Evil Archives - The Jesus of History

The Evil of Saint Paul

October 9, 2022

by Antonio Sebastian with No Comment Christianity Evil Resurrection

The Evil of Saint Paul

Recently, somebody (a kind and gentle person) asked me about Saint Paul and, to be honest, I am not sure what they were more frightened of: that the Resurrection was true or that it was a lie. What makes things even worse, they felt too frightened to even look for themselves.

By any sane measure, a spiritual teaching, which motivates people through fear, cannot be called anything but an abomination and the twin abominations of ‘Original Sin and Vicarious Sacrifice’ were born in the tortured mind of Saint Paul.

In order to explain what I mean, we must ask a question, “Why does a liar lie?”

All lies are told in order to manipulate and the lies of Saint Paul were designed to create fear in you. It was Saint Paul who taught the concept of original sin – the idea that we all damned at birth – in order to justify the next big lie: the idea that belief in a specific human sacrifice could save us from original sin. The motivation for the lie is obvious, if you take the time to read Paul’s letters in their entirety, you will see for yourself his preoccupation with financial donations. His motivation is also obvious: financial gain. The whole Christ cult was a donation scam, no different than Black Lives Matter.

Saint Paul wrote his letters sometime before 62 CE and it is his first letter to his Pauline converts in the Greek city of Corinth that seems to most concern my young friend. Here is the offending passage:

1 Moreover, I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you have stood.

2 through which also you are saved, if you hold fast with what word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

3 For I delivered to you, among the first things, that which I also received; that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures;

4 and that he was buried; and that he rose from the dead on the third day, according to the Scriptures;

5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

6 After that he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain till now, but some have also fallen asleep.

7 After that he appeared to James, after that to all the apostles.

8 But, last of all, as to the one born out of due time, he appeared to me also.

1 Corinthians 15

Ultimately, it really doesn’t matter what I say about Christian belief. Why? Because 99.9% of Christians are incapable of hearing any idea they don’t already have and they are more than comfortable believing two ideas, at the same time, that contradict each other. However, in the hope that truth and reason might bring someone out there to a love of God, I will try one last time to be an advocate for the teachings of the Jesus of History.

Before I deal with the Resurrection we must first investigate the reliability of the main witness: Saint Paul.

All of the Letters of Saint Paul tell, more or less, the same lies:

All children are born into original sin.
That God demands human sacrifice.
That the Torah predicts that the Meshiach (Messiah) will die and be resurrected on the third day.
That sin is dependent on the flesh.
That belief in the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus will absolve you of the consequences of your evil actions and original sin.

I challenge any of you to find justification for these concepts in the Torah. These five ideas are the exact opposite of Hebrew spiritual belief and the exact opposite of the teachings of the Jesus of History. They are not in the Torah.

The Jesus of History said:

“God makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends his rain on the just and the unjust.”

Matthew 5:45

Obviously, Jesus is not giving a weather report, he is echoing the vital ideas from Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) where the preacher teaches us that God does not condemn us.

Unfortunately, most Christians have a problem understanding the teachings of the Jesus of History because they are not linear – in fact, they are experiential.

Teachings like “The Kingdom of God is within you” is an experiential spiritual teaching that is almost infinitely nuanced, like an onion, with meanings within meanings.

“Become then merciful as your father is also merciful. Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not convict and you will not be convicted.”

Luke 6:36

This logia explains that it is our cognitions, our inner life, that determines our suffering. When the Jesus of History said, “Every man who turns toward a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery” (Matthew 5:28), this teaching further explains that ‘Sin’ is first created in the mind and heart. The body is only the agent of its fulfillment. It is not the body that is sinful (as it were) rather it is our decisions that give rise to suffering. Therefore, it is awareness of and the control of our minds that the Jesus of History suggests we must achieve.

It is obvious, therefore, that the teachings of the Jesus of History are the opposite of the lies of Saint Paul and without the concept of original sin, vicarious sacrifice is pointless.

Having established that ‘according to the Scriptures’ is a lie, let’s now look at the Resurrection.

The Resurrection:

Paul plays with the idea of the Resurrection, like a car salesman testing the stupidity of his client, so it is hard to pin him down, but in this passage he asserts that over 500 people saw Paul’s version of the risen Christ.

Here’s the problem. For an event so incredible, we have no contemporary record of this claim.

The Romans would have been somewhat disappointed that someone they publicly killed came back to life; they would have, at the very least, made a note of it. Jewish history does not mention it, nor do the Nabataeans, nor do the Egyptians make any mention of a Hebrew Rabbi coming back from the dead as a firsthand account. And you must remember that the first century southern Levant is possibly the most written about period in ancient history.

In fact, the Gospels themselves, are very careful what they say about the Resurrection. The Gospel of Mark, the first to be written, originally ended at verse 8 with Mary Magdalene and the Mother of Jesus finding an empty tomb and then saying nothing to anyone.

As the years go by, Mathew gets a little braver and he has an Angel say “go to Galilee and you will see Jesus there.” Somewhat suspiciously a line is added at the end “Suddenly, Jesus met them and he tells them to go to Galilee.”

Luke is a little more judicious, and just has an empty tomb and two men telling the disciples to go to Galilee.

John’s Gospel is almost an exact copy of the Gospel of Marcion and now all bets are off. In this Gospel the gardener tells Mary that he is Jesus. After this touching scene, Jesus appears all over Judea and people get to poke his wounds with their fingers, which must have been fun.

I would suggest that John’s Gospel was not written until after the Bar Kochba revolt (136 CE) and the destruction of Jerusalem. After this cataclysmic event, the family of the Jesus of History couldn’t really object to anything the Greco-Romans said about their family. Most of them would have been dead.

If a resurrected Jesus had actually appeared to 500 people, one would be forgiven for expecting the Gospels to at least agree on that point. We would also expect the first Gospel to have included this little bit of information. Obviously, some later Christian scholar felt the need to spice up Mark’s Gospel and helpfully added several more verses at the end. The fact that they felt empowered to do so demonstrates that the early Church did not take history too seriously.

Please don’t take my word for any of this. Ultimately, you have to do the work for yourself. I only mention this to give hope to those of you who may have been emotionally and spiritually abused by the lies of this sick man, Saint Paul, the creator of Christianity.

As a last word of hope for any of you, out there, who feel the need to gain some control of your life – to do something about the disconnect between the world you live in and your inner life. The Jesus of History said, “Why call me master and not do what I say? Everyone who hears my words and does them builds a house on solid rock.” I can confirm that what he said is true. If you DO what he said. If you repeat his experiment, you will find the Kingdom of God.

What is Evil?

June 4, 2021

by Shelley with No Comment Evil

For those people who are blind to the colour red, for them it just doesn’t exist. Such people live in a ‘redless’ world! It is almost impossible to explain to such people what the colour ‘red’ means to the rest of us. Discussions about ‘Good and Evil’ can sometimes feel a little like that. The Church confidently states that ‘sin is a state, not an action’. They have inherited several words for ‘sin‘, in Greek and Latin, but are not really sure what to do with them. In fact, for most religions, ‘sin‘ is an abstract idea used to beat the gullible into obedience.

Do we Suffer because we Sin?

Despite all this confusion, instinctively, most people suspect that ‘sin‘ has something to do with ‘suffering‘ but nobody is exactly sure how. The problem is that without an understanding of Hebrew language and Jewish culture, ‘Good and Evil’ is a colour most people just can’t see. To be honest, the truth is so profound that even Jewish people often miss the significance of the words. Most people are so busy talking in their heads that they miss the quiet explanation in the heart. To truly learn to hear and trust that voice we are going need to learn something of Jewish mysticism. To understand the teachings of the Jesus of History we are going to have to learn something of Kabbalah.

In fact, the answer is in the beginning. The secret of ‘good and evil’ is clearly explained in the book of Genesis, specifically in the story of Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The Jesus of History explained and expanded on that same theme with the doctrines of the ‘Narrow Gate’ or the ‘Two Ways’.

Putting yourself First

Let me explain! Have you ever been in the situation when you had to choose between yourself and someone you love? Maybe you were making some food or some drinks. One for yourself and one for the person you love. You suddenly noticed that the plate, which you intended to give to the person you love, has something on it that you want. For a split second, you felt the urge to swap the plates. If you can learn to be very quiet and very still inside, you will notice that those thoughts begin life as a feeling. That feeling is born within your idea of your ‘self‘ as separate from the world.

Let’s look at another example. I knew a Jewish mother who had grown up in difficult times. She wanted to give her children all of the things that life had denied her. She was determined that her daughter would have the ballet lessons that her parents had not been able to give her when she was growing up.

That, in itself, is not a sin. Unfortunately, her daughter was built like a bricklayer and had all the grace of a pregnant elephant. Making the child go to ballet lessons gave the girl a complex and she ended up with anorexia and killing herself. The problem was that the Jewish mother had loved her daughter as an extension of herself. She had chosen herself over the will of heaven.

Two Natures

The Jesus of History taught that for a man to look at another woman with lust was the same as to commit adultery. We can deduce, therefore, that the direction of our intention causes something to happen in the real world. To understand what we must return to the book of Genesis and a little esoteric mumbo jumbo.

Our physical bodies are born from the ‘stuff’ of this planet but we are animated with a divine life force, which science still can’t explain or replicate. Kabbalah teaches that because of this design we have two natures. On the one hand we have our mortal nature, our ’burnt-in-operating-system’ or BIOS, on the other we have our own divine nature, which is a part of God. In Hebrew we call these two natures the Yetzer Ha’Tov and the Yetzer ha’ra, the good and evil inclinations respectively.

The story of Adam and Eve is an symbolic explanation of how the choice to ‘receive for the self alone’ (BIOS) solidifies our sense of self and from innocence we learn to know shame. It is this solidification of the sense of self that gives rise to the experience of suffering.

Our intention gives rise to actions that have an effect, in the real world, like a wave that ripples through time and space. That sounds even more esoteric so let’s look at what that might mean in real terms!

Was Jeffrey Dahmer Saved?

Let’s examine an obvious example of evil. The serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, after raping, murdering and eating people as a hobby, converted to Christianity in prison. The Church celebrated and stated that ‘Today, all the angels in Heaven are rejoicing because Jeffrey has come home (to Heaven)’. Because Dahmer decided to believe in the story of Christ Jesus we are told that all his sins are forgiven. If he is ‘forgiven and no longer living under Sin’ (as Saint Paul was fond of saying) how does that even work in the real world? In what way was Dahmer, ‘Dead to Sin’.

He took the lives of seventeen men and boys, does this forgiveness bring them back to life? No, of course not. What of the families of his victims, does his adoption of belief remove their grief or their thirst for revenge? No, of course not. What of the damage to his own mind and soul that his crimes were an expression of, does his decision to believe in the creed heal his soul? No, of course not! Does his decision to believe in the Christ Jesus wash away the hate and moral indignation that society feels for him? No, of course not. In fact, for Dahmer, nothing changed. From our example, we can deduce that our actions cause a wave of effect in the real world, which reverberates through both time and space. ‘Sin’ then is something ‘Real’ like a weight of water pushing us forward and changing the nature of our future. Just as wind is invisible until it is revealed by the leaves and the waves, the effects of our actions are invisible until they are revealed by events in the real world.

Can your Sins be forgiven?

Talking of the real world, the wave of cause and effect, which Dahmer had set in motion, finally returned to redress the balance of the universe. On November 28, 1994, Christopher Scarver beat Jeffrey Dahmer to death. It is self-evident then, that despite the assurances of his Pastor, Dahmer’s ‘Sins’ were still a force that were operating in the real world. Despite being ‘washed in the blood of the lamb’, the effects of his crimes still existed. Dahmer’s choices in life brought him to a prison filled with violent men. His crimes engendered a visceral moral indignation, even among ‘bad’ people, to the point that they were prepared to take up arms against him. Surely then, these are real world proofs that no man can say ‘your sins are forgiven’.

Sense of Self

We all know how easy it is to choose the self over the rest of the world, to choose the best, to push in front, to love only while it serves our sense of self. This path the Jesus of History called the ‘Broad Gate’.

” For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.”

Matthew 7:13

According to the Jesus of History this is how we create ‘sin‘.

The Narrow Gate is to choose to ‘receive in order to benefit the world’ but this demands that we crush the ego. It also means that we learn to watch the gate of our mind’s intention because it is the force of our intention that determines the power of the wave that might beat us to death like Mr Dahmer.

If you enjoyed this Blog, then you might like to read: ‘What did Jesus teach about Sin?’ and ‘Evil and How to Avoid it according to the Jesus of History’

If you would like to learn more about the Sense of Self, read the Non-Fiction Book ‘Quantum Mechanics For Your Soul’

If you would like to learn more about the Jesus of History, read the Non-Fiction Book ‘The True Sayings of Jesus: The Jesus of History Vs. The Christ Myth‘

Why are Christians so Nasty?

April 26, 2021

by Shelley with No Comment Christianity Evil

Christians constantly tell us that they are ‘saved’. They tell us that Yoga is demonic and music is ‘of the devil’. They want to kill gays. They use verses they don’t understand like weapons. They seem to have their own language, which marks them out to each other.

“I’m washed in the blood of Jesus!”

“If you donate five dollars you’ll have a harvest.”

Only Christians are Saved!

They have convinced themselves that belief alone will guarantee them salvation. Assuming that they are ‘saved’, why are Christians so nasty?

Apart for some notable exceptions, Christians are as messed up as everyone else? There’s obviously a disconnect between what Christians tell themselves and what is actually happening in their lives. Why is that? Is God ignoring them or are they just kidding themselves?

Saint Paul the creator of Christianity

This argument has been going on since Saint Paul invented Christianity. I discuss this in my book – The True Sayings of Jesus: The Jesus of History Vs. The Christ Myth and in my YouTube channel (The Jesus of History) where I detail some of the arguments:

So the question is: ‘Can belief alone bring spiritual change or is life a bit more complicated than that’?

Believe everything the Church says and you’ll get into heaven. On Judgement day you’ll be able to laugh at all the sinners burning in hell. The Church has been selling exactly that ticket for two thousand years.

In the middle of the first century Paul started teaching in the name of Jesus. He began teaching Greeks and Romans in southern Turkey that he could give them the spirit of God in exchange for their belief in his new Gospel. The family of the Jewish teacher whose name he had stolen were not happy with his plagiarism and several showdowns ensured. (Acts and Romans)

Paul’s letters are a wall of words that say very little. He misquoted and lied but that didn’t stop him creating a religion that changed the world.

Which Gospel came first?

A hundred years ago the scholars started to try to work out which of the Synoptic Gospels was written first, when they put the Gospels side by side.

They found that it was only the sayings of the Jesus of History that lined up – the narrative and miracle accounts were obviously fictitious and could be dismissed from serious debate.

The writers of Matthew, Mark and Luke obviously had a book of the ‘sayings’ of Jesus from which they quoted. The younger brother of Jesus, James the Just, in his Epistle taught the same message.

Luke 17:21 reported Jesus as saying, “The Kingdom of God will not come by observation. It is not here or there, for the Kingdom of God is within you.”

Just like the Q source, the Gospel of Thomas is also a ‘sayings’ document and it expands on the same theme. The Kingdom of God is within you.

Where is God?

God for Paul was out there but God for the Nazarenes is everywhere.

Some of the echoes of the historical Jewish teacher still can be found in the Gospels. They suggest that Jesus went into the quiet places to pray. (Luke 5:16 – Matthew 6:6 – Mark 1:35)

From the Zen like nature of his sayings it is obvious that Jesus practiced the deep meditation techniques so popular within Jewish Kabbalah at that time. (Sepha Yetzirah)

The mind is just like a child, without discipline it is a misery to itself and to everyone else.

The Jewish tradition has a long history of meditation that existed before the Jesus of History and exists to this day. In the Gospel of Thomas, the Jesus of History teaches us that we must “Recognise what is before your face and that which is hidden will be revealed.”

This is a reference to the clear lake of conscious, which exist beneath the surface of the conscious thought patterns.

Who will save the Christians?

Christians are blind to their own evil and cruelty because they are too busy looking up for someone else to save them. If they could learn to stop talking in their heads they would hear God’s voice within and see his hand in everything. Just as the Jesus of History said, “the Kingdom of God is like a forgotten seed or yeast in bread, it comes slowly and in unexpected ways.”

Jesus taught that anger was the same as murder and lust the same as rape. Hate must be turned into love. How do you think you could do that without learning to watch the gate of your soul?

“When you pray, go into your inner storeroom and lock the door and pray to your father in secret.” Gospel of Matthew 6:6

“The lamp of the body is in the eye. When you make the eye single your body shall be full of light.” Gospel of Matthew 6:22

“When you know yourself, you will be known and you will understand that you are children of the living father.” Gospel of Thomas 3

“Know what is in front of your face and what is hidden from you will be revealed.” Gospel of Thomas 5

“The Kingdom of God is within you.” Gospel of Luke 17

If you enjoyed this Blog, then you might like – Why does everyone hate the Jesus of History

The True Sayings of Jesus: The Jesus of History Vs. The Christ Myth

Do Atheists Really Exist?

February 15, 2021

by Antonio Sebastian with No Comment Evil God

The question is, ‘Do Atheists Really Exist?’ It’s true that many people say that they don’t believe in God but that’s not the same thing.

Over 20% of the population call themselves atheists, but are they?

There are a lot of people in the world who love nothing more than to tell anyone who will listen that they hate, even the idea of, God but that is not the same thing as a being an atheist. The surprising truth is that there is no such thing as an atheist – they are an urban myth. Let me explain why!

I Know Best

Everyone believes that their stories are unique but the truth is, like a shoal of fish or like starlings flying together as the sun goes down, those collective stories form a predictable pattern.

For most of my life, I thought of myself as something of a professional atheist so I can tell you, with confidence, those millions of reasons why people think of themselves as atheists can be distilled down to only four categories:

They don’t need God to tell them right from wrong
Human suffering disproves the existence of God
God, as he is described in religious texts, is a monster
God doesn’t exist

If you look at that list, you will see an underlying pattern:

People don’t need a god to tell them what’s right from wrong because they believe they know best.
They feel confident that if they had made the world there would be no such thing as suffering.
They live with the total confidence that, if they were god, nobody would ever describe them as a monster because they are truly good people.
They refuse to believe in God simply because they have not been presented with evidence of God’s existence that would satisfy them.

I Believe in Me

On investigation, we would have to say that atheists do believe in god – the god that they believe in is their ‘self’.

But that is also true of those who say they believe in God. In the modern world, unless you actively work to avoid it, everyone worships in the Cult of the Self.

Just like Christianity, the Cult of the Self, has its apostles, its creation myths and its doctrines. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry are worshipped as saints and their words studied like holy script, despite the fact that much of what they’ve said about God was largely rubbish. Gender fluidity, the theory of Evolution and Global Warming are its doctrines, despite the fact that the evidence clearly shows that they too are myths. Like all holy scripture only the suicidal or the very brave would ever question the myths of the Cult of the self.

Today in the Modern World

As a result, Western civilisation is dying. Perhaps two world wars wounded it beyond hope of healing? Maybe this plague from China will finish us all off – I don’t know! What I do know is that we are in trouble.

In our modern world women don’t want to be women anymore; but, for some strange reason, many men want to be women.

Sex with anyone, or anything, is good but mothers fight for the right to murder their babies and celebrate when they do.

Families are bad because we are told that we are overpopulated, but the West has to import people from the Third World because the State tells us we need to increase the population.

I Could Run The Universe

It is evident that we are sleepwalking into hell. This begs the question, ‘If God was our problem, why has everything gotten so much worse now he’s dead?’ So what made people abandon God? Why would people think that they could do a better job of running the universe than God?

Just like sneezing is a symptom of a cold, atheism is a symptom of, and a response to, Textual Divinity. When people think they can find god in the written word they can’t help but create monsters. When the Judeans created their anthropomorphic blood god, they condemned us all to the future we now live in.

Abraham Isaac Kook, who was the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine, said the following just before the Second World War:

“The tendency of unrefined people to see the divine essence as embodied in the words and in the letters alone is a source of embarrassment to humanity, and atheism arises as a pained outcry to liberate man from this narrow and alien pit, to raise him from the darkness of focusing on letters and expressions, to the light of thought and feeling, finally to place his primary focus on the realm of morals. Atheism has a temporary legitimacy, for it is needed to purge away the aberrations that attached themselves to religious faith because of a deficiency in perception and in the divine service. This is its sole function in existence…”

Pangs of Cleanings

I am an engineer. It’s my job to build complex structures and keep them working, and I can tell you, if you try to make any kind of structure and make a mistake on your datum – your point of reference – you are destined to fail. The reference point, the place from which you take all measurements is the most important thing for an engineer.

Western civilisation was like a great tower whose foundations went all the way down to our shared Judeo-Christian culture, but our datum was false. The problem was that the anthropomorphic Judean blood god wasn’t real. Our datum was based on a sick fantasy. When that datum failed, the structure of Western civilisation began to collapse.

But, neither does the Cult of the Self offer us a true datum, because the ‘Self’ doesn’t really exist in the way we think it does. Our ‘Idea’ of our ‘self’ consists of three transient things:

The Sum of our past
How we feel about that past
Our expectations for the future

The illusion of the ‘Self of Now’ is a window through which we view the world and it makes us react automatically to the events in life. The ‘Self of Now’ is the source of our anger, of our lusts and our addictions. It creates our reality and it limits our perceptions. It is the ‘Cult of Self’ that has destroyed our civilisation and enslaved us all to power of the globalists – not God!

Taken from the book – ‘Quantum Mechanics For Your Soul: How to Save the World and Repair Yourself at the Same Time’

Does Satan Exist?

February 14, 2021

by Shelley with No Comment Evil Satan

Christianity would be nothing without the idea of Satan or Lucifer as a rival to God. I’m sure you will have noticed by now the amazing similarity between the dualistic philosophy of the Gnostics and Christian dogma.

Satan versus Jesus — the idea of Satan as a demigod opposing a heavenly father.
Original Sin/Total Depravity — the material world is sinful. Mortification of the flesh.
Salvation through belief and esoteric knowledge — belief in arcane knowledge bestowing spiritual power.

The theology of Saulus of Tarsus (Saint Paul) flirted with the idea of Satan as a rival to God. However, it wasn’t until Saint Augustine that Satan and Hell became the fulcrum upon which the entire Christian Church turns.

“The good Christian should beware of mathematicians. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.”

Augustine of Hippo.

Augustine was an ex-Gnostic and came from Algeria. In order to explain and justify his continued sexual addiction he invented the concepts of Satan and Hell. Interestingly, as we’ve seen above, he also hated science and learning. You will be relieved to know that there is no evidence of Lucifer in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament or in Jewish belief. Like the doctrines of Original Sin and Total Depravity, Satan has no basis in the Old Testament.

In the Christian version of Job 1:7

“And the LORD said unto ‘Satan’, Whence comest thou? Then the ‘Satan’ answered…”

Job 1:7

The implication is that Satan is the rival to, and independent of, God, which in Hebrew thought is impossible. Actually Genesis is a typical Hebrew satire meant to illustrate human nature. The actual word is ‘H, S, tA, N.’ and means the ‘Adversary’.

“And the LORD said unto ‘The Adversary (angel)’, Whence comest thou? Then the ‘Adversary’ answered…”

Job 1:7

In Jewish belief, the term Shitan (Adversary) is a description of a role any angel may fulfil. Much as any lawyer may become a ‘Prosecutor’ any angel may be created by God as an ‘adversary’. All actions in life have an effect. If I’ve cheated or murdered someone then there is an effect to myself and to the world ‘out there’, which will have to be dealt with. This concept of a weight of judgement ‘out there’ waiting to readdress the balance of the universe is what Shitan refers to.

Freewill

From a Jewish understanding of Genesis, when God created man with freewill it meant that the entire universe had to be designed in order to accommodate the possibility that humans might choose wrongly. Just as cars are made with wheels that turn both to the left and the right, humans have the choice to choose the illusion of self or they can choose the will of Heaven. Suffering and evil are merely the highway code of the universe. Governments do not create traffic penalties in order to torture people, they are there to encourage order and the safety of all. So too, in Jewish thinking, is the adversary a servant of God.

It is a truism that lies can only flourish in a soil copiously nourished with the manure of ignorance.

The Gnostic doctrine of Satan has been protected by the Church in two ways:

Restrict and control scriptural translation

Demonise the Jewish people thus ensuring a general ignorance of Hebrew and Hebrew thought

Lucifer is a good example of this studied ignorance. Most Christians use the book of Isaiah to justify both Christ as the Messiah and Lucifer as the rival to God. Both of these ideas are mistaken.

“Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! [how] art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”

Isaiah 14:12

Note: Angels – even fallen ones – do not rot in the grave! Nor are they worm food.

The words in Hebrew: “Heleyl, ben Shachar” — Heleyl, son of Shachar means: ‘Day-star, son of the morning!’ The poetic reference is to the planet Venus, which always heralds the dawn (Son of Morning) and is refereed to in Latin as ‘lucem ferre’.

This text is specifically discussing the Neo-Assyrian King Shalmaneser V, son of Tigiath-Pileser III, and his death shortly after defeating the Israeli capital city, Samaria.

The correct translation would be: “Day-star, son of the morning!” By leaving the word ‘Lucifer’ in the text the biblical translators were purposely adding something to the text that the prophet did not originally intend. ‘Lucifer’ becomes a name for a demigod instead of a poetic alliteration between the planet Venus and the death of a king. The Church has painted the Cosmic Christ as the antidote to the ‘Devil’ they created.

Satanism

Today Satanism, like ‘Patriotism,’ is more common in the tabloids than in reality. In the eighteenth century, the independently wealthy and bored elites toyed with evil as a leisure activity, much as today we have Miley Cyrus, speed dating and dogging. Therefore, we can discount Satanism as an intellectual confection of the fatally narcissistic and it need not concern us further.

We have seen that Christianity and most religions that follow the Greek mystery model, almost entirely confine themselves to the realm of the mind. As Pastor Mark Driscoll said, “We don’t go IN to the universe, we go OUT to Jesus.” For many Christians even yoga is considered demonic.

The problem with this outward approach is that it ill equips the student to find their way to introspection.

Christian apologists often dismiss the earliest ‘Logia’ of the Jesus of History as Gnostic but we have seen that ‘Gnosticism’ is defined by its dualism not by the direction of the soul. We can see now that such a condescending dismissal reveals more about the ignorance of the accuser than it says anything about Nazarene Judaism.

In fact, meditation is a foundational principle in Jewish practice. The prophets of the Old Testament used meditation and were mystics. Just as in Hasidic practice and Kabbalah today the use of meditation and deep prayer is almost universal.