Sorry but scare tactics work no longer. You won't scare me off into heaven with claptrap. The road to heaven via church nonsense is easy and the gate is wide. Churches, full of young dumb people and old dumb people who have done no homework other than listen to crap coming from the pulpits, and like sheep that we are, follow along blindly, most captivated by silver tongues smooth talking snake oil salesmen, and from the entertainment which the church provides to keep the audience trapped and enthralled.
Talking to me? There are only two states of mind. A) Believing B) Knowing. You could say that the human mind is a slave to faith. This is true enough for both atheist, deist and theist. What stops believing is knowing. The human problem is the inability, or unwillingness to tell the difference between believing and knowing. Part of the problem is that humans MUST believe or will cease to seem to exist. So a humans first loyalty is necessarily to faith/believing. A world built upon faith has it's own version of "knowledge". But worldly knowledge is just the observation of persistent faith phenomena. We think we know that 2+2=4. But it's just the observation of persistent faith phenomena that allows us to build larger and larger edifice on top of a faith-based foundation. Similarly, most things you can find in a book won't give you actual knowledge. At best a human can handle a small "seed" of knowledge experience. At full knowledge the human ceases to seem to exist. So actual knowledge goes against man's interests, which largely involves the maintenance of a semblance of legitimacy in the scheme of reality. But a scheme of reality is not Reality. Personally, i once got a small seed of knowledge. So i can speak from some experience. Because of man's dependance on faith, knowledge, even a small seed, must somehow be received. I argue that there are things you could perhaps believe, to prepare for the reception of knowledge. Or, maybe there are things you could do, or not do to prepare for the reception of knowledge. Meditation, for example, is an effort to not believe anything by not thinking anything (thinking and believing are closely related). Or, maybe you could ask for some knowledge. But you'd have to somehow believe that you could perhaps ask for it. How would you arrive at such a faith? Any and all knowledge that is actual knowledge is about Reality. Any and all knowledge about Reality is knowledge about Self. There isn't anything else to actually know. If there is anything else to know, it too is about "self", with a small "s". Rather, anything else would be "knowledge" (fake news) about an alternate self. So, when i received a small seed of knowledge, it challenged my perception about "self", expanding it quite a bit. I got a seed of knowledge which said "This is not your home". It was not an audible voice. I just knew. When you know something, you don't need anyone else in the world to confirm it. But other people are very useful for confusing what you knew. So, you could "lose" what you knew, for a while, like i did. But it's very hard to lose, and maybe it can never be permanently lost. There is a certain "power" to it. On the other hand, there are plenty of written material in the world to help clear up the question of self. There may even be a couple of chemicals that could assist. For me, i had the assist of some written material. I have not felt the need to read anything more and haven't read much of anything for years. When you know, you don't need to lug around heavy reference books. As long as one appears to exist as a human, there is more knowledge to receive. Arguably knowledge is total, or not at all. So what is a "seed" of knowledge? That's hard to explain. But however the seed grows, it must grow consistently, free from cognitive dissonance. I may have added things i believe, but they are consistent with the seed "This is not my home". The best we can do is prepare, by aligning as many beliefs as we can to what knowledge actually is. The goal is to reach a crossover, of sorts, where an educated frame of faith is subsumed by total knowledge. Where total knowledge exists (is experienced), there is no room for any kind of faith or belief, since these are actually expressions of ignorance. For that same reason there is no "universe" as man thinks he "knows" it. Man's universe is built on faith (an expression of ignorance) and therefore does not exist within the experience of total knowledge. A universe built on faith is really "the beast". A beast is difficult to tame. Arguably such a universe is untamable. You could try to ride it, like riding a bull. But chances are you'll be thrown for a loop before too long. If you define the devil as "that which is difficult", you could call man's universe "the devil". Or, more descriptively, you could call it "the anti-Christ", which is the same as saying anti-reality (Christ=Reality). Anti-reality is the world of imagination ruled by faith. Arguably any and all beliefs go against reality, which is based on total knowledge. Once you get sucked into anti-reality, it's very tricky to "overcome" the way faith functions to entrap imaginative minds. Compared to Reality, the experience of anti-reality is like being "dead", like a vampire. Vampires can't handle the sunshine of knowledge, and would wither away if they were exposed to the sun (knowledge). Anti-reality is a constant contradiction. Dead but not dead. Knowledge of Self clears up all contradictions. With knowledge the beast must wither away, disappear, and be forgotten.
I told you before, they are competing businesses to the original universal abomination of desolation, standing in the place of God, changing times and laws (day of rest and commandment 2). Been rereading "extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds" lately. The long chapter on the crusades is revealing. They wanted to possess the "holy land" and "holy sepulchre" and were willing to kill to get them. They also killed, stole, and ravaged the pathway through Europe on the way there and back. And of course it was the pope who riled them all up to do it in the first place! All for lifeless relics. Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life!
No he's not! The whole bible as brilliant as it is, is a metaphor for life. Don't take it literally. That's why so many religious leaders fail, they take everything written literally. Take sexual urge for example. People (religious) lose control because they are indoctrinated that they are accountable to god. BIG MISTAKE!!! Being accountable to someone else never works in real life, it might work for a season, but then the interest flags. We are god. God is us. We are accountable to ourselves. Want to win in life......? Everything you do benefits or takes away from yourself. Want to please god? Then please yourself and that pleasing is not a selfish pleasing but a giving pleasing. We are god! God is us, in us. We are part of god, God is not out there!
Dead right! And humans created the Torah, humans created the bible, humans created religion and Judaism and Christianity and all the bs stories. Everything especially gummint sanctioned and shit (religion) with mass appeal are flawed to billyoh. Don't be a mug and cultist clinging to stupid nonsense.
The book of Joseph Smith just goes to show to what lengths a man's mind will go to get his way...especially a narcissists' way. Why then does anybody maintain a sense of sanctity regarding the collection of books that were listed as "canon" by councils of bearded old men with pointed hats about 300 years after the facts on the ground? Don't you know men were as political then as they are now? Don't you know that the winners of war generally write the history in a way that supports the winning ideology? Anyway... Actually the only reference to Jesus judging was in the book of John where it is said that the god of this world has been judged. Presumably, Jesus judged it to be "the devil" so-to-speak. But what is "the devil"? I define it as that which is difficult . As a self-deception, the god of this world is difficult to "overcome", as is any self-deception. It is especially difficult when the self-deception seems to prove, through it's grandiose scope, that: All that is true is untrue; All that is untrue is true. This (world, universe, devil) is especially difficult when you consider that man's five senses are only designed (intelligently designed) to offer false feedback: Eyesight: false feedback Hearing: false feedback Feel: false feedback Smell: false feedback Taste: false feedback It's difficult when you consider most of man's thoughts are false feedback. This is why Jesus advised beginners to "judge not", since there isn't hardly anything a man's senses...or thoughts...can trust to be true. This includes man's idea of what is actually "sin". For example, man will readily believe that coffee, or cigarettes are sins. But won't even consider that his very existence is the manifestation of prior "sin". As such, man's sins include: being born breathing growing eating drinking thinking believing feeling pain growing old dying What makes these sins are man's complicity. This is because man is complicit in his own manifestation, in his own birth, and in his own death. As such, the god of this world, and its manifestation (man), are birds of a feather. Arguably, man is the embodiment of the thoughts of the god of this world. This would be why when Peter tried to make things difficult for Jesus, Jesus replied "get behind me satan". Yes, it's fairly easy to carry on with the status quo. But if you are willing to break the status quo, you would admit that you made this world. If you did that, you would be following the example of Jesus. Till then, you may easily remain in denial of your primary sin. You may say, Jesus made the world, not me. Well then you easily remain in denial of the essential oneness of which Jesus spoke. The denial of oneness is at the foundation of this world, of which you maintain the status quo so long as you deny this. Making up arbitrary lists of sins is a game we play to continue to deceive ourselves, when everything about man's supposed existence is a sin. To really understand sin you need to redefine it as: Seriously Insane Notions about Christ. Because of the over-ruling reality of oneness, Christ and Self are the same. Then, notions about Christ are notions about Self, which become self-deceptions when they are not true. Notions about Christ grow legs when they are taken seriously. The more seriously one takes notions about a false self, the more insane one's mind tends to go. Notions, as such, are a denial of Reality, which is a denial of Christ, which is a denial of Self. Notions are the foundation of a world built on imagination, and fueled by faith, which, by its very nature, goes against the Reality of the total knowledge of Self. As such, the "world' that man seems to "live" in is insane. Man's perceived presence is an indicator that man, and his world are experiencing insanity ("sin"). If you "live" here, you are complicit. If you follow Jesus example, you are fully responsible. It's "difficult" to overcome one's own insanity. But if you follow Jesus example, you will indeed overcome the situation.
It's one heck of a contradiction, where sinful flawed men making opinions on what is godly and what is sinful.