I realize that these kinds of posts always bring the wrath of hardcore fundamentalists who have a specific interpretation of the Bible that they would like to force onto all of humanity. However, I hold that religious doctrines belong to all of humanity, and therefore all interpretations are equally valid. Including those interpretations that suggest that the religious doctrines may be tainted by errors, misunderstandings, potential demagoguery. These concepts are quite reasonable and should not be viewed as an ‘attack’ against those who demand that only their verbatim interpretations are valid.

All, questions concerning the validity, authenticity, and accuracy of religious doctrines are valid questions that deserve intelligent consideration for the sake of all humanity.

With this in mind, I would like to share the following.

It has been by believe for many years now that Jesus was a pantheist. Pantheists believe that all is God. God is in everything. Everything is a manifestation of God. We are a manifestation of God experiencing this universe. God is this universe as a whole.

I find it extremely ironic that Christians often recoil at this idea. The idea is really not all that different from what they are supposed to believe about their own picture of God. Their God is supposed to be omniscient. Well if God is in everything and everything is a manifestation of God, then God is as omniscient as can be.

The same goes for an all-knowing God. If God is everything, than it makes sense that God would know everything there is to know. God knows your every thought because you are a manifestation of God. God not only knows your every thought, but God experiences your every experience. You never experience anything without God, and God experiences everything that you do. You are intimately and forever connected with God. You can’t be separated from God, but you can think you are separated from God, and to think you are separated from God is to be separated from God in thought.

To be close to God is to be in harmony with God. It has nothing to do with physical distance. You’re always as close to God as you can possibly be in terms of physicality. If you feel removed from God it is only because you are not in harmony with God. And when you are inharmonious with God you are being untrue to yourself, because you’re true nature is that you are a manifestation of God. To be true to yourself and to be true to God are one in the same thing.

The pantheistic view is really not all that different from the Christian view. However, the Christians have somehow separate themselves from God. They believe that they are spirits in their own right, completely separate from God, like as if they can exist without God. They pretend that they are not manifestations of God, but something else. What they believe they are that can be separate from God I have no clue. But they definitely seem to think that they separate entities from God.

The above was a bit of a ramble, but now more to my point. It is my firm belief after years of study that Jesus was actually a pantheist. I believe that the missing 18 years of his life (from the time he was about 12 to the time he came back at the age of 30) was spent in the Far East learning the ways of Eastern Mysticism which is the pantheistic view that all is one, and that we are all a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

Having become enlightened to this view of our true nature he returned to his homeland to preach the pantheistic view. However, he couldn’t just denounce the Old Testaments and try to convert people to pantheism. The people would not stand for that. They believed that thou shalt not have any other gods before theirs. Jesus had no choice but to work within the framework of what those people believed. And so he spoke in terms of being one with the father. He and the father are one.

As a pantheist it would be natural for him to recognize that he is indeed a manifestation of God, as are we all. And he even said as much in his teachings,…




Look at these words. What is he saying? He is telling the people that they are also gods. He knew that all are a manifestation of God. Moreover, he said, “Is it not written in your law,… “referring to their Old Testaments. Why did he not say “my law” if he wanted to imply that he was the God of the Old Testament?

Then he goes on to say, “I said, ye are gods”. Your law agrees with what “I’m telling you”.

I believe that Jesus recognized that the belief in the Old Testaments had gotten off track. There many thing in the Old Testament that point to the pantheistic nature of God, but there are also many more that depict God as being a separate individual ego.

I believe that Jesus was trying to help these people get back to the correct picture of God and their relationship with God as being a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

If you really pay attention to the things that Jesus himself taught when he was preaching, it falls perfectly in line with the 12 laws of Karma.

http://thejourneyinward.net/karma/karmalaws.html

Jesus didn’t teach anything that wasn’t already known by the Eastern Mystics.

The fact that his unfortunate demise caused his followers and others to immortalize him by claiming that he came to die for the sins of man totally overshadows what he really came to teach. People not think it’s more important to believe that he was God than it is to understand what he was teaching. He was teaching the 12 laws of Karma. Just look and see.

Christianity has become all about defending the idea that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, sent by an external Godhead on a suicide mission to die for the sins of man, and was there resurrected to prove the glory and power of God.

That ideal has totally overshadowed the true message the man tried to teach.

Disclaimer: This is a valid view that has every bit as much merit as any other view. It is not intended as an attack against anyone’s beliefs. If you don’t care to believe this view that’s fine. There’s no need to attack this view to defend an opposing view. It’s not about which view is right or wrong. It’s about the intellectual pursuit of truth concerning the nature of the human condition.

Your user name says it all.

Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

Jesus is the way the TRUTH and the life.

I pray you come to know that truth.

Isn’t that what I just said?

To quote you, Abra, "pantheists believe that all is God. God is in everything."

But it is written, and Christians hold to this as an immutable observation , "And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will give it. If thou wilt worship me, all shall be yours.
And Jesus answered and said unto him, 'Get thee behind me, Satan; for it is written,Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve.' " Luke 4:6-8.

And further, "And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyselfdown from hence:
For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee:
And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at anytime thou dash thy foot against a stone.
And Jesus answering said unto him, 'It is said,Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.' " Luke 4:9-12.

I find no pantheism being expressed herein wth the harmony and inclusiveness you suggest upon Christ, His Father, or the fallen angel that would be god .

Clearly, to borrow from the Holy Bible to suggest such an eloquent inference ipon your conclusions, you would have first read it to ascertain whether or not your understanding of such things is indeed and in fact accurate before suggesting such a spurious notion as an enlightened and learned observation of miscontrued truth by the Church.

I don't see Satan and Jesus being equally portrayed as God, nor do I see them exemplifying that God is in everything, by these passages that I have shared.

Clearly, this thread will become quite the argumentative strife and distraction that will not shape furtherance of your goal in authoring it, my friend.

But it is interesting, always, to hear your thoughts.

I already addressed this issue with the following Wouldee,…



However, if you would prefer to use your religious doctrine to incite world segregation, hatred, bigotry and condemnation of anyone who doesn’t accept the doctrines as pure verbatim truth then by my guest.

I fail to see the divinity in that kind of thinking.

What purpose can it possibly serve but to incite unnecessary animosity among men?

Where's the love in that kind of thinking? It becomes a loveless finger-pointing judgmental religion. Precisely what Jesus warned against.

I know that. Bigotry and hatred spread in the name of Jesus has survived for over 2000 years. My little post here is not about to stop it.

pantheism can also be applied 2 science in the form of theories on an infinite universe

Thier once was a sheep who jumped over a fence. And he went ba ba. Then here came another sheep and he said bah bah. Why do you go ba ba and i go bah bah. The sheep said i do not know but i know this heathen and he does not believe like us. No it can not be. The other sheep said no it's true. So the bah Bah sheep said to the Ba ba sheep if we both ba and bah at the same time maybe we can send him straight to hell. Ok lets do it. So the two sheep went ba ba bah bah. He's still here. Try harder. ba ba ba ba bah bah bah bah. Oh no you necum poop maybe he is wright and we are wrong. Its getting hot oh no we are sliding in to Hell. Were melting were melting. And thst was the end of those sheep. The Moral of the story is. When you decide that you are right and they can not possibly be. Most likely satan has snuck in and made you believe a lie. Blessings...Miles

Truer words cannot be spoken Miles. Except it may not have been Satan who snuck in, it may simple be that the person just chose to believe the lie on their own.

What a person believes in unimportant. It’s only when they expect other people to believe as they to that the true lies begin.

I’m not asking anyone to believe as me. And I am not condemning anyone for how they believe. I’m merely sharing an alternative view. There’s no need for anyone to feel offended or threatened by it, or feel that they need to attack it. Yet they automatically do as a knee-jerk reflex action.



The complete and total disrespect for another’s point of view.

Abra

I have been trying to listen to what your words are really saying. I have seen that you actually know more about the meaning of the spirit of the scriptures than most can understand. I can see a very deep underlining understanding that Yahshua did teach.. Blessings...Miles

Abra

I have been trying to listen to what your words are really saying. I have seen that you actually know more about the meaning of the spirit of the scriptures than most can understand. I can see a very deep underlining understanding that Yahshua did teach.. Blessings...Miles

Abra, i'll pray for you too...

































































feel anything yet?

Abra,

Sometimes, you assume too much about your own clarity on the matter.

I don't agree that animosity is unecessarily being engendered hre by my comments about your assessment of bilss and harmony, which I view rather as complacency and acceptance of things too big to be dealt with by a fearful and unbelieving mind that must find itself justified in its refusal to enter into the love of Christ and obtain a better mercy by grace through faith in acceptance of the offer to further ones own fellowship and relationship with God.

Being undone is never pleasant and not without wrestling with oneself to find truth.

Perhaps the assumption that some harsh words are needed to be chewed on a bit more for their nutritional benefits to be known more realistically is not oxymoronic but enlightening.

You will have to judge with the mirror of your choosing, Abra.

Yes!

I feel the love of your spirit filling my soul and overflowing like a great waterfall to runneth out into the cosmos of naked dancing muses and loving witches on broomsticks powered by the spirit of the Energizer Dust Bunnies. May the unicycles of eternity forever roll on the surface of the waters of your everlasting stream of flowing ardor.

Thank you very much for your prayer.

Joe bless you my son.

IT WORKS

You speak of a refusal to enter into the love of Christ. I spoke of no such thing.

You seem to be addressing issues that I never even implied.

I'm not sure how to respond to things I never even implied.

so.... it is feelings that we are describing.

I missed it entirely.

That's why I race cars.

for the endorfins and the adrenaline.

NO???? not the same?

My bad!




brevity, don't malign me. I have to see my chiropractor tomorrow and I don't wish to make his adjustments too many!

So the gardner is the way to truth? I knew it!

Abra,

I still see no further reference to this definition of pantheism as being misapprehended by me as you have forwarded.

You do not understand the context of my remarks .

Jesus is not a pantheist.

Nor can pantheism find any basis for being in Christian thought.

There are too many inconsistencies that won't harmonize with it.

Christianity is not about a doctrine of intellectual authorship and debateable doctrines of men about behavior and harmonizing man one to another according to the clarity of one's own faculties and judgement without pouring such things out to be filled with something new and completely different than that which is intellectually assumed to come fromlayering the past recollections about the will of God for man. If that were the case, there was no need to change the dispensations of the law and their relevance to the arrival of Jesus on the world stage.

The deposit of new wine in old vessels is but a fraction of the new wine that will be filled in incorruptable vessels when these rented vessels are done away with as their use comes to an end. An inescappable date for all of us.

But we can contain some of it here and now. That is what Christ is teaching and offering. NOT RELIGION with a twist.

It is not a rationalization, nor is it an evolution of more of the same with adaptation.

One must come to a full surrender of the fallability of man to overcome the burdens of the law without offending it in any way to inherit the full blessing of God. Under the covenant between Israel and God, that was the offer.

Jesus did it. But what gets everyone in a tizzy is that he said he didn't do it of himself, but that the Father did it unto him to do. That's the rub, in part.

He is not a mere mortal being. Nor is he under the law, nor under the thumb of any other diety.

As a matter of fact, all dieties known to man must now answer to Jesus Christ.

Or has that thought ever occured to you at all?

There is no pantheistic basis for being tolerable in Christ.

The mutual exclusivity is not up to man.

But then, you don't comprehend the divide between Miles and myself either. Ever wonder about what that really is?

He knows. But then, he is not persuaded by that which I and others have been apprehended of either.

That you both can agree on the Holy Spirit as being equally known personally by the two of you, and that I am otherwise disposed should give you the better grasp on the differences between us three, but then, he is legalistic with his adherence to fulfilling the law within himself, and you and I are apparently not. But then again, you don't see yourself as a sinner, do you? You have never broken the law, have you?


Or have you? Howwill you make oit right if you have?

through rabbinic teaching and the use of Midrash?

Through the endless machinations of the law and its efficacy?

Through pantheism?

I believe there is much more to your need to preach this philosophy than you admit, Abra. clearly you are on a mission to water down Christian thought, but to what end do you try to establish the moral equivalence of a Christian way of life with a religious observation about mankind that suggests that nothing is out of order?

Clearly, Christian thought says otherwise.

The duplicity is very loud. The hypocrisy is very loud.

The warfare mentality of the Christian way of life is not what you would engender for it, or for any of us irrespective of our maturity and wisdom and expertise with the words that tell of our gospel message.

It is about the experience of the fellowship of the mystery of the relationship with God. One which is never answered elsewhere in religious thought, teaching, practice or doctrine.

This is why we Christians are so very much maligned by all world religions, Abra.

I am not maligned for living in Hollister, or for living in California. Sometimes for being an American, and perhaps to some Americans if I say of myself that I am a world citizen.

I am much less maligned for being of European stock and caucasian and a blue eyed male. But in America, I am maligned by some for this fortune of birth as somehow culpable for the ills of society.

How much more as a Christian white man in America?

I stand a better chance of being received as a brother of the world without confessing my faith in Christ.

As tolerant as America is towards all things , it is still a place where Christianity is viewed as the culprit for its ills.

What else could it be from an intolerant world?


Why you seek to accompany pantheistic thought into the hatred of Christ that the world harbors for Him and His own is beyond me, Abra.

There are just too many inconsistencies with your ideas that cannot be contained here.

But carry on.

I am genuinely interested in understaNDING YOU BETTER, EVEN THOUGH i CANNOT UNDERSTAND SOME THINGS THAT YOU CHOOSE TO ESPOUSE. Sorry, that INferNal cap lock bested me again.

If that is your personal belief then more power to you. No one is asking you to change your beliefs.

All I’m saying is that you genuinely have no basis for telling others that they cannot believe this.



Too many inconsistencies with what? The scriptures? Sure, I’ll agree with that. But that’s my whole point. A large part of my belief is that Jesus was indeed grossly misunderstood in a culture that was already deeply seated in how they viewed God. A belief system that Jesus tried to work within for their sake.

Viewed from this perspective all the demagoguery associated with the gospels makes perfect sense and does not represent what I consider to be too many inconsistencies.

Every word we have of Jesus is hearsay. It has all be put through the ringer of demagoguery. That doesn’t surprise me in the least, not do I find it difficult to believe.

On the contrary, I find many more unexplainable inconstancies if the scriptures are taken verbatim. That’s my view on these doctrines.



No less than if it is taken verbatim. You’d have to believe that God become incarnated for the sole purposes of being nailed to a cross by man. You’d have to believe that this was God’s plan from the very beginning of time. To me that is an huge inconsistency with the very nature of the story. You’d have to believe that God would know that man would fall to sin long before he even created man.

In short, you’d have to believe that man has absolutely no responsibly for anything because you’d have to believe that it was God’s plan from the very beginning to be precisely as it is. That flies in the face of the idea that man is responsible for sin which flies in the face that Jesus would need to die to pay for man’s sins which man wasn’t even responsible for in the first place.

The story when taken verbatim is nothing but one huge inconsistency as far as I can see.

So your arguments of inconsistency are totally meaningless to me.

Like I say, you may believe whatever you like. But the picture I’ve proposed here has no less merit.

And that’s all I’m saying.

I would like to address some of the other things you've bought up in your post but I have things to do here right now. Maybe later.