These experiences are common, but in the grand scheme of things, they are rare. So this idea that these experiences are significant beyond the individual’s recollections does not have any importance. Going to church or praying to your God, whichever God that is, is not important. We are judged, how we live our life. Nothing else matters… there is a pun there somewhere.
O
on September 1, 2020 at 8:47 am
His heart might have stopped, but he wasn’t dead. He experienced a bad dream within those synapses which was augmented by the psychedelics. “Everybody has a choice” -except for the life that you never even asked for in the first place. He’ll have a tough time evangelizing the would-be “owners” of the book of Psalms, but I imagine they have another pact with another God. What choice does a child have in being born into a Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu or secular household? Are they created for mere “sport damning.”
Tosh
on September 1, 2020 at 8:56 am
This man’s testimony is interesting, but his delivery is so slow and hesitant it is almost painful to listen to. He could say it all in 5 minutes not 20.
Michael McNulty
on September 1, 2020 at 9:01 am
I think there’s every possibility reincarnation is what awaits us after death. Before I’d even heard of the word I grasped the concept (and so therefore will other young kids). I’d gone to the pictures with a friend when I was about ten to see the film Waterloo. Some of the battle scenes were brutal and my friend said to me, “I’m pleased I wasn’t there.” I thought about it briefly and replied, “We might have been!” After a few seconds he said, “Yeah!”
jay
on September 1, 2020 at 12:16 pm
He could have had a warning…But, Scripture tells us we are ALL reincarnated after the Second Coming of Christ, the Good and the Bad then face final judgement.
Kevin Boyle
on September 1, 2020 at 4:03 pm
“No man can be made to know what he doesn’t want to know, save by pain.”
Aeschylus c. 500 BC
Amusing to read posters telling this man, “It was just a dream.” (i.e. what I have never experienced I choose to believe does not exist.)
Gerry Donnelly
on September 1, 2020 at 4:14 pm
Not a leaf falls,without the Knowledge of God.
Every breath you take,
Every move make,
Every word you Spake,
Someone`s watching you.
lewis jones
on September 1, 2020 at 5:29 pm
we do choose our fate and have been warned plenty.
Nicholas
on September 1, 2020 at 9:09 pm
There is no death as such, but a transition to another reality. A reality better or worse than the existing one, according to merit. Death is only perceived by those the deceased left in the previous reality. Consciousness is eternal and everyday is “judgement day”.
Craig Nelms
on September 1, 2020 at 10:16 pm
One thing to know; nobody goes to “Heaven”, as in the dwelling place of God Himself, during an NDE, nor do they go to the “Pit”. You should know this as in order to go to those places you must first be judged. Once you are judged you are done, there is no going back to your “life in the physical” to “finish the school year” as it were. You’ve gotten your final grade. During an NDE one’s awareness goes to “the heavens” which is a vast place in which both sides are active. The experience you have depends on you.
As “O” points out above, NDE’s are similar to dreams. NDE’s are not as much as people make of them while dreams are more than what people think. However, you did in fact ask to come here, to take this class so that you could hopefully learn and grow.
As Michael Mcnulty indicates, it is true that you can “retake the class”. Because we are finishing out the cycle right now, I doubt there is anyone here on the Earth that is on their first time around.
Gerry Donnelly is correct; everything you do, say or even think, is recorded on your soul. How else can you be judged?
These times we are currently experiencing are the final “kick in the ass”. Find your way! If the psychos don’t want you to go to church, or to gather in groups and pray, then maybe that’s what you should do!
Mr Reynard
on September 2, 2020 at 4:12 am
Behave like a GOOD person & obey the one & main commandment !
“DO NO HARM” !!
& you will not end up in Hell…
Yukon Jack
on September 2, 2020 at 5:07 am
TOTAL BULLSHIT. BTW we are already in hell, on a planet with Jews.
What is really going on with religious belief, since the theist has no logical argument or proof then their only option is blind faith and fear. Testimonies of hell are a fear based campaign to get you to believe, nothing else. There is no proof of anything happening when you die. No serious rational person takes this stuff seriously so why put it up on the board, are you trying to get someone like myself to talk you down from your faith?
What kind of god would sentence anyone for eternal punishment? Not a just god. Who is this horrible god that would levy such injustice? The believers ego.
Lisa
on September 2, 2020 at 1:59 pm
It matters not if his experience was an actual after death experience or drug induced. The truth is that he experienced a religious revelation and was directly given another chance. God bless him and help him continue on.
memyselfnie
on September 2, 2020 at 4:25 pm
No name given, none required, either. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, true or blowing
smoke?
Not too long ago, someone told me, “If I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen”
So decide for YOURSELF!
Carl Jones
on September 2, 2020 at 5:35 pm
Kevin Boyle: I am pleased that I did not say it/they are dreams. I think these accounts are valid recollections of what happens during and in some cases after death & some time, a long, long time after death. I believe they are real. I am not that religious (the official kinds), but I do believe that for some, maybe the majority, there is some sort of afterlife. As a child, I had a recurring dream that in all my understanding, must be from a previous life. This dream was set in some kind of war/conflict, but I didn’t see any weapons or other people, apart from me and this woman that was helping me… yes, I know, I am having a dream where I am looking at me… but even as a child having this regular dream, I always knew it was me. The backdrop in this dream was a sand colour, the outside walls were sand coloured and so was the ground…. the woman wore clothes (I believe) that were from the early 1900s. I also experience viewing. I wouldn’t call them dreams, they are almost as good as being there to watch what is happening. They are often violent or serious accidents. They are fairly brief affairs, maybe the person dies?
There are no sounds, no voices, just a viewing. I should state that I have absolutely no interest in the paranormal and horror films bore me to tears. I have had several personal after death experiences with people I’ve known. I didn’t seek these out, they were freaky, and shortly after their deaths.
I am a strong believer that some people when faced with their imminent death, put up an almighty fight to the point that they are possessed by forces greater than life itself… I can’t explain this, but maybe this is like a difficult birth, maybe through choice, dying people choose to fight & maybe this is linked with people who technically die, experience death, remember the events, but then return to their bodies.
Fred B
on September 2, 2020 at 9:49 pm
@ Yukon Jack
Jack, you say your are an atheist and there is nothing beyond. What if what he said is true, then are you not taking a very big chance? Would it not be wiser to hedge your bets, and put at least some of your mental portfolio into that kind of gold, especially as your edge closer to the big crash, when everything will surely shut down and you may be faced with that point of light, which seems to be consistent in the experiences of numerous, if not most people, who have ventured into deaths door?
You seem to have very strong principles of right and wrong on various issues as if things really matter, and I thought that most atheists these days were either moral relativists or consequentialists of the utilitarian sort. I wonder where those principles of yours actually come from. If you are a consequentialist, why then not think of eternal consequences based on your free choices in how you are actually creating your own life?
Yukon Jack
on September 3, 2020 at 3:34 am
@Fred B
I am not an atheist, I just don’t believe in the Bible God. You are an atheist to all other gods, the difference is I am an atheist just like you on all those gods plus yours.
Not worried at all as a matter of fact. What you state is standard Christian mythology that some God is going to judge us in the next life, well let me tell you something I am judging God in this life for putting me on a hell planet with Jews and Christians who believe in hell. LOLROFL
Hedging your life by believing is the worst possible excuse Christians have ever come up with to believe. What if your wrong they say. Well what if your wrong and you passed up banging the Swedish bikini team because of your belief system? The point is are you really living your life if this life is a hedge to get into heaven. What if this it, the only life you get, shouldn’t you live it to the fullest?
What you are advocating is fear based behavior no different than the corona face diaper. The mask wearer is hedging their life out of fear.
BTW going to the light may be the worst thing your soul can do as the light is the entry into the soul trap where you are convinced to come back to earth hell again.
Yukon Jack
on September 3, 2020 at 1:42 pm
@ Fred B
I love reading your comments, they are some of the best on the internet, but I have to say I completely disagree with your religious faith and what you think happens when we die. You certainly have the right to believe whatever you want to believe and I shall prove to you that your belief is of no consequence. When we die we die, and I sincerely doubt that anything happens because I KNOW that humans invented the afterlife because they are sentient beings with big egos.
An “atheist” is a derogatory term like Goyim or Shiska. In a previous comment I submitted but is not published I said I am not an atheist, I just don’t believe in the Bible God. You are an atheist to all other gods, the difference is I am an atheist just like you on all those gods plus yours. Perhaps that will get you to understand that being an atheist is not a bad thing. You don’t believe in Zeus do you? Neither do I.
An atheist is like an anarchist, someone who doesn’t believe in god or state is considered by the believers in god and state to be a bad person, a degenerate, a dangerous revolutionary. The reason why the atheist and anarchists are usually lumped together is because the god meme was used to create the state. The priest was able to create a supra organization to self rule by getting the uneducated to believe that the priest was serving God, and you must obey God and his earthly servant the priest.
If you take “god” out of the priest’s argument of why you must obey him, you wouldn’t obey him and you would see the priest as a tyrant. The priest is a tyrant, in the evil Bible (which you call “holy”) the priest writes the text to say if you have contempt for the priest or court the penalty is death. Of course normal sane people DO HAVE CONTEMPT FOR THE COURT, as they know that they are the deciders not some third party.
So from the evil Bible the modern state was born along with it’s court system, which protects the high priests of the temple, the Satanists as Makow calls them, the corrupt politicians and bureaucratic class of parasites, and all the rest of the alphabet agencies that spy, murder, lie, deceive, blow up WTC buildings in false flags, etc. etc.
If you are a Christian who believes in God and that He ordained the State you must be a very evil person who believes in a very evil god because the State is evil. Just look at what the State of Israel does to Palestine. Look at how the United States supports the evil Israeli State. That data contradicts what you think about God ordaining the State if you are an honest thinking adult.
In the theist world of make believe, the priest must scare the bejeezus out of the skeptics since they have no proof of what they are saying is real. So elaborate theologies are constructed to convince the rabble to believe or else. It is your faith Fred that is the great evil consuming the world, it is faith that floats evil Israel, FAITH IS THE GREAT EVIL ON WHICH ISRAEL IS FOUNDED AND THRIVES.
On thing they do is hold up their faith as superior to reason, another is to make themselves sound reasonable, but the truth is Fred, your theology is rubbish and the proof is the evil President Trump who supports the evil State of Israel. Right in front of your eyes the great deceiver Trump holds up the Bible for law and order in numerous photo ops yet at the same time is helping evil Israel nuke the world.
The Holy Bible and Christianity are literally black magic spells on the human mind. If you think otherwise it is because you are under the spell and don’t see how these theological constructs are possessing your mind and controlling your behavior. The Bible has constructed a false reality on which you live your life Fred, so I am not worried about the afterlife as you are because I do not believe what the Jew says.
For instance, you say their is an afterlife. Ok, prove it. You say there is a thing called sin. Ok, prove it. You say sin separates you from God. Ok, prove it. You say if you don’t profess Jesus Christ you will go to hell. Ok prove that hell exists or there is judgment in the afterlife. The truth is and the sad fact of the matter is that you can not prove any of the assumptions you have made about the afterlife or God.
If you read ‘Caesar’s Messiah’ by Joseph Atwill you will learn that Jesus was invented by the Roman State. He proves that AND he proves beyond any reasonable doubt that Jesus is 100% literary fiction. So since that is logical since we also know that no man can walk on water or raise the dead, there is no reason to fear Jesus condemning us in the next life if it exists which is doubtful.
You have not realized that humans invented the afterlife because they do not want to die. With the strong survival instinct that is in all animals, including us; combined with an active imagination of a large self aware brain, humans invented the afterlife and all the associated theological rubbish. We invented it out of necessity because of our egos.
So what is really going on when a believer threatens a non-believer of afterlife punishment is that the believer is asserting their ego (their real god) on the non-believer. It has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE REAL GOD OF THE UNIVERSE. Simply put, the idiot hominids on earth squabble and kill each other over religious differences and no God cares in the least what we do, including killing each other over our God beliefs.
Fred B
on September 4, 2020 at 8:16 am
@ Yukon Jack
Well Jack, I get a lot out of your comments as well. They really do make me think and especially those things you say about my faith. I am not a priest. I never made the grade, but I did spend a number of years following my nose to satiate a great spiritual thirst in thinking that I was called to such a vocation, and I can sincerely assure you that if you are inwardly orientated to what is really the true God, it is not rubbish, and you will be overwhelmed with light and divine goodness. It is that acquaintance which ought to guide any priest or minister in exercising their authority. However, no doubt because of our human weaknesses any authority we assume we often abuse it, but the medium of presentation has to be discerned from the true message especially when many of our religious leaders and those who say they are Christians these days are such poor examples.
I can’t deal with all of your comments and I do share a lot of your criticisms for my Church, the State, and for Israel, but not your feelings which may be clouding your better judgement. You did get me at one time to consider that Christianity was a Jewish plot and I did go much further in my wonder about that. Also, I considered that by rejecting and selling Christ for an handful of silver, perhaps Judas symbolized the choice that every Jew has made in rejecting their own Messiah. The choice for all of us is really between God and mammon but I have met too many good Jews to paint them all with the same brush. There are many who could have made a ton of money but instead decided simply to do their best in some occupation which allowed them to serve and contribute without harming anyone. The same can be said for any ethnic group. However, what many people see as problematic and inimical to any culture trying to be universally just and equitable is the abuse of wealth and power by any exclusive group in their midst to advance their interests at the expense of others, and to exercise dominance and control over others.
When we consider this problem, we have to remember that most monopolistic corporations are guilty of the same evil, and in fact if you consider the history of any powerful family, tribe, or nation you always find such abuses and evils. The evils you are complaining about regarding my Church and the Jews are not exclusive to them. Look at the treatment by our ancestors towards the native people of North America. Look at the present day exclusiveness of the Chinese Han people toward any minority group in their own nation. No one group has any monopoly on evil and because any group which gets power tends to abuse, that possession does the abuse right. Neither does it make the power they wield to be extrinsically evil. All moral evil comes from the heart of man and like its handmaiden hate, it can totally corrupt all of a person’s deeds as well as their innards.
Faith is the handmaid of reason. Our reason is a very mechanical thing which we use to help us make proper decisions, and for every choice me make it requires an act of faith. If you are going to leap across a chasm you had better use your reason, but to make the leap you are going to have to trust your reason and your senses which trust is an aspect of your faith. When we have a problem, it does no good to think about trying to solve it unless we believe there is an answer to it. If we suspend faith and just live by reason, we find that we become indecisive. .For problems we cannot solve or seem to be beyond us we generally turn to some help and guidance.
In ultimate matters like the purpose of life, there is no rational or logical meaning to it unless life is a continuum and there are consequences to it. Otherwise, it should not really matter how any person or group behaves. That in fact is the drift of the world without Christianity. We are losing our sense of right and wrong and life is becoming more and more meaningless and hopeless to billions of people. In this respect if Christianity was a Roman plot as you said in your comment, then in a pragmatic sense, it was a good one. But that kind of faith or belief lacks the power to believe in the existence of a God and you are not going to do that when you think that all evil comes from such a belief. In fact such evil comes from human selves turned in on themselves which is the opposite orientation to God.
I do not know about other faiths but the Christian faith does not begin or depend on the selfish concern to live forever or upon the fear of finality. It begins with the orientation to a person who is totally good and real, where we realize our own worthlessness and unreality without him. With that commitment it leads to a thirst or hunger for God, which pursuit can only make any consideration of eternity or eternal life meaningful.
You say, “For instance, you say their is an afterlife. Ok, prove it.”
In saying this you put reason before faith, and you put the belief or desire for afterlife before God. Without God, afterlife would be meaningless and a hell to live in. We are made for our beings to be be filled with God. Do that and you will not care about proving anything. Also, if I could prove the existence of God to you through reason you would have no need of the divine virtue or gift of faith, and it would only be a product of reason, a bunch of words and not divine. One of the reasons we are here is to grown in that virtue along with the others. If you want that gift you have only to look for it.
Yukon Jack
on September 4, 2020 at 2:32 pm
@Fred B
When the Gospel was penned by Josephus on behalf of the Roman State, the betrayer Judas was reverse psychology ploy:
“Also, I considered that by rejecting and selling Christ for an handful of silver, perhaps Judas symbolized the choice that every Jew has made in rejecting their own Messiah. ”
The idea here is the Gospel reader is to not to be like the bad Judas, but to convert to Christ and be true to the new higher love vibration and not be sucked under by the love of money. Such themes are woven throughout the story. The idea here is that Rome wants docile good citizens not money grubbing dishonest Jews.
Those forces are still at work today. Mainstream Jews all work together to undermine the good tidings of a Christian society. Jew infestations at all levels of society still work behind the scenes to run the scams, the hoaxes, the false flags.
————————
“In ultimate matters like the purpose of life, there is no rational or logical meaning to it unless life is a continuum and there are consequences to it.”
Everyone has a god experience including me. The difference between me and the religionists is that I have not allowed my ego to install the overlay of religion into my experience. I do not say that when I have a meaningful experience that Jesus/Mythra/Krishna/Zeus did it.
I will give you some examples. Part of my learning process that was when I left Christianity was I worked as a carpenter at a Hare Krishna temple. They all ranted and raved about how Krishna did this and that for them. So when ever they had a meaningful experience they assigned their god to the event.
Since I think rationally, I immediately saw that there interpretation of everyday normal synchronicities were through their filter. Since they believed in Krishna they though incorrectly that Krishna was doing something for them. (As if God is personally involved in the affairs of men, especially oneself). Of course I kept my mouth shut as to not offend my employers at the temple.
Another example. I met this woman who told me she prayed to Jesus for a job and she immediately got one at McDonalds. I had to keep from laughing out loud since I am polite. So Jesus wants us to work at fast food joints? Ridiculous.
Another example. A former Los Angeles cop told me when he moved to this north Idaho town that he prayed to Jesus and got an apartment for $850 a month (this was 20 years ago). Once again I held my laughter back, so Jesus is ok with you paying rent like some kind of serf?
—————————
“Without God, afterlife would be meaningless and a hell to live in.”
Life is meaningless. The afterlife is just more “life” per say, and it is just our fantasy. Right now we are living, we are in life, and the New Agers say it is up to us to give our lives meaning. We do that, not some God.
What the person’s ego can not come to grips with is that they don’t matter. How is it we are different from any other animal? If you walk along a shoreline and see numerous dead fish that washed up, how was it that any of those fish mattered? Because we have a big brain and active imagination, we beat that meaningless by imagining we are special. We do not want to be like any animal which we see that just live and die.
We say, we humans were created separate from animals, our lives thus have meaning. But it is just a delusion, as we are big brained self aware creatures resisting our own deaths. So since we KNOW we are going to die, we try to beat death, we say we have a soul that goes on to the “next” life. We have no proof of this so we form groups called churches and then ALL agree to this afterlife fantasy we entertain while alive.
Thus the soul may be just another one of our inventions in our never ending drive to beat death. We have a fierce will to live, so the soul becomes a necessity for us big brained hominids to exist in peace with our own mortality.
I write extensively on this, this need to believe is our cope dope. Faith in the next life gives us hope to carry on. I say HOPE IS THE COPE DOPE. I also say that if you observe those who have not become a believer in some religion, that person might turn to heroin or other drug to cope. If you can’t find god for solace you can find drugs.
Where I live (Oregon) marijuana is legal. Millions use it daily to help them cope. I do not. I choose to face life directly without any hope or faith or belief. I just accept my life on it’s face value. I get lots of synchronicities but I have never had God tell me there in an afterlife with him. I do not think I would want that since I don’t like being alive nor would I want to spend eternity with any religionist.
The worst thing that could happen to me (I joke about) is that I wake up dead. I die then realize I am not dead. Oh my God, this hell doesn’t just end? That would be the worst nightmare of all, that life is eternal.
—————————
The challenge I give to all Christians when they tell I me I should believe as a hedge in case hell is true is that if you live your life in fear of some unknown afterlife fate then are you really living your life to the fullest. The Christian says what if you are wrong? I say what if the Christian is wrong? Then they wasted their life because they acted out of fear.
This is just like the coronamask wearers who were fooled by the media hoax, now they are going to find out they never needed to be afraid of the invisible virus. Well Jesus/god is the same thing, it is just an idea in your head that makes you fear of doing what you want. How many young people who are dating for the first time won’t kiss because of fear of the invisible covids?
——————————
Like all my debates with true believing Christians I eventually came up with a good comeback. If you can provide at least one good valid reason I should be a Christian or believe in Jesus for eternal life I shall immediately convert. So far not one Christian on my journeys has been able to meet this challenge. There is no valid reason to believe because it is all made up just the same as this covid hoax.
Fred B
on September 5, 2020 at 5:38 am
If Christianity was a Roman plot to make people completely docile and compliant then would not the Roman establishment have to follow suit in their example, which they certainly did not try to emulate until the more pragmatic emperor Constantine came along some 300 years later. Also, until Constantine most Roman emperors suppressed Christianity not just because Christians shunned the pursuit of material wealth, power and pleasure, but mainly because the biggest affront to the Roman establishment was Christian monotheism and a focus on a God which considered Emperor worship as idolatrous. In Judea during the life of Jesus, the Romans no doubt considered Jesus just as much of a threat to their order as did the Jews, and they in fact both conspired to get rid of him. I do not see how anyone can ignore that implication when reading the gospels.
If you study the first writings which made up the epistle letters and gospel accounts you quickly realize that although every teaching can be found in some earlier Hebrew teaching, there was no similar sequencing of the teachings for such a unique and different account of the Hebrew faith. Yet, it was all there with everyone missing the obvious until Christ came. You also realize that the sequencing is put into a real life form which came from with the real teachings and deeds of a real person, like not only do you have this incredible selection and arrangement into something completely revolutionary, but what was taught was actually being lived out in open confrontation to the fallen authorities of our world. Whether textual, philological, historical, or literary criticism, of these scriptures, the most reliable accounts show that the core teachings, sequencing, and deeds came from a real living person, and not from some Greco-Roman-Hebrew university think-tank to transform the world into a better place. In fact the overwhelming vast majority of all revolutionary discoveries and doctrines, good and bad, come from individual persons who have gone against the grain of the herd mentality, and so I find little basis for anyone to say that Christianity was a Roman plot or even pragmatically accepted by the Roman establishment until the masses had largely converted despite the earlier repression.
The sequencing of the Christian teachings is like new DNA never conceived by any single person before, like the birth of a new species and not just some mutation. Yet it was all present in scriptural writings un-sequenced in fragments and shards before this man came along. It was all there in hints and fragments before and then wonderfully put together in the being and life of one person, and then new DNA-like code of that person was broken again into pieces by both the Jews and the Romans, who were oblivious in their ignorance to what they were doing in their efforts in trying to kill what they saw as a threat to their order. These forces are still at it. However, each shard and fragment of this very special person carried an entirely new code like a new species to be planted like a seed deep in the heart of anyone really open and receptive to thirst or hunger for that difference and new life.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
You say that you worked for a time as a carpenter. Maybe that is the problem. Just about every carpenter I ever new or worked with in my younger years was an atheist or an agnostic. I doubt there are any statistics to say that is generally the case, but I frequently mused that for some reason there seemed to be a disproportionate number who were that way. Then I noticed that I seldom met a carpenter who had not lost a finger or two in his work. However, what I found most supportive of my silly little theory, was my own efforts in fixing and building things around my house in later years. It seemed that every time I used a hammer I would hit my thumb causing the air to turn blue with my profanities and cussing. Then there is all of the frustration and cussing from measuring a precious piece of wood too short and mistakenly making the cut. So if in fact Jesus was a carpenter and did not cuss like me, I simply had to conclude that was another aspect showing his divinity.
As for the Krishna people, I did join and try their meditation form when I was just out of school, but I found that their mantras were actually focused on spiritual beings which seemed rather foreign and too strange for me really to follow. You can no doubt go a long way with East Indian meditation methods and prayer and they in my view are most likely connecting with a spiritual realm. No one would stay in it unless they felt connected to something outside of their own egos, so perhaps you missed the obvious in your dealings with them. Regardless of any obscure teachings about the immortality of the soul or afterlife, what I observed was that most of the people drawn to it, were hungering for peace, love, illumination, through a focus on something really spiritual and detached from their own egos.
Your examples of the people who prayed for things like getting a job at McDonalds or finding a cheap apartment, is much to the credit of those humble and grateful people, who perhaps do not deserve any scorn. Who is to say they did not get some kind of spiritual help? If they would have found those things all by themselves, then to whom would they be grateful? Themselves? That sounds quite egocentric to me, and apart from some self-satisfaction, they likely would not feel the joy and release of being grateful. If a friend or stranger helped them find those things, and they were grateful they would at least have had a much grater connection to someone outside of themselves and their own egos. But there was no friend or stranger to help them until they turned to Christ or God, and because they found what they did their grace is seen in their thankfulness, which is a much richer, more fulfilling, and joyful connection I would think. But you further scorn what they found as being somehow unworthy of them despite their needs. Yet, to them it became like gold not only because they believed God intervened to help them find what they were looking for, but because they also believed those things came from God and they appreciated them all the more.
Perhaps a skeptic like yourself should be more forgiving and curious and ask that if the searchings and findings were not facilitated by some divine intervention, then perhaps their openness from their own egos in their faith enabled them somehow to utilize their whole beings including their unconscious minds to guild them. They were much better off in not being so “self reliant” in those situations, you would have to agree.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
If you really believed that life was meaningless I doubt you would care about all of the deception, hypocrisy, abuses of power, and injustices in the world. When you make up your own meaning and purpose i life it is most often only an ego trip and usually ends in some kind of meaningless form of vanity.
As for being above the animals, Hindus believe that each creature has a soul and communes with God. Cows are generally considered sacred and I understand according to some of their imagery that they also have a special reverence for elephants. I tend to think that God dwells in all creatures who are compatible with and open to His presence, but that the human creature because of reason and intelligence has a much grater capacity to know and to be aware of God than any animal. In fact the Christian believes that from this difference in having a greater capacity to know and contemplate God that they also have a much greater capacity to interact with and love God than other creatures, and that is in fact why most believe we were made, which is to do exactly that. Our superior intellects are not given to us to lord it over other creatures but to come to know and love the presence of God everywhere, and to include Him in our lives. Being more conservative I also include the more ego-liberating purpose of trying to serve Him as well.
I do not regard hope or belief in God as similar to dope which is addictive and an escape from reality. Unless we are connected to God for balance we tend to become addicted to things which cause further imbalances and cravings leading us to extremes which only create a greater void in ourselves.
Your worst nightmare is similar that of Hamlet’s restraint:
“……………………….To die, to sleep–
To sleep–perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.”
If when you die and there is that light, it may be that very light on which you have turned your back all your life and blamed for all of your misfortunes, and then you perhaps will get what you have chosen, which appears to be left to your own self and devises. You may in fact descend to a lower level of consciousness which will never end so you can be the master of your own ship and your own light unto yourself, which could be a living hell of solipsism. Whereas the Christian who is drawn to and goes humbly to that light and hopes to dwell in it in the presence of God, and hopefully to be with many others in love and peace, all of which may be a much higher level of consciousness than we can imagine.
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It is by adherence to and pursuit of the truth that we both know that we are living through the biggest scam in human history. I see as many Christians sucked into the Covid scam through the media and their blind obedience to government authority as secular people.
However, it may be that the truth I have chosen or have been drawn into has a certain sacred authority to it and that I am not as free as a secular person. or a moral relativist, to think that when things become too hot or uncomfortable I can just change my views as if everyone is entitled to their own facts. All people who are bent over with their heads buried in the sand, in my view need their asses kicked very hard. People can have their own opinion but not their own facts, and that I believe that is what God is also telling you.
It may not be wise not to have an insurance policy which requires you to alter your temporal life for the possibility of a blissful eternity, but I would have to agree that such a rational would not be a very good example of true faith. No doubt that is what many people probably do, and I would also say that their lives are most likely far better as a result. However, doing such is in some respects a negation of faith as it appears to be done out of the fear of losing something much greater than some temporal or selfish pursuit in this life, while they suspend their enjoyments of this life and at the same time do not experience the liberation and fullness which comes from true faith. The people that appear to have a stronger or truer faith are those who can see the difference between what they are or have become, and are able to reach out, or to open up, for the help they need to be that better and more complete person. Like with AA they can’t do it without that higher self.
Smugly many of us think we do not need any help, but those who do only use reason to see the facts about themselves more clearly, and to identify where they want to leap to. They do not ask for rational proof before they make their leap, and the do realize that in the leap they are consenting to departing from their entrapped and fallen selves. That is why true faith involves a trust which negates the fear.
It is said that the proof of the pudding is the eating of it. You cannot have the proof of your pudding to see if it is real and if it is really good, by standing on the other side of the room with a spoon in your hand and whole lot of rational arguments trying to prove that there is really pudding in the bowl and that it will taste good. You have to go across the room with your spoon and dig into it. You said earlier that your is that in your earlier life you have already tasted the pudding, but I can tell from what you say that you haven’t.
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You say, “If you can provide at least one good valid reason I should be a Christian or believe in Jesus for eternal life I shall immediately convert.” The reason is that Jesus Christ is the incarnate living truth and if you do not have him in you, the truth is not really a living force in you, and you are just an empty gong. When you breach the gap in the leap or the walk of faith you are “believing into” him, and that is all the proof you will get or your will need.
These experiences are common, but in the grand scheme of things, they are rare. So this idea that these experiences are significant beyond the individual’s recollections does not have any importance. Going to church or praying to your God, whichever God that is, is not important. We are judged, how we live our life. Nothing else matters… there is a pun there somewhere.
His heart might have stopped, but he wasn’t dead. He experienced a bad dream within those synapses which was augmented by the psychedelics. “Everybody has a choice” -except for the life that you never even asked for in the first place. He’ll have a tough time evangelizing the would-be “owners” of the book of Psalms, but I imagine they have another pact with another God. What choice does a child have in being born into a Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu or secular household? Are they created for mere “sport damning.”
This man’s testimony is interesting, but his delivery is so slow and hesitant it is almost painful to listen to. He could say it all in 5 minutes not 20.
I think there’s every possibility reincarnation is what awaits us after death. Before I’d even heard of the word I grasped the concept (and so therefore will other young kids). I’d gone to the pictures with a friend when I was about ten to see the film Waterloo. Some of the battle scenes were brutal and my friend said to me, “I’m pleased I wasn’t there.” I thought about it briefly and replied, “We might have been!” After a few seconds he said, “Yeah!”
He could have had a warning…But, Scripture tells us we are ALL reincarnated after the Second Coming of Christ, the Good and the Bad then face final judgement.
“No man can be made to know what he doesn’t want to know, save by pain.”
Aeschylus c. 500 BC
Amusing to read posters telling this man, “It was just a dream.” (i.e. what I have never experienced I choose to believe does not exist.)
Not a leaf falls,without the Knowledge of God.
Every breath you take,
Every move make,
Every word you Spake,
Someone`s watching you.
we do choose our fate and have been warned plenty.
There is no death as such, but a transition to another reality. A reality better or worse than the existing one, according to merit. Death is only perceived by those the deceased left in the previous reality. Consciousness is eternal and everyday is “judgement day”.
One thing to know; nobody goes to “Heaven”, as in the dwelling place of God Himself, during an NDE, nor do they go to the “Pit”. You should know this as in order to go to those places you must first be judged. Once you are judged you are done, there is no going back to your “life in the physical” to “finish the school year” as it were. You’ve gotten your final grade. During an NDE one’s awareness goes to “the heavens” which is a vast place in which both sides are active. The experience you have depends on you.
As “O” points out above, NDE’s are similar to dreams. NDE’s are not as much as people make of them while dreams are more than what people think. However, you did in fact ask to come here, to take this class so that you could hopefully learn and grow.
As Michael Mcnulty indicates, it is true that you can “retake the class”. Because we are finishing out the cycle right now, I doubt there is anyone here on the Earth that is on their first time around.
Gerry Donnelly is correct; everything you do, say or even think, is recorded on your soul. How else can you be judged?
These times we are currently experiencing are the final “kick in the ass”. Find your way! If the psychos don’t want you to go to church, or to gather in groups and pray, then maybe that’s what you should do!
Behave like a GOOD person & obey the one & main commandment !
“DO NO HARM” !!
& you will not end up in Hell…
TOTAL BULLSHIT. BTW we are already in hell, on a planet with Jews.
What is really going on with religious belief, since the theist has no logical argument or proof then their only option is blind faith and fear. Testimonies of hell are a fear based campaign to get you to believe, nothing else. There is no proof of anything happening when you die. No serious rational person takes this stuff seriously so why put it up on the board, are you trying to get someone like myself to talk you down from your faith?
What kind of god would sentence anyone for eternal punishment? Not a just god. Who is this horrible god that would levy such injustice? The believers ego.
It matters not if his experience was an actual after death experience or drug induced. The truth is that he experienced a religious revelation and was directly given another chance. God bless him and help him continue on.
No name given, none required, either. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, true or blowing
smoke?
Not too long ago, someone told me, “If I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen”
So decide for YOURSELF!
Kevin Boyle: I am pleased that I did not say it/they are dreams. I think these accounts are valid recollections of what happens during and in some cases after death & some time, a long, long time after death. I believe they are real. I am not that religious (the official kinds), but I do believe that for some, maybe the majority, there is some sort of afterlife. As a child, I had a recurring dream that in all my understanding, must be from a previous life. This dream was set in some kind of war/conflict, but I didn’t see any weapons or other people, apart from me and this woman that was helping me… yes, I know, I am having a dream where I am looking at me… but even as a child having this regular dream, I always knew it was me. The backdrop in this dream was a sand colour, the outside walls were sand coloured and so was the ground…. the woman wore clothes (I believe) that were from the early 1900s. I also experience viewing. I wouldn’t call them dreams, they are almost as good as being there to watch what is happening. They are often violent or serious accidents. They are fairly brief affairs, maybe the person dies?
There are no sounds, no voices, just a viewing. I should state that I have absolutely no interest in the paranormal and horror films bore me to tears. I have had several personal after death experiences with people I’ve known. I didn’t seek these out, they were freaky, and shortly after their deaths.
I am a strong believer that some people when faced with their imminent death, put up an almighty fight to the point that they are possessed by forces greater than life itself… I can’t explain this, but maybe this is like a difficult birth, maybe through choice, dying people choose to fight & maybe this is linked with people who technically die, experience death, remember the events, but then return to their bodies.
@ Yukon Jack
Jack, you say your are an atheist and there is nothing beyond. What if what he said is true, then are you not taking a very big chance? Would it not be wiser to hedge your bets, and put at least some of your mental portfolio into that kind of gold, especially as your edge closer to the big crash, when everything will surely shut down and you may be faced with that point of light, which seems to be consistent in the experiences of numerous, if not most people, who have ventured into deaths door?
You seem to have very strong principles of right and wrong on various issues as if things really matter, and I thought that most atheists these days were either moral relativists or consequentialists of the utilitarian sort. I wonder where those principles of yours actually come from. If you are a consequentialist, why then not think of eternal consequences based on your free choices in how you are actually creating your own life?
@Fred B
I am not an atheist, I just don’t believe in the Bible God. You are an atheist to all other gods, the difference is I am an atheist just like you on all those gods plus yours.
Not worried at all as a matter of fact. What you state is standard Christian mythology that some God is going to judge us in the next life, well let me tell you something I am judging God in this life for putting me on a hell planet with Jews and Christians who believe in hell. LOLROFL
Hedging your life by believing is the worst possible excuse Christians have ever come up with to believe. What if your wrong they say. Well what if your wrong and you passed up banging the Swedish bikini team because of your belief system? The point is are you really living your life if this life is a hedge to get into heaven. What if this it, the only life you get, shouldn’t you live it to the fullest?
What you are advocating is fear based behavior no different than the corona face diaper. The mask wearer is hedging their life out of fear.
BTW going to the light may be the worst thing your soul can do as the light is the entry into the soul trap where you are convinced to come back to earth hell again.
@ Fred B
I love reading your comments, they are some of the best on the internet, but I have to say I completely disagree with your religious faith and what you think happens when we die. You certainly have the right to believe whatever you want to believe and I shall prove to you that your belief is of no consequence. When we die we die, and I sincerely doubt that anything happens because I KNOW that humans invented the afterlife because they are sentient beings with big egos.
An “atheist” is a derogatory term like Goyim or Shiska. In a previous comment I submitted but is not published I said I am not an atheist, I just don’t believe in the Bible God. You are an atheist to all other gods, the difference is I am an atheist just like you on all those gods plus yours. Perhaps that will get you to understand that being an atheist is not a bad thing. You don’t believe in Zeus do you? Neither do I.
An atheist is like an anarchist, someone who doesn’t believe in god or state is considered by the believers in god and state to be a bad person, a degenerate, a dangerous revolutionary. The reason why the atheist and anarchists are usually lumped together is because the god meme was used to create the state. The priest was able to create a supra organization to self rule by getting the uneducated to believe that the priest was serving God, and you must obey God and his earthly servant the priest.
If you take “god” out of the priest’s argument of why you must obey him, you wouldn’t obey him and you would see the priest as a tyrant. The priest is a tyrant, in the evil Bible (which you call “holy”) the priest writes the text to say if you have contempt for the priest or court the penalty is death. Of course normal sane people DO HAVE CONTEMPT FOR THE COURT, as they know that they are the deciders not some third party.
So from the evil Bible the modern state was born along with it’s court system, which protects the high priests of the temple, the Satanists as Makow calls them, the corrupt politicians and bureaucratic class of parasites, and all the rest of the alphabet agencies that spy, murder, lie, deceive, blow up WTC buildings in false flags, etc. etc.
If you are a Christian who believes in God and that He ordained the State you must be a very evil person who believes in a very evil god because the State is evil. Just look at what the State of Israel does to Palestine. Look at how the United States supports the evil Israeli State. That data contradicts what you think about God ordaining the State if you are an honest thinking adult.
In the theist world of make believe, the priest must scare the bejeezus out of the skeptics since they have no proof of what they are saying is real. So elaborate theologies are constructed to convince the rabble to believe or else. It is your faith Fred that is the great evil consuming the world, it is faith that floats evil Israel, FAITH IS THE GREAT EVIL ON WHICH ISRAEL IS FOUNDED AND THRIVES.
On thing they do is hold up their faith as superior to reason, another is to make themselves sound reasonable, but the truth is Fred, your theology is rubbish and the proof is the evil President Trump who supports the evil State of Israel. Right in front of your eyes the great deceiver Trump holds up the Bible for law and order in numerous photo ops yet at the same time is helping evil Israel nuke the world.
The Holy Bible and Christianity are literally black magic spells on the human mind. If you think otherwise it is because you are under the spell and don’t see how these theological constructs are possessing your mind and controlling your behavior. The Bible has constructed a false reality on which you live your life Fred, so I am not worried about the afterlife as you are because I do not believe what the Jew says.
For instance, you say their is an afterlife. Ok, prove it. You say there is a thing called sin. Ok, prove it. You say sin separates you from God. Ok, prove it. You say if you don’t profess Jesus Christ you will go to hell. Ok prove that hell exists or there is judgment in the afterlife. The truth is and the sad fact of the matter is that you can not prove any of the assumptions you have made about the afterlife or God.
If you read ‘Caesar’s Messiah’ by Joseph Atwill you will learn that Jesus was invented by the Roman State. He proves that AND he proves beyond any reasonable doubt that Jesus is 100% literary fiction. So since that is logical since we also know that no man can walk on water or raise the dead, there is no reason to fear Jesus condemning us in the next life if it exists which is doubtful.
You have not realized that humans invented the afterlife because they do not want to die. With the strong survival instinct that is in all animals, including us; combined with an active imagination of a large self aware brain, humans invented the afterlife and all the associated theological rubbish. We invented it out of necessity because of our egos.
So what is really going on when a believer threatens a non-believer of afterlife punishment is that the believer is asserting their ego (their real god) on the non-believer. It has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE REAL GOD OF THE UNIVERSE. Simply put, the idiot hominids on earth squabble and kill each other over religious differences and no God cares in the least what we do, including killing each other over our God beliefs.
@ Yukon Jack
Well Jack, I get a lot out of your comments as well. They really do make me think and especially those things you say about my faith. I am not a priest. I never made the grade, but I did spend a number of years following my nose to satiate a great spiritual thirst in thinking that I was called to such a vocation, and I can sincerely assure you that if you are inwardly orientated to what is really the true God, it is not rubbish, and you will be overwhelmed with light and divine goodness. It is that acquaintance which ought to guide any priest or minister in exercising their authority. However, no doubt because of our human weaknesses any authority we assume we often abuse it, but the medium of presentation has to be discerned from the true message especially when many of our religious leaders and those who say they are Christians these days are such poor examples.
I can’t deal with all of your comments and I do share a lot of your criticisms for my Church, the State, and for Israel, but not your feelings which may be clouding your better judgement. You did get me at one time to consider that Christianity was a Jewish plot and I did go much further in my wonder about that. Also, I considered that by rejecting and selling Christ for an handful of silver, perhaps Judas symbolized the choice that every Jew has made in rejecting their own Messiah. The choice for all of us is really between God and mammon but I have met too many good Jews to paint them all with the same brush. There are many who could have made a ton of money but instead decided simply to do their best in some occupation which allowed them to serve and contribute without harming anyone. The same can be said for any ethnic group. However, what many people see as problematic and inimical to any culture trying to be universally just and equitable is the abuse of wealth and power by any exclusive group in their midst to advance their interests at the expense of others, and to exercise dominance and control over others.
When we consider this problem, we have to remember that most monopolistic corporations are guilty of the same evil, and in fact if you consider the history of any powerful family, tribe, or nation you always find such abuses and evils. The evils you are complaining about regarding my Church and the Jews are not exclusive to them. Look at the treatment by our ancestors towards the native people of North America. Look at the present day exclusiveness of the Chinese Han people toward any minority group in their own nation. No one group has any monopoly on evil and because any group which gets power tends to abuse, that possession does the abuse right. Neither does it make the power they wield to be extrinsically evil. All moral evil comes from the heart of man and like its handmaiden hate, it can totally corrupt all of a person’s deeds as well as their innards.
Faith is the handmaid of reason. Our reason is a very mechanical thing which we use to help us make proper decisions, and for every choice me make it requires an act of faith. If you are going to leap across a chasm you had better use your reason, but to make the leap you are going to have to trust your reason and your senses which trust is an aspect of your faith. When we have a problem, it does no good to think about trying to solve it unless we believe there is an answer to it. If we suspend faith and just live by reason, we find that we become indecisive. .For problems we cannot solve or seem to be beyond us we generally turn to some help and guidance.
In ultimate matters like the purpose of life, there is no rational or logical meaning to it unless life is a continuum and there are consequences to it. Otherwise, it should not really matter how any person or group behaves. That in fact is the drift of the world without Christianity. We are losing our sense of right and wrong and life is becoming more and more meaningless and hopeless to billions of people. In this respect if Christianity was a Roman plot as you said in your comment, then in a pragmatic sense, it was a good one. But that kind of faith or belief lacks the power to believe in the existence of a God and you are not going to do that when you think that all evil comes from such a belief. In fact such evil comes from human selves turned in on themselves which is the opposite orientation to God.
I do not know about other faiths but the Christian faith does not begin or depend on the selfish concern to live forever or upon the fear of finality. It begins with the orientation to a person who is totally good and real, where we realize our own worthlessness and unreality without him. With that commitment it leads to a thirst or hunger for God, which pursuit can only make any consideration of eternity or eternal life meaningful.
You say, “For instance, you say their is an afterlife. Ok, prove it.”
In saying this you put reason before faith, and you put the belief or desire for afterlife before God. Without God, afterlife would be meaningless and a hell to live in. We are made for our beings to be be filled with God. Do that and you will not care about proving anything. Also, if I could prove the existence of God to you through reason you would have no need of the divine virtue or gift of faith, and it would only be a product of reason, a bunch of words and not divine. One of the reasons we are here is to grown in that virtue along with the others. If you want that gift you have only to look for it.
@Fred B
When the Gospel was penned by Josephus on behalf of the Roman State, the betrayer Judas was reverse psychology ploy:
“Also, I considered that by rejecting and selling Christ for an handful of silver, perhaps Judas symbolized the choice that every Jew has made in rejecting their own Messiah. ”
The idea here is the Gospel reader is to not to be like the bad Judas, but to convert to Christ and be true to the new higher love vibration and not be sucked under by the love of money. Such themes are woven throughout the story. The idea here is that Rome wants docile good citizens not money grubbing dishonest Jews.
Those forces are still at work today. Mainstream Jews all work together to undermine the good tidings of a Christian society. Jew infestations at all levels of society still work behind the scenes to run the scams, the hoaxes, the false flags.
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“In ultimate matters like the purpose of life, there is no rational or logical meaning to it unless life is a continuum and there are consequences to it.”
Everyone has a god experience including me. The difference between me and the religionists is that I have not allowed my ego to install the overlay of religion into my experience. I do not say that when I have a meaningful experience that Jesus/Mythra/Krishna/Zeus did it.
I will give you some examples. Part of my learning process that was when I left Christianity was I worked as a carpenter at a Hare Krishna temple. They all ranted and raved about how Krishna did this and that for them. So when ever they had a meaningful experience they assigned their god to the event.
Since I think rationally, I immediately saw that there interpretation of everyday normal synchronicities were through their filter. Since they believed in Krishna they though incorrectly that Krishna was doing something for them. (As if God is personally involved in the affairs of men, especially oneself). Of course I kept my mouth shut as to not offend my employers at the temple.
Another example. I met this woman who told me she prayed to Jesus for a job and she immediately got one at McDonalds. I had to keep from laughing out loud since I am polite. So Jesus wants us to work at fast food joints? Ridiculous.
Another example. A former Los Angeles cop told me when he moved to this north Idaho town that he prayed to Jesus and got an apartment for $850 a month (this was 20 years ago). Once again I held my laughter back, so Jesus is ok with you paying rent like some kind of serf?
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“Without God, afterlife would be meaningless and a hell to live in.”
Life is meaningless. The afterlife is just more “life” per say, and it is just our fantasy. Right now we are living, we are in life, and the New Agers say it is up to us to give our lives meaning. We do that, not some God.
What the person’s ego can not come to grips with is that they don’t matter. How is it we are different from any other animal? If you walk along a shoreline and see numerous dead fish that washed up, how was it that any of those fish mattered? Because we have a big brain and active imagination, we beat that meaningless by imagining we are special. We do not want to be like any animal which we see that just live and die.
We say, we humans were created separate from animals, our lives thus have meaning. But it is just a delusion, as we are big brained self aware creatures resisting our own deaths. So since we KNOW we are going to die, we try to beat death, we say we have a soul that goes on to the “next” life. We have no proof of this so we form groups called churches and then ALL agree to this afterlife fantasy we entertain while alive.
Thus the soul may be just another one of our inventions in our never ending drive to beat death. We have a fierce will to live, so the soul becomes a necessity for us big brained hominids to exist in peace with our own mortality.
I write extensively on this, this need to believe is our cope dope. Faith in the next life gives us hope to carry on. I say HOPE IS THE COPE DOPE. I also say that if you observe those who have not become a believer in some religion, that person might turn to heroin or other drug to cope. If you can’t find god for solace you can find drugs.
Where I live (Oregon) marijuana is legal. Millions use it daily to help them cope. I do not. I choose to face life directly without any hope or faith or belief. I just accept my life on it’s face value. I get lots of synchronicities but I have never had God tell me there in an afterlife with him. I do not think I would want that since I don’t like being alive nor would I want to spend eternity with any religionist.
The worst thing that could happen to me (I joke about) is that I wake up dead. I die then realize I am not dead. Oh my God, this hell doesn’t just end? That would be the worst nightmare of all, that life is eternal.
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The challenge I give to all Christians when they tell I me I should believe as a hedge in case hell is true is that if you live your life in fear of some unknown afterlife fate then are you really living your life to the fullest. The Christian says what if you are wrong? I say what if the Christian is wrong? Then they wasted their life because they acted out of fear.
This is just like the coronamask wearers who were fooled by the media hoax, now they are going to find out they never needed to be afraid of the invisible virus. Well Jesus/god is the same thing, it is just an idea in your head that makes you fear of doing what you want. How many young people who are dating for the first time won’t kiss because of fear of the invisible covids?
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Like all my debates with true believing Christians I eventually came up with a good comeback. If you can provide at least one good valid reason I should be a Christian or believe in Jesus for eternal life I shall immediately convert. So far not one Christian on my journeys has been able to meet this challenge. There is no valid reason to believe because it is all made up just the same as this covid hoax.
If Christianity was a Roman plot to make people completely docile and compliant then would not the Roman establishment have to follow suit in their example, which they certainly did not try to emulate until the more pragmatic emperor Constantine came along some 300 years later. Also, until Constantine most Roman emperors suppressed Christianity not just because Christians shunned the pursuit of material wealth, power and pleasure, but mainly because the biggest affront to the Roman establishment was Christian monotheism and a focus on a God which considered Emperor worship as idolatrous. In Judea during the life of Jesus, the Romans no doubt considered Jesus just as much of a threat to their order as did the Jews, and they in fact both conspired to get rid of him. I do not see how anyone can ignore that implication when reading the gospels.
If you study the first writings which made up the epistle letters and gospel accounts you quickly realize that although every teaching can be found in some earlier Hebrew teaching, there was no similar sequencing of the teachings for such a unique and different account of the Hebrew faith. Yet, it was all there with everyone missing the obvious until Christ came. You also realize that the sequencing is put into a real life form which came from with the real teachings and deeds of a real person, like not only do you have this incredible selection and arrangement into something completely revolutionary, but what was taught was actually being lived out in open confrontation to the fallen authorities of our world. Whether textual, philological, historical, or literary criticism, of these scriptures, the most reliable accounts show that the core teachings, sequencing, and deeds came from a real living person, and not from some Greco-Roman-Hebrew university think-tank to transform the world into a better place. In fact the overwhelming vast majority of all revolutionary discoveries and doctrines, good and bad, come from individual persons who have gone against the grain of the herd mentality, and so I find little basis for anyone to say that Christianity was a Roman plot or even pragmatically accepted by the Roman establishment until the masses had largely converted despite the earlier repression.
The sequencing of the Christian teachings is like new DNA never conceived by any single person before, like the birth of a new species and not just some mutation. Yet it was all present in scriptural writings un-sequenced in fragments and shards before this man came along. It was all there in hints and fragments before and then wonderfully put together in the being and life of one person, and then new DNA-like code of that person was broken again into pieces by both the Jews and the Romans, who were oblivious in their ignorance to what they were doing in their efforts in trying to kill what they saw as a threat to their order. These forces are still at it. However, each shard and fragment of this very special person carried an entirely new code like a new species to be planted like a seed deep in the heart of anyone really open and receptive to thirst or hunger for that difference and new life.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
You say that you worked for a time as a carpenter. Maybe that is the problem. Just about every carpenter I ever new or worked with in my younger years was an atheist or an agnostic. I doubt there are any statistics to say that is generally the case, but I frequently mused that for some reason there seemed to be a disproportionate number who were that way. Then I noticed that I seldom met a carpenter who had not lost a finger or two in his work. However, what I found most supportive of my silly little theory, was my own efforts in fixing and building things around my house in later years. It seemed that every time I used a hammer I would hit my thumb causing the air to turn blue with my profanities and cussing. Then there is all of the frustration and cussing from measuring a precious piece of wood too short and mistakenly making the cut. So if in fact Jesus was a carpenter and did not cuss like me, I simply had to conclude that was another aspect showing his divinity.
As for the Krishna people, I did join and try their meditation form when I was just out of school, but I found that their mantras were actually focused on spiritual beings which seemed rather foreign and too strange for me really to follow. You can no doubt go a long way with East Indian meditation methods and prayer and they in my view are most likely connecting with a spiritual realm. No one would stay in it unless they felt connected to something outside of their own egos, so perhaps you missed the obvious in your dealings with them. Regardless of any obscure teachings about the immortality of the soul or afterlife, what I observed was that most of the people drawn to it, were hungering for peace, love, illumination, through a focus on something really spiritual and detached from their own egos.
Your examples of the people who prayed for things like getting a job at McDonalds or finding a cheap apartment, is much to the credit of those humble and grateful people, who perhaps do not deserve any scorn. Who is to say they did not get some kind of spiritual help? If they would have found those things all by themselves, then to whom would they be grateful? Themselves? That sounds quite egocentric to me, and apart from some self-satisfaction, they likely would not feel the joy and release of being grateful. If a friend or stranger helped them find those things, and they were grateful they would at least have had a much grater connection to someone outside of themselves and their own egos. But there was no friend or stranger to help them until they turned to Christ or God, and because they found what they did their grace is seen in their thankfulness, which is a much richer, more fulfilling, and joyful connection I would think. But you further scorn what they found as being somehow unworthy of them despite their needs. Yet, to them it became like gold not only because they believed God intervened to help them find what they were looking for, but because they also believed those things came from God and they appreciated them all the more.
Perhaps a skeptic like yourself should be more forgiving and curious and ask that if the searchings and findings were not facilitated by some divine intervention, then perhaps their openness from their own egos in their faith enabled them somehow to utilize their whole beings including their unconscious minds to guild them. They were much better off in not being so “self reliant” in those situations, you would have to agree.
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If you really believed that life was meaningless I doubt you would care about all of the deception, hypocrisy, abuses of power, and injustices in the world. When you make up your own meaning and purpose i life it is most often only an ego trip and usually ends in some kind of meaningless form of vanity.
As for being above the animals, Hindus believe that each creature has a soul and communes with God. Cows are generally considered sacred and I understand according to some of their imagery that they also have a special reverence for elephants. I tend to think that God dwells in all creatures who are compatible with and open to His presence, but that the human creature because of reason and intelligence has a much grater capacity to know and to be aware of God than any animal. In fact the Christian believes that from this difference in having a greater capacity to know and contemplate God that they also have a much greater capacity to interact with and love God than other creatures, and that is in fact why most believe we were made, which is to do exactly that. Our superior intellects are not given to us to lord it over other creatures but to come to know and love the presence of God everywhere, and to include Him in our lives. Being more conservative I also include the more ego-liberating purpose of trying to serve Him as well.
I do not regard hope or belief in God as similar to dope which is addictive and an escape from reality. Unless we are connected to God for balance we tend to become addicted to things which cause further imbalances and cravings leading us to extremes which only create a greater void in ourselves.
Your worst nightmare is similar that of Hamlet’s restraint:
“……………………….To die, to sleep–
To sleep–perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.”
If when you die and there is that light, it may be that very light on which you have turned your back all your life and blamed for all of your misfortunes, and then you perhaps will get what you have chosen, which appears to be left to your own self and devises. You may in fact descend to a lower level of consciousness which will never end so you can be the master of your own ship and your own light unto yourself, which could be a living hell of solipsism. Whereas the Christian who is drawn to and goes humbly to that light and hopes to dwell in it in the presence of God, and hopefully to be with many others in love and peace, all of which may be a much higher level of consciousness than we can imagine.
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It is by adherence to and pursuit of the truth that we both know that we are living through the biggest scam in human history. I see as many Christians sucked into the Covid scam through the media and their blind obedience to government authority as secular people.
However, it may be that the truth I have chosen or have been drawn into has a certain sacred authority to it and that I am not as free as a secular person. or a moral relativist, to think that when things become too hot or uncomfortable I can just change my views as if everyone is entitled to their own facts. All people who are bent over with their heads buried in the sand, in my view need their asses kicked very hard. People can have their own opinion but not their own facts, and that I believe that is what God is also telling you.
It may not be wise not to have an insurance policy which requires you to alter your temporal life for the possibility of a blissful eternity, but I would have to agree that such a rational would not be a very good example of true faith. No doubt that is what many people probably do, and I would also say that their lives are most likely far better as a result. However, doing such is in some respects a negation of faith as it appears to be done out of the fear of losing something much greater than some temporal or selfish pursuit in this life, while they suspend their enjoyments of this life and at the same time do not experience the liberation and fullness which comes from true faith. The people that appear to have a stronger or truer faith are those who can see the difference between what they are or have become, and are able to reach out, or to open up, for the help they need to be that better and more complete person. Like with AA they can’t do it without that higher self.
Smugly many of us think we do not need any help, but those who do only use reason to see the facts about themselves more clearly, and to identify where they want to leap to. They do not ask for rational proof before they make their leap, and the do realize that in the leap they are consenting to departing from their entrapped and fallen selves. That is why true faith involves a trust which negates the fear.
It is said that the proof of the pudding is the eating of it. You cannot have the proof of your pudding to see if it is real and if it is really good, by standing on the other side of the room with a spoon in your hand and whole lot of rational arguments trying to prove that there is really pudding in the bowl and that it will taste good. You have to go across the room with your spoon and dig into it. You said earlier that your is that in your earlier life you have already tasted the pudding, but I can tell from what you say that you haven’t.
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You say, “If you can provide at least one good valid reason I should be a Christian or believe in Jesus for eternal life I shall immediately convert.” The reason is that Jesus Christ is the incarnate living truth and if you do not have him in you, the truth is not really a living force in you, and you are just an empty gong. When you breach the gap in the leap or the walk of faith you are “believing into” him, and that is all the proof you will get or your will need.