BOOK 69

THE BEGINNING, THE END, AND THE MIDDLE PART

I fiercely avoid scriptural arguments. In my 40 year journey as a reborn child of God, there is no bigger threat to our unity, our sanctification, and ultimately our salvation than using the identical Scriptures to foment endless arguments and finger-pointing among proclaimed “believers”. I have to question the wisdom of emulating the very enemies of the Christ, who chose to ignore the voice of the creator while strutting their “holiness” and “authority” that was bestowed on them according to the Holy Scriptures (in those days there were only 44 books). In a last ditch effort to build some kind of recognizable distinction between the Church and the “World” (like Nehemiah rebuilding the wall) I am offering my revelations of the present Bible (all 66 books) in the three areas where I disagree with all of today’s teachers, pastors, evangelists, prophets and apostles. Thank you for considering my take on the beginning, the end, and the middle part of the Bible Story.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God” John 1-1.

When Jesus revealed that God IS Love, this statement makes complete sense! WORDS are what gives identity to everything that is made, and even modern science tells us that without words, all of existence is sub-atomic radio waves travelling through a void. The Scriptures tell us that God brought all the birds and the beasts and “every living creature” to Adam and he gave them names. Even now this goes on in families where the children come up with their own names for favourite toys, or foods that they like, and most parents smile and go along with these new “words”. Back in the Beginning, before the “fall” it was all Love. The only rule was not to partake of the knowledge of Good and Evil. The words were Love (God), they were spoken With Love (God), an expression of Love (God). And then the “fall”!

According to the Scriptures, Eve was tempted to eat of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” because it might make their perfect life even more perfect, and what loving wife can’t identify with that? The problem was that she was deceived about the consequences of doing this. The devious serpent actually convinced her that she would not be struck dead that same day! So she shared some of this “fruit” with Adam and he ate. Unlike our present Catholic Pontiff (and countless millions of Firm Believers) I don’t find anywhere that this fruit was an apple. Or a pear. Or cherries. The fruit of the knowledge of good and evil is judgement. Words of judgement. And that was the point at which mankind rejected God’s perfect judgement and set himself above the Creator. “Sin” entered the world through Adam – not Eve. If Adam hadn’t agreed to start judging good and evil, God would easily have dealt with his wife... permanently, and sin would not have found a place in this world. This perspective changes the current status of Adam as a ruefully slow-witted bad boy into an incredible example of how much a man can love his wife – enough to accept death before he allowed even God to separate them. It makes the “fall” look more like the love story of Romeo and Juliette!

However, there was good reason for God’s rule, and the severity of the punishment. Six thousand years of our history attests to the misery that results from human judgement. It wasn’t long after the “fall” that the murder of Able by his brother Cain took place and look what caused that horror. Cain felt rejected because God told him that his gift was not “as good” as his brother’s. The reason that God didn’t strike Cain down before the murder, or even after the crime, was because Our Creator knows what the cause of our madness is... He Allowed Adam and Eve to continue living out of respect for Adam’s willingness to sacrifice himself, and rather than striking them both dead, meted out a just punishment – to argue endlessly 24/7 about who was right and who was better and who was best. At the same time He implemented His plan of redemption (that hinged upon Jesus and His willingness to sacrifice Himself for anyone who would return to the original relationship with our creator by having faith in the promise of forgiveness of sin). But that is the middle part, and first I need to clear up a false teaching regarding the “end” of scripture.

My Bible ends with a dire warning that “If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophesy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things that are written in this book.” (Rev.22, 18 – 19)

I have always understood that “this book” referred to the “Book of Revelations” and not the entire 66 books of the Bible. I have listened for all these years as preachers wave the Bible in the air and proclaim “This is THE COMPLETE WORD OF GOD” until I am sick. The local Baptist congregation has made this claim part of their Creed. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” (Tim 3 – 16). As far as I am concerned, when someone hears what God has to say and writes it down, it is Scripture. Whenever He speaks, and what He says about anything. “And there are many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.” (John 21, 25) Jesus, we all agree, was the WORD made flesh, so are we to believe that all those books that were not written were not inspired of God? Ridiculous. The purpose of binding a few scriptures together and conclude the collection with the dire warning of Revelations was to eliminate the role of Apostles and Prophets in the governance of the Church. This, in turn, allowed splinter groups to form, each with their own private interpretation of the Scriptures, and none of them being held accountable for horrendous hypocrisy and ignorance.

It is my fervent hope and expectation that the present interruption of weekly “services” is a final chance for the corporate Body of Christ, who have endured the strain of staying pure in heart (while surrounded by the malicious chaos of our present world), to shake off the incessant droning of religious lectures and challenge the obvious madness that infests human government. It is time to outline the necessary changes to “Our Way of Doing Things” and separate ourselves in order to offer a choice to desperate people in a collapsing society. That is the Great Commission mentioned in Scriptures.

Which brings me to “the middle part.”

When Jesus arrived in Israel, there had been no accepted prophets for only 400 years. Among the Levitical priesthood there was a well documented split in interpreting the same Scriptures (much like today’s denominations). The Pharisees believed (and taught) that the resurrection from the dead was along the lines of the Egyptians and their Pharaohs – a bodily return of dead people to life. This made sense of the whole burial ritual and keeping track of the tombs of your favourite ancestors.

The Sadducees, on the other hand, recognized that flesh and Spirit are different realms, and while all flesh would perish, the Spirit was everlasting and merely escaped from the body at death. They tried unsuccessfully to brand the Lord’s teaching as anti-pharisee, but to no avail. Jesus put it quite bluntly to them both when He said “I AM the resurrection” and proceeded to heal the sick, restore sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf and raise dead people to life. In the early Church these occurrences continued and caused an upset everywhere they went. Paul (Who was trained As a Pharisee) understood the message of receiving everlasting life by believing the Words of Jesus when he recounted his tribulations as an apostle who had divine approval. He endured stoning, shipwreck, lashings etc., but in his first letter to the Thessalonian church, he comforted them with “we which are alive and remain shall be caught up with them (the Christians who had died.) in the clouds.”. Obviously he considered the promise of eternal life to be exactly that. (1 Th. 4, 17).

We haven’t had any recognized prophets for close to nineteen centuries. Today’s teaching on the subject of resurrection is vague and theoretical since nobody has substantive evidence to back up what they teach. The most common theme is a glorious “afterlife” that believers enter as soon as they die, which matches much of the dogma of other religions. The Scriptures in the Bible can be used to insist that the Kingdom of heaven will be here on earth (after descending prefabricated from space), or just a giant collection of “spiritual entities” that have graduated from their fleshly prisons. Many people still hold to the idea that we should embalm our bodies to prevent decay and keep meticulous records of who was buried where in preparation for a massive “resurrection”. I prefer to stick with what Jesus had to say. “And fear not them who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Mathew 10, 28. His own death and resurrection are a testament to His perfect example – He did indeed practice exactly what He preached. As for the Kingdom of heaven... it is amongst us; it is ours to enter in Today; it is within; those who live in the Kingdom are like children; the Church Is the Body of Christ. Our individual resurrection took place at our baptism when we invited God to be Lord of our life and believed that He forgives us our sins as we forgive others who sin against us. That is far too straightforward to suit the arrogance of human beings, but never-the-less, God has not given me a vision of an alternate plan. WE ARE the alternate plan.

This is the third book of a trilogy. The first, Book67 the Book of Unspin details necessary changes to our basic institutions - Religious, Financial, Judicial, and Governmental. It also offers a five step peace plan between modern day Israel and the Palestinian authority. The second, Book68 the Unification of Species, outlines seven global agreements that can create peace and order out of the present violence and corruption that dominate our global news. My hope for this final attempt to communicate my thoughts and reasoning is to equip the vast army of angry Christian prophets who are currently being ignored into a unified shout to bring down the deceptions that keep the present system operating no matter what. If anyone doubts that God still speaks to and through human beings, I recommend they watch Michael Moore’s new documentary, “Planet of the Humans”.