity with a fresh perspective and avoid the subconscious biases and firewalls that I developed and was trained for concerning spiritual discernment. I wanted to be able to seek the truth without any traces of past ideological prejudices to cloud my judgment as I discovered new information and new ways of looking at things. I wanted to be as openminded as possible so that I could follow the truth wherever it led me and let the chips fall where they may. That has always been my motto, which is one reason why I was willing to go from being a Southern Baptist to a Catholic and a Catholic to Eastern Orthodox Christian, based upon seeking truth and following where the information led me. I never felt comfortable being an ideologue and defending a belief or position for the sake of winning an argument or to fit in cliques and grow my network, but I have always wanted to find the truth for the sake of truth alone, and I have always been willing to suffer the consequences of people’s negative opinions of me and rifts in my social life.
I opened my mind and looked at many perspectives with the least amount of bias as I could. Within a few years span I listened to atheists, occultists, etc., trying to seek truth. I think the most important thing I did was spend a lot of time in solitude and silence so I could hear God speak to me through my intuition. Despite my departure from institutionalized Christianity, I maintained my prayer life, perhaps stepping it up a few notches and never ceasing to seek God’s will. All I have ever desired is to do God’s will and to be who He wants me to be, period. As much as I desired for a shortcut to find what it was that I was looking for, it took lots of deep soul-searching, therefore realizing that it is a never-ending pursuit in this lifetime. What I wouldn’t have given to have been able to just sit down with God or one of His angels and have them explain to me everything, like a big questions and answers session where I could ask anything and get point-blank answers. But unfortunately, it is not that simple to learn the deep truths of God and His will for our lives. It takes patience, endurance, passion, morality, study, and sometimes the road of hard knocks with trial and error.
Leaving Institutionalized Christianity
When I say, “institutionalized Christianity,” many people may assume that they understand what I mean, and perhaps many do. But for clarification about what I mean by that is the belief that Christianity is only found within one centralized authority of religious Christian ideology. Institutionalized Christianity says that anyone who professes anything distinct from what they have defined as Dogma is neither Christian, or not Christian enough. Institutionalized Christianity brings large groups of people under one ideological umbrella and dictates what everyone believes through a hierarchical structure that proclaims to have authority over everyone within the institution.
There is a danger in institutionalized Christianity because there is a universal danger in anything institutionalized. The danger is the very fact that all institutions that have a considerable amount of people within it are targets for being infiltrated and coopted by those who want to hijack them in order to control them for their agenda. Secret societies have been hijacking religious institutions for many centuries by having agents pose as converts and clergymen in order to covertly climb the ranks and establish positions of power and control within. Many world religions and sects within world religions have been infiltrated for so many years that there are networks within that have already completely taken over and therefore controlling the whole institution without most of the members even realizing it. In my last book called The Antichrist and his Cult4, I gave examples of how Islam was infiltrated by the false Jewish messiah Sabbatai Zevi (1666AD) and his followers (Donmeh). I also showed how the Illuminati infiltrated different sects of Christianity along with governments and so on. Christianity has been a target of Satan and his minions ever since Christ established it two-thousand years ago. In the Bible there are plenty of examples of early infiltration, such as in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. I mentioned this in my book called The Antichrist and his Cult…
In chapters 2-3 of the book of Revelation, Jesus is recorded as admonishing the seven churches of Asia, and there, are perhaps, some of the early infiltrators of Christianity, such as, in Ephesus “those who say they are apostles and are not” (Rev. 2:2), the Nicolaitans (2:6), “those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan” (2:9; 3:9), Pergamos, “where Satan’s throne is” and where “the doctrine of Balaam” and the “Nicolaitans” was being taught (2:12-15), and in Thyatira, where the “woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess” (2:20). As for those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan”, this seems very similar, and perhaps an early manifestation of the Sabbatean-Frankists today, such as the Rothschilds and others who make up the “Jewish” elements of the Illuminati, which I will go into detail further on in this book.4
But perhaps the most devastating and most effective covert hijacking of Christianity came from the Roman Empire through Constantine, which led to the institutionalizing of much of Christendom. Previously the Roman Empire, which was led by the Flavian Dark Sun occultists, had attempted to infiltrate Christianity with a little success but Christians did a great job spotting the infiltrators and running them off. They also tried snuffing out Christianity through heavy persecution which actually backfired and helped Christianity to spread even more, as shown by Tertullian of Carthage (155–220AD), who said, “Every time you mow us down our numbers increase, the blood of Christians is the seed.”5 But sadly, the “powers that be” of the Roman Empire found a way to unite the Empire’s ruling-class and the hierarchy of the Church in order to convince the bishops of the Church to allow the ruling-class to participate in defining binding Dogma and to develop an institutionalized structure and centralized network, that is they created a controlling mechanism for Christianity to bring all Christians under one centralized umbrella through a ruling-class/priest-class central authority. All they had to do was convince the leaders of the Church that the emperor Constantine had a dream/vision that Jesus appeared to him, which led to Constantine becoming a Christian and pledging to lift the persecution of Christians and making Christianity the official religion of the empire. The first Ecumenical Council of the Church was enforced by the Roman emperor, which should be a problematic red-flag in itself, who then coerced the bishops of the Church in 325AD to get together for the Council of Nicaea that institutionalized Christianity. Mark Passio sums this up…
“The Flavians’ own Astro-theology based religion was devoted to a Solar Deity called Sol Invictus, the Unconquerable Sun. These Solar Cult members sought to unify the Roman Empire under a common state-run religion by changing the problematic early Christian philosophy to reflect the myths of their own Astro-theological Solar God (which they inherited from even older Solar Cult traditions). The continuity of this Solar Cult Mythos can be observed in the stories and characteristics of Mithra, Zoroaster, Dionysus, Horus, Osiris, Serapis, and many others. The hugely influential Piso family of the Calpurnian bloodline of Rome had already been at work on the Roman Empire’s ‘Christian Problem’ since the mid-1st century AD, when the Pisos began to lay the foundations of the new state religion designed to control people’s thought and suppress further rebellion against the ‘authority’ of the ruling class… To crush the growing rebellion in consciousness once and for all, the Flavian and Neo-Flavian dynasties knew that the Roman Empire would ultimately need to be united under such a state-controlled belief system. Constantine ‘The Great’ (born Flavius Valerius Aurelius) would ultimately take up this task. In 325AD Constantine held the Council of Nicaea, where exoteric religious leaders of the time were held under duress to develop a Rome-sanctioned ‘legal’ religion suitable for the masses… The Nicaean Council weeded out any knowledge which spoke of spirituality forbidden by the ruling class.”6
Whether or not Constantine had good intentions for Christianity, imposing the immersion of the ruling-class upon the Christian faith should have never been tolerated because this was not a hands-off liberation, but rather the typical promise of privileges and freedom for authoritative meddling and control. This became the incarnation of everything that Christ came here to oppose. There were three entities that Jesus opposed more than anything else, that is, government, religion, and the financial order of the day. But as we see what the institutionalization of Christianity has developed into, especially looking at the Catholic Church and its banking empire, history of always being at the center of geopolitics, and a powerful priest-class and hierarchy that wreaks of dark religious occultism, it has become the opposite of what Christ established.
“The three worldly dynamics Jesus actually fought against during His lifetime as described in the New Testament were what I call The Unholy Trinity: Religion, Money and Government. He challenged the established religious orders of His day, the Pharisees and Sadducees. He took great issue with the usury of the Temple Money Changers, the established financial order of the day. And of course, he was convicted and crucified by the Roman government at the behest of the religious and monetary powers. This example, which Fake Christians never talk about, also serves to illustrate where the true power of the control system ultimately lies.
Religion: Thought Control * Perpetuates Ignorance * Based upon Belief, not search for Truth * Controlled by a Dark Occult Priest-class * The Essence of all Mind Control * Basis for the ‘Old World Order
Money: Emotional Control * Perpetuates Apathy * The New God to which human beings now entirely devote their care, attention and energy * The Ultimate Religion * Basis for the New World Order
Government: Bodily Control * Perpetuates Cowardice * Based upon the erroneous belief in Authority * Violent Enforcer for Dark Occultists, Bankers * New World Order”6
Fortunately, there has always been those who have led opposition to this derailment from true Christianity, even by Catholics who have pushed for reform. History shows us that those who practiced Christianity apart from the Catholic Church were at times vehemently attacked. There have been countless departures from Catholicism, but it seems that human nature is inclined to believe in authority and desire to be told what and how to think. That is because the “powers that be” have always used this type of mind-control and indoctrination to control the masses, to get the population to believe in the authority of the ruling-class and priest-class, and to keep the masses to think within certain paradigms that prevents critical and free-thinking. One example is the left-right paradigm in politics. This paradigm was created to keep the population divided amongst themselves and to not think for themselves. For example, in America we have a two-party system of Republicans and Democrats. Almost everyone in America claims to be either one or the other, and when a critical free-thinker says that they do not support either, or perhaps goes as far as to say that they do not believe in the authority of government, most Americans just look at you with glazed-over eyes. The reason is because that there is a multi-trillion-dollar industry that has been manipulating what we are taught in government education, the media, entertainment industry, etc., which shapes our worldview from cradle to grave, therefore keeping our minds within that paradigm which acts as a prison cell for the mind. People therefore cannot even imagine thinking outside of the box that has been created and that their minds have been stuck in their whole life. The mind-control is so powerful that even when someone does come to the realization that their worldview has been manufactured and they start to break away and think for themselves outside of the paradigm, it usually takes a while to “unlearn” those things that have your mind operating like computers with a factory default setting.
Therefore, I believe it is important for each and every one of us to do our research and follow the truth wherever it leads us. Never fear asking those tough questions that challenge our religious beliefs and worldviews. When new information opens new doors, it is important to study it, challenge it, and accept and embrace it if it proves authentic and true. Having an open mind and being willing to be open to all possibilities is the greatest way to grow in truth. In the end, TRUTH and FREEDOM is the ultimate goal. In my opinion, Jesus came and provided us with the purest form of Truth and Freedom, because He is the Truth that sets us free! But Satan and his minions work 24/7 to distort Christianity, and it is important to recognize those places in the Christian faith that has been hijacked and coopted so that we can avoid being misled. Institutions are always targets for Satan and his minions, which means that we need to be free-thinkers and not slaves and dupes to institutions that declare themselves authorities over our minds. Do your research, pray about what you learn, take the time to digest it all, and trust your intuition and the Holy Spirit to guide you into Truth.
The Bible (audio)
What is the Bible? The Bible is a large book made up of a bunch of different books that were written by different authors within a span of one-thousand and five-hundred years. It has been arraigned in its present form with the books divided and placed in a certain order, not in chronological order, but in categories. These categories are based upon their style of writing, such as in the Old Testament you have the Pentateuch, also called the Law of Moses (first five books), historical books, poetry, and the prophets. The New Testament has been arraigned with the Four Gospels (presentation of Christ), then the historical book of Acts, the letters of the Apostle Paul, the General Epistles, and then the apocalyptic writing called the book of Revelation. The entire Old Testament was written before Jesus Christ came, and the entire New Testament was written by Jesus’ close followers after His death and resurrection. Typically, Christians believe that the Old Testament is part of the written Word of God because it prophesied about Jesus, and that the New Testament authors make these connections throughout their writings by demonstrating in different ways how Jesus fulfilled those Old Testament prophecies. Not all Christians have the exact list of books for the Old Testament. Protestant Christians usually have a list of 39 books for the Old Testament while Catholics have 42, and Orthodox Christians have a little more than Catholics. For the New Testament most Christians have the same list of 27 books.
Most Christian institutions and denominations believe and teach that the Bible is the infallible and inerrant word of God and depending upon what denomination and institution we are talking about depends upon how rigid they are concerning the infallibility and inerrancy of the Scriptures. Many Protestant Christians are taught that the Bible is the complete Word of God and the sole authority to their faith and that there is no other authority outside of the Bible. Catholics and Orthodox, as well as some others believe in the concept of Scripture and Tradition. Tradition can be defined in various ways and is usually understood as the oral tradition of the Gospel that was handed down through the centuries that trace all the way back to the Apostles. In Catholicism there is another “authoritative” factor applied, which is the Magisterium of the Church, and is defined as the teaching office of the Church. Most Protestants are taught that they can consult the Bible and receive the truth of God in the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit will help them interpret it (which I do believe), and that the Bible from cover to cover is infallible and inerrant as if every word came straight from the mouth of God Himself (which I do not believe). The problem with this belief and doctrine, which many Christians are dogmatic about, is that if there is no authority outside of the Bible and it is the sole authority to your faith, then who had the authority to decide what books were to be in the Bible and what books were to be rejected? The fact of the matter is that there were men who decided upon what books should be considered inspired and compiled as Scripture, and it took centuries to develop a compilation of books that would eventually become the Bible as we have today.
Many Christians are not familiar with the process and development of the canon of Scripture, which was a process that took centuries to decide upon. Many Christians take for granted that they have a one-volume version of the Bible, a luxury that most Christians in the two-thousand-year history of Christianity never had. The fact of the matter is, concerning the development of the canon (complete list) of Scripture, Christians from different Christian traditions throughout the world had lists of books of the Bible that they considered to be Scripture which they drew from to defend and articulate doctrines and dogmas. Most of them shared many of the same lists of books but they were not identical. I will discuss this development of the canon of Scripture below in further detail, but the point of this, in this section, is to point out that there were church councils among leaders of the Christian church who got together to discuss and agree upon a consensus about what was canonical. These bishops of the churches and those who were under their guidance (the flock) understood themselves (bishops) to have the apostolic authority to be qualified and “ordained” by God to make this decision. This definition of what was canonical was not a one-time decision but was something that was articulated upon by the bishops many times in local church councils and larger Ecumenical councils for centuries. Sometimes there would be tweaks in the list of books, omitting a book or two, and then sometimes adding them back or adding others. It wasn’t until the Council of Trent in the 16th century, followed by Protestant councils, where they defined the canon of Scripture and declared the canon to be closed and finalized once and for all. As you can see, the Bible is a product of Christianity, not Christianity being a product of the Bible. This is something that is sort of blurry in Protestant circles because the Bible gets treated in Protestantism oftentimes as the source and foundation of the Christian belief. Allegorically it’s like which came first, the chicken or the egg. Christianity actually thrived for quite some time on oral tradition alone without a Bible. This was probably a time when the moral teachings of Christ were having the biggest impact on the behavior and actions of Christians, which alarmed the ruling-class in such a way that the ruling-class started finding ways to infiltrate Christianity and eventually hijack it. The teachings of Christ were enlightening minds to the fact that humanity has the God-given right to be free and that each person is a sovereign being under the law of God, and that morality was the key to freedom or enslavement. Christ’s teachings in practice by His followers is the antithesis to the mind-control and enslavement of the ruling-class, since the ruling-class wants to be looked upon and submitted to as God. Morality equals freedom, immorality equals enslavement.
Therefore, as time went on, and Satanic elements were trying to corrupt the message of the Gospel through false teachings, so Christians began to write oral traditions down and circulate them to churches for instructions and for documentation. Obviously, the writings from the Apostles were valued the most, and oftentimes were considered to be inspired just as much as the Old Testament Scriptures, which had already been well known by the Jewish Christians for centuries. Copies began to be made of these writings and were circulated to congregations. As these copies were being made of various letters and Gospel accounts, it is important to keep in mind that they were hand-written copies. These copies of the New Testament Scriptures were mostly written in Greek, but it is evident that some New Testament books were originally written in Aramaic and then translated into Greek. Some of the Early Church Fathers claimed that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew by the Apostle Matthew. Satanic elements who focused on distorting the Apostolic oral teachings began to not only make copies of those writings mentioned above, but they would omit or add parts to it in order to pervert the message, and they also wrote various accounts themselves and would deceptively forge the names of the Apostles in order to portray it as being Apostolic. That’s not to say that every pseudepigraphical (falsely attributed work) were done with bad intentions, nor does it mean that every addition or omission found among the ancient Bible manuscripts were done with the intentions of being misleading. There are whole sections found in Bible manuscripts that were not original but were added by later scribes and made it into versions found in modern Bible translations, for example Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53—8:11. In my opinion, concerning examples like Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11, for a free-thinking Christian, this should not be troubling at all because those sections appear to be harmless additions, it’s only when Christians try to defend the doctrine of Bible infallibility and inerrancy that those types of harmless additions becomes a matter of apologetic debate. There are other added sections that have slipped into the Bible that were not written by the original author and are pushing a significant doctrine, such as the interpolated phrase in verses 5:7–8 of the First Epistle of John, often referred to as the Johannine Comma, which makes the passage appear to be undisputed as Trinitarian. I personally have no problems with the doctrine of the Trinity, I actually support it myself, but on the other hand I do not support it as being binding Dogma that should be used to divide Christians, and I especially find it dangerous for Trinitarian doctrines to be added into Scripture in order to manipulate Christians to think that the concept of the Trinity is spelled out in the Bible more than what it was originally by the authors.
Due to the massive amounts of ancient Bible manuscripts that scholars have on hand to determine in a scientific manner, called Textual Criticism, it allows for narrowing down when certain additions were added by scribes. Much of the oldest witnesses of the New Testament manuscripts only goes back to late second century, which means that all the copies made during the first century, which is when the New Testament was written, have not survived, and it leaves a gap for possible additions and omissions that may have perhaps happened during the first century and early second century, therefore are left undetected. This means that it is possible that the Satanic agents of the “powers that be” from the Roman Empire could have added enemy provisions which would lead Christians into acquiescence and compliance to their tyrannical dictates. There are some very suspicious sections found in the Bible that give the impression that all tyrants are ordained by God and must be obeyed and submitted to. In my opinion, Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-18 look like something that the “powers that be” could have added through a scribal hand. As mentioned above, the Flavians of the Roman Empire and “the hugely influential Piso family of the Calpurnian bloodline of Rome had already been at work on the Roman Empire’s ‘Christian Problem’ since the mid-1st century AD, when the Pisos began to lay the foundations of the new state religion designed to control people’s thought and suppress further rebellion against the ‘authority’ of the ruling class.” Did these dark occultists of the Roman Empire have their scribes (agents) in the first century AD make copies of popular New Testament writings and add sections like Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-18? I have no proof that they did, nor do I have proof that they did not. The only proof that I have is that Bible manuscripts in general have had sections added or omitted by scribes, as I demonstrated above by showing a few examples, though there are many other examples that I did not mention. I have done some research on Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-18 in order to investigate the origins, and I have come to a conclusion.
Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-25
Recently I published an article on Romans 13:1-7 titled “Is Romans chapter 13 a forgery.”7 In the passage in 1 Peter 2:13-25, there is a similarity to chapter 13 of Romans concerning how we should submit to government authority. My goal was to determine through investigation whether there was a possibility that the “powers that be” such as the Flavians and Piso family of the Roman Empire, or perhaps some other Satanic agent, may have added that section into the Scriptures through a scribe. One thing for sure is that it is provable that there are many additions and omissions found in the ancient Bible manuscripts, sometimes just a word or phrase, but there are also whole sections that have been added or omitted by scribes, such as Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11, sections that were not written by the authors of those books but were added later by a scribe.
Romans 13:1-7 says…
Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. 4 For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. 5 Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake. 6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. 7 Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.
In my investigation into Romans 13:1-7, I found that that section is found in the oldest Bible manuscript, that being P46 which dates sometime between 175-225AD. As for Romans 13, there have been some who think that the Romans 13 passage could have been added during the Council of Nicaea, but ancient Bible manuscript P46 proves that this is not the case since that manuscript that has the Romans passage was copied at least one-hundred years prior to the Council of Nicaea. But the problem with manuscript evidence is that there is no manuscript that has Romans chapter 13 that has been discovered that goes any older that P46, which means that there is almost a one-hundred-and-fifty-year gap between the time that Paul wrote Romans, which is estimated to be around 57AD, to the date of the manuscript P46. I also investigated witnesses of the Early Church Fathers, and I found that that didn’t prove much either, since the oldest concrete witness was Irenaeus of Lyons, which is in the same timeline as P46. There was another witness that possibly cross-referenced the Roman 13 passage, that being the Martyrdom of Polycarp, and the oldest date for that witness is 155AD. But one factor that almost nobody mentions concerning the reliability of the witness of the Early Church Fathers, as far as textual criticism goes, is that the writings of the Early Church Fathers have a similar textual reliability issue as the Bible does, and that is the writings of the Church Fathers are products of scribal copies themselves with manuscript traditions and variants. So, when someone refers to a Church Father as being a witness of a citation of Scripture for textual criticism purposes, it needs to be understood that there are no autographed writings just like there is no autographed writings of the Biblical authors.
Now, looking at the passage of 1 Peter 2:13-25, the key verses have some troubling authoritarian sympathizing content…
13 Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme, 14 or to governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good. 15 For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men— 16 as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for [b]vice, but as bondservants of God. 17 Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king. 18 Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh.
This is in harmony with the Romans 13 passage and depending upon how statist-minded that a Christian is depends upon how they interpret this passage. Some so-called Christians use these passages to defend their government-worshiping political views. Some Christians who have a sense for liberty and freedom will often dance around these passages and be like, “I know the text says that, but it really means this.” As for a free-thinking Christian like myself, I prefer to say that those texts are not consistent with the teachings of Christ, and that these are either authoritarian inserts, or if Paul and Peter actually did write it, then they were wrong in their assertions. I have no problems questioning the judgment of the authors of the Bible. The idea that every word in the Bible is as if it came straight out of the mouth of God is a concept that is projected upon the Bible, but this is nothing more than a man-made doctrine, and it is unnecessary. This concept has led Christians to believing that they have to apply everything in the Bible to their philosophical and religious positions, and this has led to the adoption of racist views, inferiority of women, pacifism, unnecessarily strict and severe codes of conduct of every kind, petty division amongst believers, etc. And then you have the case like mentioned above where there are absurd assertions made in the Bible, which leads those who can think critically, therefore have to do all sorts of spinning the context and interpretative acrobatics in order to justify and make the passage applicable in a sensible and practical way. A free-thinking Christian does not feel the need to do all of that, because right is right and wrong is wrong.
Now let’s put the passage of 1 Peter 2:13-18 through the same test that I did for the Romans chapter 13 passage. When I consulted the oldest ancient Bible manuscript for the 1 Peter passage, I found that the manuscript is P72. According to the scholar Kurt Aland, P72 dates between the 3rd or 4th century. So, this manuscript is not as old as the P46 manuscript that was mentioned above, therefore there’s a large gap of time between the time that Peter wrote this epistle (62-64AD) to P72 that dates no earlier than 200AD. This means that there is a possibility that the “powers that be” could have inserted those authoritarian provisions to “submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors.” As for citations from patristic sources, this is similar to that of the Romans passage. The oldest citations that I found was from Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian of Carthage, who were contemporaries, and would have made these citations around 200AD.
My Conclusion on Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 (audio)
I have come to the same conclusion that I did concerning the Romans 13:1-17 passage. Either the authoritarian supporting assertions were not originally written by Peter and Paul themselves and were added later by those who desired to manipulate Christians to allow the Satanic authorities of the Roman Empire to dictate their lives and to give up their individual sovereignty, or Peter and Paul were simply wrong and were statists.
Render Unto Caesar
As I mentioned above, those passages in Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 are not consistent with the teachings of Jesus. Some may use the argument that it is based upon a scene found in the Gospels (Matthew 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26)…
15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted how they might entangle Him in His talk. 16 And they sent to Him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that You are true, and teach the way of God in truth; nor do You care about anyone, for You do not regard the person of men. 17 Tell us, therefore, what do You think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” 18 But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, “Why do you test Me, you hypocrites? 19 Show Me the tax money.” So they brought Him a denarius. 20 And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” 21 They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” And He said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22 When they had heard these words, they marveled, and left Him and went their way. (Matt. 22:15-22)
This passage is sometimes used by statists to demonstrate that Jesus was in harmony with the passages mentioned above in Romans and 1 Peter. But this is not the case at all. This passage in the Gospels that recorded Jesus as saying “render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” was first of all an attempt to put Jesus in a situation where he would have been attacked by the authorities for teaching to not pay taxes to Caesar, or he would have been attacked by the crowds who were oppressed by the authorities and hated Caesar. But Jesus brilliantly asked for a coin with Caesar’s image on it, and asked them whose image it was, and they said it was Caesar, therefore making the case that the coin, even though it belonged to whoever earned it, it still ultimately belonged to Caesar because that was the currency of the monetary system under Caesar’s control. When we use a currency created by a monetary system, it does not matter if we worked for it, because it ultimately belongs to those who created it, it just happens to be the form of payment that we have agreed to receive as recompense for our services or trade. It is also illegal to destroy that money because it is still considered government property. So basically, Jesus is teaching that if we use a currency, then we are responsible to follow the rules of whoever created that currency, because we have agreed to use that for exchange of goods. Obviously the “powers that be” have created a control system that makes it much less convenient to operate outside of their monetary system, but ultimately the decision is still up to us to use it. No doubt that this is why Jesus often taught the dangers of money. It goes well beyond the individual’s temptation of greed and the worship of money, because it is being used to control the populations through usury, which is Satanic. Illuminati banking cartels control the world through their monetary system, and they have accumulated most of the wealth of the world by lending their currency and creating a world full of debt slaves. As Proverbs 22:7 says, “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is slave of the lender.” Jesus was not promoting paying taxes but gave us insight about the strings that are attached to using government currency. You may have worked for it or accumulated it on your own, but that currency is still the property of those who create it, especially fiat currency. Almost every teaching that is recorded of Jesus concerning money is almost always done as a warning of the dangers of it, that being personal greed and the slavery it causes.
How I view the Bible (audio)
I demonstrated above how many Christians view the Bible, such as many believe that it is infallible and inerrant and the sole authority to our faith. Some, such as Catholics and Orthodox Christians believe in the concept of Scripture and Tradition, meaning that along with the infallible Word of God there is an infallible interpretation of the Christian belief system, and that being preserved and facilitated by “the Church.” Roman Catholicism believes that the Roman Catholic Church is the Church that Christ established, and the Eastern Orthodox Church believes that they are the Church that Christ established. They both claim that they possess an unbroken chain of succession of bishops that trace all the back to the twelve apostles, therefore claiming that this gives them the authority to be the infallible mechanism to govern the people of God. I personally spent over twenty-five years participating in those Christian institutions that push those beliefs, but I have broken away from them. As for what I do believe about the Bible and how it should be used, I will give my thoughts.
When I think of the Bible, I see it as a large book that is made up of many books, written by numerous different authors who had special encounters with God, and those encounters were recorded by them personally or by someone else who recorded what they learned about it. God interacted with them in special ways. Sometimes He spoke to them orally. Sometimes He communicated to them through dreams and visions. Some of these authors were taught by Jesus Himself, while some of them recorded what the Apostles told them. These writings, as I mentioned above, went through a process of being debated upon to be determined what was authentic and truly inspired by God. I personally look at this development of the Canon of Scripture as being special. I do believe that these books of the Bible are inspired by God, but I do not believe that they are infallible and inerrant and perfect in every way as many Christians believe. I do believe that a person will see the fingerprints of God throughout the Bible, but on the other hand you will find the fingerprints of man in it as well. The Bible was written by human hands, proven fact. The books of the Bible were decided upon by humans and the Canon of Scripture was developed by humans, proven fact. The belief in Divine inspiration of the Bible is something that is believed upon and cannot be proven as fact, it is simply a concept that has been projected upon the Bible. Many Christians claim that the Holy Spirit guided the authors of the Bible and protected them from error as they wrote. The fact of the matter is that there are plenty of errors in the Bible, despite all of the attempts to reconcile these errors and contradictions and to harmonize them. I myself published a book years ago called A Complete Comparison of the Four Gospels8, where I put every single Gospel passage side-by-side and compared the differences of the Gospels writers, and I provided an apparatus where the differences were harmonized in order to show that there are no contradictions. I am very proud of that work, and it makes a wonderful study tool to analyze the Gospels, and I use it myself for my own study and research. But looking back with hindsight, it was a pious attempt to defend the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible. I no longer believe in the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible, and I don’t see any reason why that has to be a requirement to be believed. As for all the variants found even within the Gospel accounts alone, not to mention all the other contradictions throughout the rest of the Bible, these contradictions should not be too troubling. As the Gospel writers recorded the events of Christ you will find details in many places that vary. I don’t find this troubling in the least because this is not a matter of fallacy but rather a difference in reporting. The four Gospels are four witnesses to the birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection of the Jesus. These four witnesses give accounts of what was seen and heard. The fact that they are not carbon copies of each other allows me to trust them that much more. Had they been written in a way that every detail had been exactly the same then that would make me suspicious. Whenever a police officer interviews witnesses to a car wreck, and there are multiple people who saw what happened in real time, there will be almost always honest but conflicting details, simply because people see something from different angles with different perspectives. Some may notice some things that others don’t, and others may emphasize some things more than others. It does not mean that the accounts cannot be trusted, but that they are different versions of the same event. When taking this into consideration concerning the Bible and its content, if one rigidly believes the manmade concept of Bible infallibility and inerrancy then they will be required to do a lot of interpretative acrobatics in order to justify and harmonize conflicting content. But a freethinker can read the Bible and decide for themselves what is true and whether it should be applied to their lives or not.
The Apostle Paul gave his view of what Scripture meant to him in 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” I have seen Christians use this verse to “prove” the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible. Obviously, Paul had Old Testament books in mind when writing that to Timothy, because this letter to Timothy is estimated to have been written around 66AD, well before all of the New Testament books were written in their entirety. Another indicator that Paul meant Old Testament writings is from verse 14 of the same chapter when Paul said to Timothy, “that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures,” obviously it was a timeframe that was prior to any of the New Testament books to have been written. So, this standard concerning Scripture described by Paul needs to be understood in the context of what Paul was meaning, therefore applying this to the New Testament is something that is done outside of Paul’s true context. This could be applied to the New Testament if one takes this as a generalized rule for Scripture, but it does need to be acknowledged what Paul was actually talking about before making that assumption. That being said, what Paul said is something that I actually agree with, but it doesn’t mean that all Scripture is infallible and inerrant, but that it is a work that was inspired by God, or a better and more accurate translation is “God-breathed (θεόπνευστος).” God is simply relaying His perfect message through imperfect men, which logically means that you will find God’s words and man’s words intermingled throughout. This means that it is up to us to determine what is man’s words in the Bible and what is God’s words in the Bible. If you are a freethinker, then you will do your research and come to your own conclusion. If you chose to not be a freethinker and are convinced that other men (clergy and institutions) need to dictate what you should or should not believe, then this will most definitely keep you bound to man’s doctrines and dogmas that pose and masquerade as divinely inspired provisions. Paul, as mentioned above, said that Scripture is God-breathed, therefore it possesses content that is divinely inspired “and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Scripture can be used as a moral compass that can guide us to live the way that God wants us to live. That is the purpose of the Bible and the mission that Jesus came to teach. The Bible was never intended to be used to create belief systems but rather lead us to understand the Lord’s will and to live and behave like Christ. The teachings of Christ existed well before the New Testament, and if Jesus intended His followers to use a book to create various belief systems, like we see today with over forty-five thousand Christian denominations, then Jesus would have passed out Bibles and said, “Here, take this book, this is all you need.” No, Jesus came and taught morality because that is what really makes a difference in the world that truly matters and directly impacts whether the population becomes free or enslaved. But so many Christians from the earliest days of Christianity have been using the written Scriptures in order to develop BINDING DOGMAS that cause more division and strife amongst followers of Christ than anything else. Christians have chosen to put less significance upon the moral teachings of Christ and have put almost all the significance upon creating definitions and creeds that have absolutely no impact upon leading people to become moral and Christ-like. Christians have created countless different so-called formulas for salvation, which conflict and require so many different expectations, all claiming that they have the “correct” formula to “be saved,” and they all use the Bible and quote Bible verses to back it up. So many Christians have unfortunately turned Christianity into a religion of a book, and have basically deified the Bible in a way that makes it almost as if it is the fourth person of the Trinity. The evidence of that is how it has been declared by many to be infallible, inerrant, perfect, and the sole authority to one’s faith and should NEVER be questioned. And for those such as Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians who take it further and claim that only their institutions have certain ordained people who can correctly use the Bible and define what everyone should believe, makes practical sense if one believes in the infallibility of the Bible because at least they account for the historical fact that the Bible was developed and the books were defined and declared canonical, therefore logically it would require authority outside of the Bible to put the Bible together and chose what books should be considered inspired and what should not be considered inspired. But as a freethinker, one does not need to be told how and what to believe, but choose to do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Christian institutions have gone off the rails ever since man’s pride got in the way and the enemies of Christianity started infiltrating and coopting different Christian sects in order to control them. Man’s pride has led to many Christians to create their own spin and then declare that they are the only ones who have unlocked the “true” meaning, therefore attacking anyone who disagrees with them. This eventually becomes a competition between groups who compete to have the most followers and “win” the most arguments. Then, those who have infiltrated and coopted have created paradigms and false dialectics in order to divide and rule, which is very effective and has led to institutionalized Christianity and religious powers that are very similar to those that Jesus opposed the most.
Freethinking Christianity
Being a Christian freethinker does not mean that moral relativism is embraced in any manner whatsoever. There is undoubtedly absolute truth, which has been written on our very souls by the Creator, and we were originally designed by the Creator to intuitively understand the difference between right and wrong. But Satan and his minions have always worked endlessly to distort human perception of what is right and wrong, and God has always provided a counter to Satan’s ploys throughout the history of humanity. As man has been led astray, God would work through certain people such as prophets and mystics in order to help bring people back into the knowledge of Truth. As a freethinking Christian I believe that Jesus came to reveal that Truth, and He was the perfect example. His moral teachings and His standard He set for us to follow is lifechanging and world changing. Even non-Christians often admit that they don’t believe in Jesus but that they do admire what has been recorded to have been taught by Him. His moral standard and teachings are not only lifechanging and practical, but they are intuitive.
In the world we live in, Satan and his minions are ruling from the highest places of earthly power, and everything that they condition society to embrace is designed to lead people into the antithesis of God’s moral laws. The reason why they work so hard to lead society into immorality is because the more that a sociality becomes moral, then the freer that that society becomes, and the more immoral that a society becomes the more enslaved they become. That is because of the Natural Law of the universe, which is the Moral Laws of God. It is a proven fact that has played out over and over again. God’s Moral Laws are universal, non-man-made, binding and absolute conditions that govern the consequences of behavior for all intelligent beings. It is a set of universal spiritual laws which act as the governing dynamics of consciousness. These laws have been woven into the very fabric of our reality which deliver the behavioral consequences for beings with the mental capacity capable of discovering the objective difference between harmful and non-harmful actions. It must be understood that morality is objective, meaning that it is not subjective, it’s not for people to just arbitrarily decide what’s considered right behavior and wrong behavior based upon their likes, whims, and preferences at any given time or location. Its objective and inherent, and it exists independently of our perceptions, and it’s there for us to discover, and we either align our behavior with it and live in harmony with it, or live in opposition to it.9 This is knowledge that the Dark Occultists understand completely, and they keep it hidden while at the same time leading the masses into chaos and confusion with Satanic ideologies like moral relativism that teaches that truth is not objective, and that right and wrong is subjective. Satan’s minions influence the masses because they control the media, entertainment industry, educational system, etc., which means that they are able to program the minds from cradle to grave in order to distort the very truth that we all have written upon our souls by the Creator. This dilutes and distorts our understanding of what is true and what is right, and makes our own intuition completely impotent if we don’t make a conscious effort to seek God. We are being pulled from every direction by Satanic propaganda and mind control operations. The average person does not understand the level of how deep, dark, and how far-reaching this mind control goes, and they fail to recognize how their own consciousness has been impacted to view the world and reality a certain way.
What must I do to be saved? (audio)
There are over forty thousand different Christian denominations all using the same Bible, but there is a massive spectrum of criteria that has been formulated amongst all these different groups. Some say faith in Jesus alone. Some say faith and water baptism. Some say repentance, faith and baptism. Some say you need to speak in tongues. Some sects of Christianity are sacramental churches, such as Catholic and Orthodox, who believe that sacraments like baptism, confession, and the Eucharist are binding and literally God’s invisible graces working through visible means, therefore essential for salvation. While other parts are non-sacramental who teach that those sacraments are only symbolic and do not actually do anything that effects salvation. There’s a massive spectrum from one end to the other, and the list goes on and on and on concerning all the different formulas for salvation. But what is troubling is that most of these different formulas for salvation are backed up with Scripture, but it is a matter of how those things are interpreted. You can use the Bible and make it look like faith alone is all that is required for salvation, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9) Then you can turn right around and use Scripture to make it look like works are essential for salvation, “You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.” (James 2:24) Then Scripture can be used to bring in more criteria, such as, “Then Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’” (Acts 2:38) Peter says to be baptized in the “name of Jesus Christ,” while Jesus gives a Trinitarian baptismal formula, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matt. 28:19) Then even more criteria can be taken from Scripture to make it appear that the Eucharist is essential for salvation, “Then Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. 57 As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.’” (John 6:53-57) Then there is confession of sins that can be used as further criteria, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) There are some Pentecostal churches that teach that speaking in tongues is a necessary manifestation of the Holy Spirit and without it, a person is not truly saved. They use Scripture to support their claims, such as during the day of Pentecost in the book of Acts, many people who became Christians immediately spoke in tongues (Acts 2:4; 10:46; 19:6). These same Pentecostals, called Jesus-only or Oneness Pentecostals, focus solely on the baptismal formula found in Acts 2:38 that says to “be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ,” therefore opposing the Trinitarian formula of baptizing “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matt. 28:19) On the other hand, many Trinitarian churches are extremely dogmatic about baptizing in the name of the Trinity, and they reject any other baptismal formulations. Then we can bring more criteria in concerning baptism, such as what is required, immersion in water or is sprinkling okay? This is highly debated at every angle. Some believe that you have to dip the person three separate times, once in the name of the Father, then once in the name of the Son, and then a third time in the name of the Holy Spirit. Some believe that one single dip is sufficient. I can go on and give hundreds of examples off the top of my head of all the variations and formulas for salvation that are believed and taught by different Christians, all using the same book, and all using Scripture to support their claims.
Then there are many other dogmas and doctrines that are related to salvific criteria found among all the different Christian denominations. Doctrines and dogmas that are binding and essential criteria and is to be believed if one is to be considered a Christian, which varies and makes up a massive spectrum, as I have been demonstrating. These different criteria have developed and been vehemently debated from the earliest days of Christianity, and by the fourth century the institutionalized Ecumenical Councils declared anyone who believed outside of the rigid formulas were excommunicated and punished. For example, the first Council of Nicaea in 325AD debated over the deity of Christ against Arianism, which taught that Jesus was not eternal. The first Council of Constantinople (381AD) further condemned Arianism, along with Apollinarism that maintained that Jesus had a human body and sensitive human soul, but a divine mind and not a human rational mind. Also condemned Sabellianism, the belief that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three different modes of God, etc. First Council of Ephesus (431AD) which condemned Nestorianism’s teachings about how many natures Christ had and their concept of hypostatic union. It also condemned the doctrine of Pelagianism that taught that original sin did not taint human nature and that humans have the free will to achieve human perfection without divine grace. Council of Chalcedon (451AD) dealt with the alleged offences of Bishop Dioscorus of Alexandria, the relationship between the divinity and humanity of Christ, many disputes involving particular bishops and sees. Second Council of Constantinople (553AD) once again confronted doctrines of Nestorianism and condemned Monophysitism, a doctrine that in the person of the incarnated Word, that is, in Jesus Christ, there was only one nature—the divine. Third Council of Constantinople (680-681AD) condemned Monothelitism, concerning the human and divine wills of Jesus. And the seventh Ecumenical Council, Second Council of Nicaea (787) was concerning the use of religious images and icons. That is just a glossed over description of what was focused upon during the seven Ecumenical Councils, which are of great importance to Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. It is claimed and these events represented an attempt by Church leaders to reach an orthodox consensus, restore peace and develop a unified Christendom. As for me, those doctrines that were debated and condemned with harsh judgments are teachings that are speculative in nature, and hardly a reason to be a means for radical division. I cannot overstate how those issues are SPECULATIVE, and have absolutely no impact on morality whatsoever, therefore no impact on the freedom and slavery of humanity. I am not saying that it is not beneficial to seek the deeper truths of God and to try to understand those kinds of mysteries, but those condemnations and judgments based upon how many natures or energies that Christ had or the fine details about the deity of Christ is based upon speculation. The doctrine of the Trinity is something that can be supported by Scripture, but on the other hand, those who are not Trinitarian make great arguments while using Scripture as well. I personally resonate with the doctrine of the Trinity, but I do not condemn anyone who doesn’t, because this doctrine is a matter of interpretation and not something that just jumps out of the pages of Scripture in a self-evident way. That also goes for the belief in the deity of Christ. I have always found passages of Scripture that suggest that Jesus is God in the flesh, but there are plenty of other passages that suggest otherwise. For example, in the beginning of the Gospel of John you will find probably the most convincing passage that shows that Jesus is God, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (Jn. 1:1,14) Then in Revelation 3:12, Jesus says this, “He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God.” If Jesus is God, then why does He refer to another as being His God? That is a rhetorical question, because I already have a position that I resonate with, but this is to demonstrate that it is perfectly understandable why there are so many different points of view about these kinds of deeper doctrines, which is why I cannot imagine a loving God would send somebody to Hell for believing one way or another or choosing to have more love for those who believe one over the other. Let me give an illustration that I made up concerning about how I believe God actually feels about this. Just imagine there is a man who is a father of four children. The first child thinks of dad as Superman, who can leap tall buildings in a single bound, stop bullets, and believes that dad is the strongest and toughest man in the world. The second child loves his dad and sees dad as a very loving and compassionate father, who is a wonderful provider, but does not see dad the same way that the first child does. The second child doesn’t think dad is Superman, but he loves his dad just as much as the first child. Then the third child, who is a bit OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and is obsessed with dad’s rules and thinks that everyone needs to zealously follow every single one of dad’s rules right to the letter. The first and second children are not nearly sticklers for the rules as the third child. Then the fourth child has a little of all those characteristics as the first three children. All of these children love their father the same, and even though he is the same dad to them all, do you believe that if he is a good father that he would love any of them any differently even though they see him with a different point of view? Would that dad only love the first son who thinks that he is Superman while perhaps condemning the others to harsh judgment, even death? Or would dad choose the third son who is obsessed with his rules while condemning the others, who actually loves their dad equally? Absolutely not!
We live in a world where everybody has been dealt a different hand in life, and our exposure to truth and knowledge of God varies. Some people have been born into a God-fearing family and has had well thought-out and well-practiced faith in God lived out in front of them their whole lives, while others have been born into the world with the polar opposite. Not everyone has had God revealed to them, while some have had only partial or distorted representations of God presented to them. This is why that I do not accept that God sends good people to burn forever in Hell for not accepting the Gospel because there are so many legitimate reasons why. Even though there are numerous places in Scripture that declare that only those who accept the Gospel, in various forms of criteria as I have demonstrated above, the loving God that I believe in would not send unfortunate good people to burn for eternity as punishment for not grasping a Gospel message that many Christian institutions have mishandled and poorly represented. There are many people who have had good reasons to be turned off by Christians and have shared the same sentiment as Gandhi, when he said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” I know some people who grew up in families that are generational churchgoers, and they unfortunately were exposed to rotten hypocrisy from the time that they were born, and instead of following that same horrible pattern, they got out of church when they were old enough to make that decision and they have extremely hard feelings because they were abused and exposed to bad people who were fake Christians. Some of these people will never step foot in a church again and are so damaged that they are not open to even discuss God in a positive manner. I am not going to go on and on presenting these kinds of examples of why people have good reasons to not be open to God, but I think you understand my point. Even though the Bible has many passages that appear to be uncompromising with some of the “salvation criteria,” and that unless you follow that criteria to the letter then you will burn in Hell, but Jesus is recorded in the Gospel of John where He says something that appears to me as a gracious exception, when He says, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.” (Jn. 15:22) This appears to show that when someone has not heard the Gospel then they are not held to the same accountability as those who have. I think this also applies to those who have been the victims of having poorly represented Gospel messages delivered to them. Ultimately, I believe that God judges each and every one of us fairly based upon our own individual lives, and that it is not a matter of acceptance of formulas designed by “Christians” who have cherrypicked the Bible with a list of criteria to be followed in order to be “saved.” Christianity was NOT meant to be a belief system, or a religion of a book (Bible). Christianity is living as a follower of Christ and the example that He set for us. As I mentioned above, Jesus never passed out Bibles and said, “here, take this and create a belief system from it,” but He came and taught morality in its purest form, in order to truly make a difference in our lives and to change the world. But a combination of flawed pious intentions by His followers, and the infiltration and coopting of His enemies, that created institutionalized Christianity therefore creating a religion and called it Christianity that put more emphasis upon speculative doctrines and formulas than lifechanging morality of individuals. It got Christians to be more concerned about having the correct interpretations about the effectiveness of ceremonial sacraments that have zero impact upon how we live our lives, or more concerned about how many natures Christ had, or which Person of the Trinity precedes from who, etc., and less concerned about the things that Christ taught that actually makes a difference in the world for the better. Now there are so many Christians that allow themselves to divide themselves over formulas and made-up lists of criteria that can be interpreted a million different ways, but very little time and effort is taken to present true morality that Christ taught, which is not something that can be interpreted in a bunch of ways because it is absolute and self-evident. If Christians were united upon that and put all of those other less significant dogmas and doctrines in their rightful perspective, then Christianity would crush the head of Satan and his minions, and the world would no longer be ruled by the parasite ruling-class that rules it today.
Therefore, the question is not “what must I do to be saved” as if we have a list of cherrypicked Bible passages that determine our fate. Here is what I believe. God judges each and every one of us based upon how we respond to Him according to how He has revealed Himself to us. As I mentioned above, every single person has had a certain hand dealt to them in their lives that leads them to understand God in their own way. Not everyone has the same intellect to discern reality. Not everyone has had the same opportunity to receive the Gospel. Not everyone has had the same Christian example demonstrated to them by other Christians. Not everyone has had God interact in their lives at the same level. I truly believe God is a fair and just God, and He will judge us all fairly based upon how we respond to Him according to the hand we have been dealt.
Following God is a life journey, and the more we seek Him and learn to live for Him, the more He will reveal Himself to us. Our prayer life plays a massive part in our relationship with God, because it is how we can come to know God the most on an intimate level. It is like any intimate relationship that we have, communication is key. When someone is in an intimate relationship, it is only natural that one devotes themselves to the other and desires to spend time and to learn more and more about the other person. This is why it is very important for us to understand that we are responsible for our own relationship with God, not some institutionalized entity to tell us how we should think and what we should believe. Your relationship with God is personal, not dictated or mediated by a priest-class. That is not to say that we cannot get good advice and direction from others who have followed God and done their own research and practiced discipline and holiness. Just as we can use other successfully married couples as examples to follow and can glean wisdom from them, so we can and should look to others for spiritual examples to glean wisdom and knowledge from. But at the end of the day, just as your marriage is your responsibility and for you and your spouse to work out, so is your spiritual life. It is not always fun, and it usually requires sacrifices. Not sacrifices like animal sacrifices, but rather revolving your time and energy around growing closer to God and being who He wants you to be. The longer that you seek God and are willing to listen to Him the more you will grow closer to Him and know when He is speaking to you and guiding you. For me personally, I have always felt closest to God when I am in solitude, and can pray, think and ponder on Him. Going to church never made me feel closer to God, and it wasn’t for a lack of trying. I spent over two decades faithfully attending church and getting involved in ministries. I spent ten years as a Southern Baptist seeking to grow closer to God in that type of “worship” services. I spent ten years in a totally different type of setting, that being the liturgical services of Catholic churches. And I spent two years in the liturgical setting of an Eastern Orthodox church. I never one time felt any closer to God by going to church. The times that I felt closest to God was always in solitude and when I was researching and learning more about Him. This is my honest confession, and I do not expect others to agree with me, nor am I suggesting that this is the answer for others. We are all different and have different personalities. I am an introvert and I have always been in my element while in solitude. I realize that others with extrovert personalities are quite the opposite and feed off being around other people. Being in church around others was always a little out of my comfort zone and it never really resonated with me, therefore never enhancing my connection to God. I believe that going to church is something that we all have to decide for ourselves and determine whether it is helping us grow closer to God.
The Church (audio)
As mentioned above, I have spent over two decades faithfully going to church, and the different types of churches I went to understands the purpose and practice quite differently. Catholic and Orthodox are sacramental and liturgical churches, while the Southern Baptist denomination that I was a member of for ten years was not. In the Southern Baptist church worship services, it was usually centered around the sermon preached by the preacher. Services usually started off with some songs being sang by the congregation and the choir. Perhaps there would be some announcements during the service, and then the sermon would usually come at the conclusion of the service. Pious Baptists usually believe that going to church is very important, but they don’t have the same perspective as found in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, where the doctrine of going to Mass is binding, and if you miss Mass without a good reason then that is considered a mortal sin, meaning it can result in falling out of the state of grace and send you to Hell. Baptists usually see someone missing lots of church as being a backslider, and for those who believe the doctrine of “once in grace always in grace,” they will look at a backslider as one who probably didn’t really have salvation in the first place. I always felt that those who believed “once in grace always in grace” actually agreed with those who believe that you can lose your salvation, but they just found ways to spin it and articulate it to sound different in order to push their pet doctrine. Therefore, if a perceived “saved” person quits going to church then many “once in grace always in grace” advocates will say that they didn’t really have salvation in the first place.
Catholic and Orthodox worship services are liturgical and sacramental. The services are not centered around the sermon like that of a Baptist service, but the Mass is centered around the liturgy and the Eucharist (Lord’s Supper). They believe that the Eucharist is where the bread and wine become transformed into literally the body and blood of Christ, and I have heard it said that it helps you become what you eat, that is Christ-like. The liturgy is the public worship, and is believed to play a vital role that ‘continues the work of our redemption in, with, and through his Church… It is seen as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus and involves the presentation of man’s sanctification under the guise of signs perceptible by the senses and its accomplishment in ways appropriate to each of these signs.’ (CCC 1069-1070) They believe that it is God’s invisible graces working through invisible means. I remember that prior to converting to Catholicism I was attracted to the liturgical concept because going to church was not giving me that connection to God that I was told that it was supposed to do. Like I mentioned above, going to church was a struggle for me because I never felt like I fit in, and I would always leave church not feeling any closer to God than before I entered the doors. The concept of liturgy and sacraments did sound like an actual purpose to go, because it was not about going to sing hymns and listen to a preacher share information that I myself was learning on my own, but it was about receiving something that I myself could not duplicate on my own. That resonated with me because I saw that there was an actual purpose to go to church. But as I have described above, I spent over a decade faithfully attending Mass, and even though I believed with all my heart that I was doing God’s will and receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, it never fed me with the fullness of God as it was claimed it was supposed to do. In other words, I never left Mass feeling any closer to God than when I entered the doors. It was not for a lack of trying. I can see how going to Mass can be very beneficial to those who don’t spend much time researching and studying their faith, because Catholic and Orthodox liturgy is very repetitious, and there are lots of Scripture and Traditional beliefs that are constantly being uttered during Mass, therefore attendees are learning their religious creeds and dogmas during every Mass service. You actually participate and repeat creeds every service and those creeds become engrained in your brain. A tremendous amount of Scripture is read and uttered by the congregation during Mass, and I have always thought it was ridiculous when people would say that they never hear Scripture in a Catholic Mass. But like I mentioned, after years of going to Mass, just like going to church as a Baptist, it never helped me feel closer to God, and I always felt closer to God on my own. Again, let me repeat, I am not suggesting this for others, because I believe it is up to each and every one of us to seek for ourselves what actually brings us closer to God, and come to our own conclusions.
I do believe that Jesus established His Church. But as I have demonstrated in this book, I believe that He did not establish Institutionalized Christianity. Institutionalized Christianity is the creation of man, and there are many faces to it. Institutionalized Christianity often pretends to have a monopoly on God’s will, and it is used to control the masses. Oftentimes the different so-called Christian institutions are nothing more than Hegelian dialectics, that is, they are pitted off in opposition to one another by those looking to create the THESIS verses ANTITHESIS to equal SYNTHESIS. It is a divide and rule technique that is an ancient geopolitical model and strategy to ensure that the masses are never unified, and they are led to believe that those who should be their allies have the perception that they are their enemies, therefore not recognizing that the true enemy is the one (powers that be) that are manipulating all sides. In my book called Handbook on the Powers that “Should Not” Be, I wrote about how the Illuminati uses this Hegelian Dialectic to divide the world population by creating geopolitical ideologies. The Illuminati did this by creating Communism in order to pit it against Capitalism, while controlling both. This allowed them to divide the world in order to create wars. Capitalist nations created the wealth to develop the New World Order police state with all the technology and weaponry, and the Communists not only established centralized power in those countries that it was enforced, but it was covertly used to infiltrate Capitalist countries like the United States through education and the political landscapes. This has now manifested into the result that they have wanted, that is the New World Order global government. In other words, Capitalism was the thesis, Communism was the anthesis, and the New World Order one world government is the synthesis, which is the desired outcome. The same kind of technique is also used to control religious institutions by the same “powers that be” who have controlled the political landscape. In my last book called The Antichrist and his Cult, I gave numerous examples of Christian denominations and institutions that were either hijacked or created by the Illuminati (powers that be). When one does the research, they will find that many of these so-called Christian institutions were created by the funding of the Illuminati bankers. Big name television “evangelists” and mega-church pastors are oftentimes agents and have memberships to infamous Cult created organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations. It has been exposed many times where so-called ministries would do “mission” work under the guise of spreading the Gospel, but it would be CIA operations to spread propaganda or to spy. This is why I highly suggest everyone to do some independent research and find out where the Christian denomination and institution that you may be a part of or are considering to join, and to find out whether it was bankrolled and founded for geopolitical reasons, because there is a shockingly large amount of mainstream Christian denominations and institutions that are tied to big Illuminati money.
The church that Christ established was not institutionalized, it is the body of believers united in Jesus Christ. The word Christian simply means a follower of Christ. The church is made up of many followers of Christ and are united spiritually. No church building or cathedral makes any difference whatsoever. We are scattered here on earth, but we have the same destination, and we will be united in a more significant way after we leave our body. Being a Christian does not necessarily mean that we all share the same creed or interpretations. We all are in different stages in our relationship with God, which means that some are in the beginning stages where our understanding and knowledge is at a minimum. As we learn and grow in our faith, as we should, then our understanding grows. I believe it is important to continually seek to grow in our relationship with God through prayer and study. Some people are more bent on higher levels of thinking, and they are self-driven to learn more all the time. Some people are simply not bent that way, but that is okay because sometimes those with less inclination to do deep thinking and learning can be the most holy and do more spiritual works that actually please God the most. I learned this lesson many years ago when I had been studying the Bible for a number of years. I was so passionate about learning the Bible and I studied it continually. I found that within a few years I had learned more about the Bible than many people who had been in church their whole lives. One day I was having a conversation with a young lady who grew up in church and in a family who were devout Christians. I assumed that she might know more about the Bible than I did but as we were talking, I discovered that I knew quite a bit more than her. She even admitted that she knew less about the Bible than I did. I remember how that made me feel for a moment that I was on a different level than her. But as I got to know her better, I found that she had been doing mission work for years and helped the needy and less fortunate. This was a great lesson for me because when I compared the difference that she had made in the world to what little difference I had made in the world, even though I could quote more Bible verses, I felt quite inferior after having a temporary superiority trip boasting in my knowledge. I realized that knowledge is good, but there are other things that God finds much more valuable. The Apostle Paul was truly correct when he said, “Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. 2 And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. 3 But if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.” (1 Cor. 8:1-3)
What makes us the church is our faith in Jesus Christ, not that we all share the exact same points of view. We are all at different levels of understanding the ways of God, but God knows our hearts, and we will ultimately be judged by Him based upon that. Many of us have had different journeys to get to where we are at spiritually, and we all will continue to be on our own journey. But as long as we all are honestly seeking the truth and trying to do what is right, then I cannot imagine how God could be disappointed with that. The church is the body of believers, not from a particular Christian denomination, but scattered throughout all denominations and beyond. Even in the most infiltrated and Illuminati coopted congregation it is possible for even misled people to still have a heart for God, even though they may have a distorted understanding of Him, because God sees the heart and knows and understands. Not that we should not try to help people to understand the dangers of the congregation that they are a part of, because we should. We should share information to help clarify, and therefore letting them come to their own conclusions.
Sin Factor
The Bible says a whole lot about sin. Sin means to miss the mark. As I mentioned in this book, I do not believe that the Bible is infallible and inerrant, therefore when it comes to determining what is sin and what isn’t, then I prefer to study carefully and allow the Holy Spirit and my intuition to help me discern what is sinful and what is not. The Bible has lots of God’s fingerprints within it, and it also has lots of man’s fingerprints, so it requires us to seek what is sin according to God, and what is sin according to man as projected in the Bible. This by no means suggests that we just pick and choose what we want to be sin based upon their likes, whims, and preferences, because that would be moral relativism. But I do believe that the knowledge of right and wrong has been written upon our hearts by the Creator. The Bible does teach that in both the Old and New Testaments, “I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them.” (Jer. 31:33; Heb. 10:16) And the Apostle Paul also alludes to this concept as well, “for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, 15 who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them.” (Romans 2:14-15) God did create us with the understanding to discern right from wrong, but the problem is that Satan and his minions have always done everything in their power to distort that in the minds of the people, because as I mentioned earlier in this book, immorality leads to enslavement, and morality leads to freedom. Today there is a multi-trillion-dollar industry that does nothing but target the perception of humanity and their understanding of the difference between right and wrong. This Satanic Cult (powers that be) created the ideology of moral relativism, which is designed to confuse the masses to believe that there is no such thing as objective truth. The Cult knows good and well that objective truth is very real, but as long as they keep the masses confused about it, then they are able to control them because humanity will be out of harmony with the Laws of God, that is Natural Law. Humanity has always struggled with this because Satan has always had minions who rebel against God on earth. The Old Testament does a good job of demonstrating how God has provided moral guidelines in ancient times in order to help humanity know the difference between right and wrong in a world lead astray by the Adversary, Satan. God’s Moral Laws are found in the Old Testament, as well as the traditions of man, therefore as a freethinker it requires careful discernment to distinguish between the two. Obviously as a Christian, Jesus is the perfect example of how God’s Moral Laws are to be embraced and lived, but just as the Old Testament was written by man and has the fingerprints of man found within, so must the New Testament be discerned with the same careful discernment as the Old Testament. I discussed this in detail in earlier parts of this book. Imperfect men wrote about the perfect Laws of God, therefore we should use our God-given discernment based upon those Laws that are written upon our hearts. Certain commandments in the Bible will feel natural to us because they are in harmony with what has been written upon our hearts by the Creator, while other commandments in the Bible, if spiritually discerned, will not seem natural to us because they are traditions of man that are presented as coming from God. That is why if one carefully discerns the Bible with an open mind free from presupposed dogmas and indoctrination, then commandments that are traditions of man will stand out as unnecessary and morally neutral. Traditions of man will put lots of emphasis upon commands that make absolutely no difference and have no impact upon you or the welfare of others, but they will present these commands as something that God is obsessed with and will punish with Hell if they are not followed to the letter. Most of the Ten Commandments are very legitimate, but why would God be concerned about us observing the Sabbath day? Many Christians cannot even agree with what day that God wants us to observe, Saturday or Sunday. I have seen many Christians rant about how other Christians should not be observing Sunday because the Sabbath was always observed on Saturday, yet in ancient Christian tradition the Christians started observing their Sabbath on Sunday because it was the day that Christ is recorded to have risen from the grave, therefore Christians changed the day of the Sabbath and called it the Lord’s Day. As a freethinker I am quite certain that God is not obsessed with something like that. I would imagine that He is happy either way that His followers make a special day to observe Him, though that should be something that we all do every day. I also see Christians get hung up on trivial things and act as if God is obsessed with the name that we call Him, and they will insist that we should call Him by various Hebrew names, and that we should only refer to Jesus as some special Hebrew or Aramaic name, as if any other name we use to reference Him is invalid and that God will not listen to us otherwise. I have also heard other silly things like we should not conclude our prayers with the word “amen.” I have heard people I respect say that if you use the word “amen” at the end of your prayer then it will annule your prayer. Really? Absolutely ridiculous! God knows our hearts and does not need our HUMAN vocabulary to be “perfect” in order for us to appease Him. All of these human provisions that pose as God’s provisions turn our faith and relationship to God into a man-made religion. Ultimately this just makes God look like a petty tyrant.
God-given Liberty
It is important to understand that Christians have a significant amount of liberty, and that needs to be understood more than almost anything else, because this is what is not understood the most in the world today. You need to know what your rights are, that is, the God-given rights that we all have that come from the Creator. Most people do not even know what a right is, and this must change, because once this is understood by the collective then this will change the world! But until this is understood then we are going to continue to be under tyranny, which is spinning out of control right before our eyes today. A “right” is any action taken that does not bring harm to others. So, in other words, we all have the right to live however we want as long as we do not harm others. That is rights given by the Creator, not man, not government, but from God. Government has no right to infringe upon that under any circumstance. Therefore, we do not have the right to believe that we can elect people to infringe on other people’s God-given rights either.
You also have the right to self-defense. It is a God-given right to protect you and innocent people with whatever force necessary. Pacifist and so-called Christians will promote not defending ourselves, and they will often get stuck on the passage of Scripture where Jesus taught to turn the other cheek. (Matt. 5:39) But many Christians don’t seem to be aware that Jesus taught the importance of arming ourselves for protection. Yes! Jesus is recorded to have said, “Then Jesus said to them, ‘But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it, and likewise a knapsack; and he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.’” (Luke 22:36)
With our liberties that we have, and the God-given right to live however we want to live as long as we do not bring harm to others, we do have the responsibility to avoid certain actions. The Ten Commandments do shed some light, though observing the Sabbath is practically neutral since it makes no difference, unless you think that God is obsessed about what day you set aside to observe Him. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is recorded to have taught many things, and there are some brilliant teachings that we need to follow. Again, we need to understand that Jesus is recorded to have said and done many things, but these are records recorded by man, so discernment is important, not to mention, as I discussed in detail earlier, that manuscript evidence does show that there are additions and omissions throughout ancient Bible manuscripts by scribal hands. The Bible is a moral compass, not a teleport mechanism, which means that we use it to help us stay on the right path, and that means careful discernment and personal responsibility to use that compass correctly and with common sense.
The Beatitudes of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew (5:3-10) are brilliant, practical, and lifechanging!
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
For they shall be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
For they shall inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
For they shall be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful,
For they shall obtain mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
For they shall see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
For they shall be called sons of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus lays out principles to follow that will not only give you the commands that will lead you to doing what is right, but He also teaches how to get into the right mindset and attitude while obeying those commands. It is one thing to do what is right because there are consequences to doing wrong and benefits to doing what is right, but you reach another spiritual level when you are motivated to do those things because you have trained yourself to WANT to do those things. Jesus teaches us to not only change our actions but to change our hearts in the process. To not only do what God wants out of fear of God, but to do what God wants out of the love of God. For Jesus gave the greatest commandment (Matt. 22),
37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
Jesus also taught us to treat others the way that we want to be treated (Matt. 7:12 Golden Rule). If society would live by that one principle alone then that would solve almost every problem in the world!
There are seven deadly sins of Natural Law, and they are non-negotiable.
MURDER: taking without just cause the life of another, which does NOT belong to you
ASSAULT: taking without just cause another’s physical well-being, which does NOT belong to you
RAPE: taking another’s free-will sexual consent, which does NOT belong to you
THEFT: taking property which does NOT belong to you
TRESPASS: entering or remaining in another’s dwelling place without their permission, which does NOT belong to you
COERCION: taking another’s free will, which does NOT belong to you
LYING: taking another’s ability to engage in informed decision-making, which does NOT belong to you
Natural Law is just another term for God’s Moral Laws. These are the very laws that have been written upon our hearts, and are instinctive, but like I mentioned, that instinct has been attacked by Satan and his minions in so many ways for centuries, and it is important that we become reacquainted with the Moral Laws of God so that we can remove the cognitive dissonance that humanity has been indoctrinated and propagandized into by the Satanic Cult ruling-class.
Conclusion
The purpose of this book is not to get other people to think like me, but rather to think for themselves. The last thing that I want to accomplish is to create my own brand of theology or ideology and to be seen as a guru. I do not want followers or disciples at all. I want to motivate people to become freethinkers themselves, and to do their own research and to come to their own conclusions; to seek the truth and to follow the truth wherever it leads you. Embrace your own journey. Listen to God and what He has to say to you. Like I mentioned above, I personally can hear God through solitude and periods of silence. I also hear Him through my research and prayer. And like I also said above, I find His fingerprints throughout the Bible, which is why I have devoted most of my life to intense research and study of it. I also hear God through other people. Yes, there are some good people in the world who are doing God’s will, and their testimonies and life witness project God’s words and glory in various ways. I also want to motivate people to question everything! Never be afraid to ask the toughest questions that you can come up with, especially if it challenges your worldview. Try to discover whether your religious views and worldviews truly have its origins in Truth, or whether they were created and have their origins for geopolitical reasons. Never underestimate how far the tentacles of Satan and his minions goes when it comes to hijacking and coopting all institutions, whether political or religious. And don’t allow things like peer pressure and false paradigms to keep your brain locked in a box where you are afraid to think outside of the box. So many people have been conditioned to follow the crowd and to fear being labeled a conspiracy theorist or something. Who cares! Be a renegade and think like a revolutionary! Jesus was! The whole purpose of Christianity is to be like Christ!
The Historical Christ
For the conclusion of this book, I want to add some thoughts about the historical Christ. It has become increasingly argued by skeptics that the entire Bible is a myth, including the accounts of the existence of Jesus. There is a large spectrum of beliefs about what is considered historical and what is considered myth when it comes to the contents of the Bible. Some believe that the contents of the Bible should only be understood as parables and strictly didactic, and not historical. There are some scholars out there that argue a theory that they label as the “Jesus Myth.” I have listened to one of those scholars for years, Dr. Robert Price. I highly respect Dr. Price because he is intellectually honest and is well researched. Dr. Price actually admires the teachings attributed to Christ and even calls himself a “Christian Atheist,” which is an oxymoron, but according to Price he actually does try to live by the moral teachings that have been attributed to Christ, but he does not believe Jesus is literally a historical person. I found his debate with Dr. Bart Ehrman to be quite interesting, both being atheists, but Bart defended the historical Jesus. Dr. Price often points out in many of his talks and interviews about how Christianity and its doctrines draws from earlier ancient religions and myths. Price believes that Christianity is a historicized blend of mainly Egyptian, Jewish, and Greek mythologies, and that the early Christians adopted the model for the figure of Jesus from the popular Mediterranean dying-rising savior myths of the time, such as that of Dionysus.11 There is absolutely no doubt that there is a tremendous amount of similarity between the stories in the Bible and those earlier myths and religions. Even the Flood account in the book of Genesis is very similar to other stories given in other myths and religions. But does this mean that the Bible and the stories of Jesus are simply myths that were used by the Biblical authors and then reworked? Absolutely not! My perspective about this is perhaps outside of the common paradigm that many Christians argue from. I believe that it is quite possible that these earlier stories that contain concepts that are found in the Bible and run very parallel are concepts that were planted into the minds of mankind by God and were early manifestations of the fuller truth that would be revealed later. Often Christian apologists will take a rigid and more defensive position and declare that early pagans could not have had anything revealed to them by God, and any revelations would come from the demonic side. But even the Bible itself gives some examples of Divine revelations being revealed to pagans, such as the sorcerer Balaam who prophesied of the coming Messiah, and the Magi who recognized that prophesy by the signs in the sky. John Henry Newman tackled this argument very well concerning if Christianity took concepts from earlier traditions.
“The phenomenon, admitted on all hands, is this:—That great portion of what is generally received as Christian truth is, in its rudiments or in its separate parts, to be found in heathen philosophies and religions. For instance, the doctrine of a Trinity is found both in the East and in the West; so is the ceremony of washing; so is the rite of sacrifice. The doctrine of the Divine Word is Platonic; the doctrine of the Incarnation is Indian; of a divine kingdom is Judaic; of Angels and demons is Magian; the connection of sin with the body is Gnostic; celibacy is known to Bonze and Talapoin; a sacerdotal order is Egyptian; the idea of a new birth is Chinese and Eleusinian (el-you-sin-ian); belief in sacramental virtue is Pythagorean; and honors to the dead are a polytheism. Such is the general nature of the fact before us; Mr. Milman argues from it, —’These things are in heathenism, therefore they are not Christian:’ we, on the contrary, prefer to say, ‘these things are in Christianity, therefore they are not heathen.’ That is, we prefer to say, and we think that Scripture bears us out in saying, that from the beginning the Moral Governor of the world has scattered the seeds of truth far and wide over its extent; that these have variously taken root, and grown as in the wilderness, wild plants indeed but living; and hence that, as the inferior animals have tokens of an immaterial principle in them, yet have not souls, so the philosophies and religions of men have their life in certain true ideas, though they are not directly divine. What man is amid the brute creation, such is the Church among the schools of the world; and as Adam gave names to the animals about him, so has the Church from the first looked round upon the earth, noting and visiting the doctrines she found there. She began in Chaldea, and then sojourned among the Canaanites, and went down into Egypt, and thence passed into Arabia, till she rested in her own land. Next she encountered the merchants of Tyre, and the wisdom of the East country, and the luxury of Sheba. Then she was carried away to Babylon, and wandered to the schools of Greece. And wherever she went, in trouble or in triumph, still she was a living spirit, the mind and voice of the Most High; ‘sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions;’ claiming to herself what they said rightly, correcting their errors, supplying their defects, completing their beginnings, expanding their surmises, and thus gradually by means of them enlarging the range and refining the sense of her own teaching. So far then from her creed being of doubtful credit because it resembles foreign theologies, we even hold that one special way in which Providence has imparted divine knowledge to us has been by enabling her to draw and collect it together out of the world, and, in this sense, as in others, to ‘suck the milk of the Gentiles and to suck the breast of kings.’”12
Fritz Springmeier also gave an excellent argument in an unpublished article that he wrote,
“The arguments that Christ never existed boil down to 2 pts. 1) doubters feel the evidence for his existence is weak, & 2) doubters think the gospel stories are myths. Now how or why do they feel the evidence is weak? Well, they throw out anything written by Christians as biased. And then they throw out half a dozen Roman records of Jesus by making excuses (lame in my opinion). Next, they claim the Jewish historian Josephus (36 A.D.-100 A.D.) did not write about Christ in his Jewish Antiquities history book that came out around 93 A.D. Supposedly the Christians tampered with the manuscripts of his books. Then having made outrageous excuses for why we should not believe the historical evidence that is there, they say, if he was real there would be more evidence! I have not heard how they discount the Jewish Mishnah, written by Jesus’ enemy that says, ‘On the eve of Passover they hanged Jesus of Nazareth.’ While the Jewish religious leaders were definitely hostile to Jesus, they never denied his existence. And there are too many clues that could not have been faked by Christians. How about the Christian acrostic found in recent years buried in Pompeii by the volcano that covered Pompeii in 79 A.D? And how about all the ruins of churches scattered everywhere? And what about the Roman soldier’s graffiti mocking Christians found by archeologists? Are you going to tell me all the writers of the NT conspired to create a hoax, and that tens of thousands of people across the Roman empire were involved also? The truth is this…the teachings and the Christian traditions had to come from somewhere. And fragments of the NT show that parts had been written not that long after Christ was crucified. (Certainly not centuries later like skeptics want to believe!) Now critics claim the Bible books were invented by various people–in one theory supposedly an elite Roman invented them. Yeah right. I would like to see anyone in the elite invent something like the NT–and the teachings of Christ did not support the Roman elite…which is why every few years the Romans tried to exterminate the Christians. What convoluted thinking. No matter what evidence surfaces or is mentioned, you will continue seeing skeptics say, ‘There is no contemporary evidence outside of the New Testament that Jesus ever existed.’ And that is patently false.
Practically everything that could be, has been nitpicked and questioned. For instance, supposedly Matthew did not write Matthew. Well Matthew was an educated tax collector who knew math & writing. It is thought that he was the unofficial historian for the 12 disciples. So there is no problem with him writing the book MT. Why isn’t there more contemporary writings documenting Jesus?? 99%, if not more, of the writing from that first century are forever lost. Two of the four Roman historians of that period mention him. For instance, Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus describes Christ suffering under prefect Pontius Pilate. He began writing his Annales (Annals) in 95 A.D. about the time John was writing the Apocalypse. Speaking about Pilate, supposedly he was too brutal to have ever said Christ was innocent. But if we look at all the details about Pilate’s personality, he may have been brutal but he was also an astute politician. He did not want to execute a popular preacher/healer on the eve of the Passover…so the NT account is very consistent with his personality. He had been a governor in Celtic Britannia before transferring to Judaea, and a very prominent question the Celtic bards taught him was, “What is truth?” There are only thousands of other ridiculous nit picky issues raised by people.
On the surface it sounds legit…the mythicists take a little of this and some of that pagan myth…the problem is they borrow from all over & a close look at the pagan myths show they don’t resemble the account of Jesus at all. You can’t take myths from different places and sources and clobber them together to explain Jesus. Pagans did believe in dying & rising gods…but Jesus’ resurrection was grounded in the messianic beliefs of the Jewish people that God through an eschatological event i.e. the resurrection, would regain control over the earth. Jesus was a public figure appearing to many thousands of people. Within 30 years of his crucifixion, the various gospels were already in circulation about this very public figure. Where are all the writings by the multitudes of people who lived in the lands he travelled in, who would have written about how no one remembers anything like that??? An obvious hoax about a public figure would have been easy to spot. But we find no one protesting how the Christians have created a mythological person.”13
Personal Evidence
Intellectually I find that there is sufficient evidence in the historical Jesus, as shown above. The story that I am about to tell is not evidence of Jesus directly, but it was evidence that was shown to me that there is definitely something beyond the reality that we see which truly exists. Many years ago, when I was a Southern Baptist, I was teaching and doing lessons on various Biblical topics. I had been doing some research on Satan and demons, and I was preparing a lesson on that topic. One afternoon I was home alone, and I decided to lay down and take a nap. During the nap I was woken up and I could see everything around me, but I could not move my body. It was like I was completely paralyzed. I felt a pressure around my skull closing in as if it was squeezing tighter and tighter by the second. I heard a voice whispering in my ear saying over and over, “I am going to kill you.” This was extremely terrifying! The pressure kept getting tighter around my skull and it felt like my head was going to pop like a grape any moment, while the voice kept whispering in my ear telling me that it/he was going to kill me. I was desperate and started praying, “Lord help me!” “In the name of Jesus please help me!” And suddenly the pressure around my head was released and the voice was gone, and I was able to move my body. But for what seemed like 5 to 10 seconds I felt the strongest presence of evil in the room, and it faded off in a bizarre manner. The only way I can describe that fading away was the sensation that I felt one time after a major storm where a tornado had touched down close by. During that storm there was quite the chaotic period of strong winds and trees falling down everywhere, and rain pouring down like I had never seen before. But all of a sudden, the storm stopped and calmness came, but for a brief moment that storm vanished back up into the sky and it was as if you could feel it disappear in a few seconds time, and when it did the sun came out and it went from chaos to sunny and calm very quickly. That may seem like a strange way to compare a demonic attack, but those two times are the only times I had ever felt such a strange sensation, though the demonic attack was by far more frightening and intense.
I have had many years to think about that experience and wonder why I had it. I have always felt like God allowed that to happen to me in order to teach me a lesson. Being the kind of person who questions everything, and I have had periods of doubt and confusion, some of what I have written about in this book. But one thing that the experience taught me was that no matter how much doubt and confusion that I struggle with spiritually, I can never deny that there is a reality beyond the world and reality that we see with our eyes. It also taught me that there is a dark and evil spiritual force that exists. I am thankful to have had that experience, but I hope to not have any more demonic interactions like that. It also taught me that prayer works, because I do believe it was the power of prayer and a cry of desperation that warded off that demonic attack.
Another bizarre thing that happened to me one time was I had a premonition, which was a vivid dream about the death of a coworker. This happened in 1999. At the time I was working at a foundry, and for a period of time I worked with a man by the name of Carl Simpson. I got to be friends with him, and I really enjoyed working with him. He was funny and loved pulling off pranks. He would do things like put grease in the fingers of your gloves, and when you would put the gloves on your fingers would squish in the grease. He would also do things like put a little grease on those cones that we would drink water from, and he would stick them on people’s hard-hats, and they would walk around with a cone on their heads and not even know it. He did that to me many times. Carl loved having a good time. Eventually Carl transferred to another department, and I had not seen him for quite awhile. Every now and then I would pass him by on lunch break, but I rarely saw him. One day I had a vivid dream that I was at work, and I saw Carl laying on a stretcher dead and there were people standing around him. I remember asking what happened to him, and someone replied that he got caught in something. The dream was so real, and it left such an impression on me that I felt troubled when I woke up. It was way beyond what a normal intense dream feels like. After that, I remember passing Carl one day and stopped to speak to him for a moment, and I remember that it was almost a little bit creepy because the dream left such an impression on me that it was almost like seeing someone who had died. Then after a few months after that dream I was working evening shift, and when I arrived at work and pulled into the lot, I had a feeling of dread come upon me. I had the strongest feeling that something bad had happened, and as I was walking into work and was approaching my department that I was working in at the time, the feeling of dread kept getting stronger and stronger the closer I got to the timeclock. Oddly enough the dream about Carl did not cross my mind as being the source of that dread. Finally, once I walked into the lab department that I was working in at the time, my coworkers in that department were standing around waiting for shift change. I asked them how they were doing, and Roy Long, who was one of the day-turn workers looked at me said, “I’ve got some bad news. That boy Carl Simpson got killed earlier today.” Come to find out Carl was killed by a mold machine that he got caught in, which was exactly how he was killed in my dream. I was stunned by the whole experience. That night when I got off work, I ran me a hot tub of bathwater, and I just laid in there to relax and wind down. As I was laying there thinking about the dream and what had happened to Carl, the funniest thing happened that could have just been coincidence, but maybe not. I was laying there and all of a sudden, my son’s rubber-ducky that we had hanging up in a little net above the tub fell out and hit me right between the legs. I just laughed because it seemed like something Carl would have done, being the prankster that he was.
That whole experience is another thing that I feel God used to teach me a lesson. It was far beyond a coincidence. I feel that God let me experience that in order to confirm that there is more to this reality than what we see with our eyes. There is a spiritual side that I personally cannot deny. Experiences like that have always been a witness to spiritual things even when I have had the darkest nights of the soul when I did not know what to believe.
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Sources
1 The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Publisher : Libreria Editrice Vaticana; 2nd Revised & enlarged edition (April 16, 2000) ISBN-10 : 1574551094 ISBN-13 : 978-1574551099
2 Catholic Answers website https://www.catholic.com/
3 How Did the Nicene Creed Lead to the Break Between Roman Catholic & Greek Orthodox? https://classroom.synonym.com/how-did-the-nicene-creed-lead-to-the-break-between-roman-catholic-greek-orthodox-12087703.html
4 John Litteral, The Antichrist and his Cult: The Beast System and the Endgame, Independently published (November 26, 2021), ASIN : B09M7MPNWB, ISBN-13 : 979-8767496082
5 Tertullian of Carthage, The Apology 50.13
6 Mark Passio, Presentation “Fake-Ass Christians”, This presentation was originally given in Philadelphia, PA on June 24, 2017. Associate Producer Leiha Boone. Video Recording by Becca Martin and Sean McCann. Video Editing by Jeff Ritter. Selected Artwork by Sethikus Boza. https://whatonearthishappening.com/news/580-watch-mark-s-presentation-fake-ass-christians-online-now
7 John Litteral, https://litteraltruth.com/2021/11/27/was-romans-131-7-a-forgery/
8 A Complete Comparision Of The Four Gospels: All Four Gospels With Parallel Passages Side-by-side With Explanations And Harmonization Paperback – December 6, 2013, by John D. Litteral (Author) Publisher : CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, ISBN-10 : 1494284170, ISBN-13 : 978-1494284176
9 Joe Murray, Episode 8, Natural Law, The Law of Freedom, Oct. 15, 2020, https://freedomforall.online/2020/10/15/natural-law-the-law-of-freedom/
10 Mark Passio, The Sacrede Gift of Anger, presentation delivered at Anarchadelphia 2019
11 Price, Robert M. (2000). “The Christ Cults”. Deconstructing Jesus. Prometheus. pp. 86, 88, 91, 93. ISBN 978-1-61592-120-1.
12 John Henry Newman, Chapter 8. Application of the Third Note of a True Development—Assimilative Power, https://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter8.html
13 Fritz Artz Springmeier, Written Dec. 5, 2016, https://litteraltruth.com/2021/12/07/the-biblical-christ-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt-a-discussion-on-the-evidence-for-yahshua/
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