That In Which We Live, Move, and Have Our Being

Month: July 2023

What is a Good Bible?

Grace and Peace to you. May the Living Force, the Ground of All Being, and the Divine Spirit that guides and nurtures all life be with you and guide you into all truth.

In keeping with that wish everyone should have a good Bible. The Bible is the most accessible tool we have to access the ancient scriptures and the Wisdom of the Divine and I keep one by my chair and take one with me wherever I go (if I will be gone for more than a day).

That may surprise many because I often rail against the translations of the Bible that we have in English. I think English is a poor language to translate the Bible into. When it comes to philosophy and theology English is a very imprecise language and the way some political parties manipulate and play with the meaning of words it is making the language even worse. However, the Bible is the most accessible document we have for ancient Wisdom and the most diverse collection of ancient scripture that we can easily access today. I would like you to have the best chance of getting an accurate translation that is not colored by human prejudice.

I firmly believe in the passage: “Every word of the LORD proves true. He is a shield for those who take refuge in Him.” However, because I firmly believe this I want to ensure I know what the Divine One actually said and that I am not getting a poor or “political” translation that has more of some churches DOGMA in it than it does the word of truth from ancient scripture. What did the original actually say and do we actually understand it today?

Too often, what we think it says is colored by what we already believe before we start reading. This is why I go back to see what the passages originally said in the oldest version of Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic that we can find. I consider it so important I dig for the buried truths beneath the surface words and invite you to go with me on these digs.

I will have many more posts in the future than I have had in the past as I will begin concentrating more time here.

There are two passages I look for to see how they are translated so that I can avoid church politics and dogma. You see, even John Wesley’s Methodism (which originally employed women preachers – if Wesley and his brother determined that they were “called to preach” by a Divine Call) became a denomination that, in the 1960s, told my sister “Women can’t be preachers.” Like so many religions this isn’t, in my mind, Biblical because the Bible says that “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave or free but all are one in Christ Jesus.”

Happily, myself, my wife, and my sister, all became pastors and ministered together in the same district. It was a wonderful experience.

If any “Christian” tells you that race, gender, or social status is important to the Divine they are denying the verse I just quoted because the Bible says that NONE of those things are important to the Eternal One. They may be important in our relationships with one another but they are not important for our union and relationship with the Divine Source.

Unfortunately, they are very important to some churches. I even had a friend who showed me the list of beliefs that her denomination put out and it listed the verse I just quoted near the top of their beliefs. She had circled that one and then circled one farther down that said, “We don’t believe that women can preach or be leaders in the church.” This was especially significant because I thought that she was called to preach by the Holy Spirit and teach but her denomination and family were all opposed to women’s leadership in that way and, if she was called, she never answered because of the social stigma in her denomination and family was too strong.

Paul is often said to have been a misogynist because of the things he wrote to the church at Ephesus. However, we have no clue what questions he was responding to when he wrote what he wrote to Ephesus.

We do know that Ephesus was the home to one of the Ancient Wonders of the World – the Temple of Artemis. More than any other ancient city the priestesses and women of the Temple of Artemis had influence there. People often quote him saying “Women should be silent in church.” But he ONLY wrote this in answer to an unknown question at the church of Ephesus where the Temple of Artemis dominated society.

I love the Pauline letters and much of my theology is drawn from them and the Hebrew Bible. However, my Bible instructor highlighted the problem we have drawing conclusions from Paul’s letters when he said, “We have to remember when we are reading these letters that we are reading someone else’s mail. On top of that, we only have Paul’s answers and we don’t have the questions nor do we know the situation that he is responding to. For that reason, we have to compare and contrast the different letters to see what Paul was actually saying.”

When it comes to women we know that Paul entrusted his most important letter, the Letter to the Romans, to Phoebe a minister at the Church of Cenchreae, to carry for him. As the letter to the Romans is the most complete explanation of Paul’s theology it is considered to be his most important letter and it is definitely his longest. It had to be very important to him he put a lot of time and effort into it. He could have entrusted it to anyone but he sent it with a woman. You can find this in Chapter 16, verses 1 and 2.

I quote from the NRSV (a book I consider one of the better translations for Bible study, however not a very good one if you are looking for comfort – more on this later.)

16: 1-2 “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well.”

OK, we know that Phoebe was a powerful woman. She is described as a deacon and a patroness of the church. In those days Christians had no churches and they had been kicked out of the Jewish Synagogues so they couldn’t worship there either. Early Christians gathered together in the houses of believers. The largest churches met in the houses of the wealthy and they were under their protection. We get a pretty good clue that Phoebe was one of them because she is a “benefactor of many” and the Greek words used pretty clearly identify her as a patron.

Now in many Christian sects (there are well over 350 Christian denominations and sects and many of them will fight tooth and nail over varying beliefs – so when someone says “Christians believe…” they are gas-lighting you. They are either telling you what “they” believe and are pretending that all “real” Christians believe the same or they are hating on Christians and have created this phony boogeyman in their mind. I once spent almost an hour arguing with someone who told me “Christians believe…” and proceeded to tell me things that I have NEVER met ANY Christian of ANY denomination who believed the things this truly ignorant person thought Christians believed. I am a minister. My Master’s Degree is in Religion. I think I have a pretty good understanding of religions and what Christians believe but, like all trolls, he was “right” and not open to learning anything.

Beware of non-Christians who tell you what Christians believe. I have seen way too much gas-lighting on this topic in New Age and Wiccan books as well. Some of these books are well written but they have such a misconception about Christianity that they confuse the worst actions of those who “claimed” in History to be “Christians” and seem to know nothing of what Christ actually said or taught. These people MAY have known a grandma, an aunt, or someone in their life who believed what they say “Christians believe…” but I have an Encyclopedia of Christian Worship and Religion that has studies of hundreds of denominations, how they worship, and what they believe, and far too often I cannot find these supposed “Christian beliefs” in any of them.

Further, anyone who says Christians believe and says anything other than “Christians believe in Christ” is gas-lighting you because that is literally the only thing that all Christian denominations and Messianic Jews agree on. They don’t even all believe that the Christ they worship was a real person (some believe in a Cosmic Christ concept that is present in many religions,) and they definitely don’t all believe that he rose from the dead. Yet Paul, who knew the original disciples said, “If Christ did not rise in body than our preaching is empty and our hope is vain.” So, it seems pretty clear to me that they were being literal in what they claimed because that is a pretty strong statement.

But back to Phoebe. She is a deacon of the church of Cenchrae. A deacon is a minister who is also a servant. Christian ministers are supposed to be “servant-leaders” because they follow a Christ who knelt down and washed the feet of his disciples. This was an act that servants tended to do because it was a dirty job in a world where everyone wore sandals everywhere and didn’t bathe every day. Christ did it as an act of love and to demonstrate to his disciples what leadership really meant. It meant caring for those you lead.

Many churches have the belief that women need to take a back seat. Perhaps there is something to that because nuerological studies tell us that when women talk their body releases ten times as much dopamine as a man’s does. So if you ever got the idea that women like to hear themselves talk this is literally true. I don’t say this to put women down it is just a biological and nuerological fact. It is probably a necessary fact because women provide primary care for young children. They have to do this because they have the breasts to nourish the child. Children grow and develop faster, like plants, if they are spoken to in a loving manner so it makes total sense that they would have evolved mechanisms to encourage them to talk to their children. God would be stupid if he didn’t make it that way. We will never know if it is because of this tendency to talk more, or if it was out of hand in Ephesus, that Paul said “women should be silent in church.”

However we do know for a fact that he entrusted his most important letter to Phoebe a deacon of the church at Cenchrae.

Now here is why I look at this verse.

Some translations of the Bible were written by denominations that believe that women cannot be leaders, even if God calls them to be so, and so whenever women are mentioned as Deacons in Greek they translate women as “servants” and men as “ministers.” Christian Deacons are servant ministers but this betrays their own prejudices and NOT the prejudices of God when they assume that Deacon means “servant” if it is applied to a woman, and “minister” if it is applied to a man. That is an example of human prejudice affecting the translation and not Biblical truth.

I have talked to persons who say things defending their denominations beliefs by saying that “God wouldn’t do that” (such as make women a leader.) I hate it when people say that because right away you know that they think they can determine what God will do or won’t do. In my opinion their God is too small. The Divine One is so much greater and transcendent than us we will never fully understand its ways and we need to be more humble in our searching of scriptures.

So if a Bible calls Phoebe a servant I generally don’t buy it. If they call her a minister I do buy it. This tells me if the translator was reading into their translation their own prejudices and beliefs about women and I don’t want to read their prejudices I want to read the truth; or as close as I can get to it.

A second place I look is verse 16:7 (also in the book of Romans,) where Paul says:

“Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.”

In Greek Junia is written Iounia and is sometimes translated as Julia in some Bibles Origen, who lived 185 to 253 AD, was clear this was Junia the wife of Andronicus as were most ancient commentators and scholars. It wasn’t until the 12th Century AD that commentators began to insist that Junia was a Junias.

Some translations admit that Junia was female but change the translation. Even in Wikipedia, (and no real scholar actually uses Wikipedia as a source,) one passage says that she was “known to the apostles” not that she was one of the apostles. Better translations of the Greek are that she and her husband were “counted among the apostles” and you can even make a case that it should be translated that they were “outstanding among the apostles.”

Here is the ranking (if there is a ranking,) of Christians. Seekers who are looking for the truth. Believers who have found the truth. Followers who are living out the truth. Disciples who are dedicated to following Jesus wherever he leads them, even unto death, and Apostles.

Apostle is the highest praise that a Christian can get. Jesus told his apostles, I no longer call you disciples but friends because now it was up to them to take his teachings out in the world even as he had represented his father to them, now they were to do that for the world.

Junia, in this passage, is called an apostle. Some Bibles were translated from the Latin and when the Roman culture translated this passage they said, “That must be a mistake. Women can’t be apostles. It must be a Greek name and not actually the Roman name of Junia. They, therefore, translated it as Junias putting a Greek male ending on it and making the name male. However, subsequent studies have shown conclusively there is not and never was a Greek name of Junias. If your Bible calls Junia Junias it is doing so because it is pre-empting Paul’s statement that she was a female Apostle because the translation doesn’t believe that women can be leaders (no matter what some upstart who actually knew the disciples of Christ and wrote half of the New Testament might have written, or what the Bible actually says.)

In my mind changing the Bible to fit your prejudice is heinous and these are two easy verses that I check to try to avoid bad translations that are going to give me more of their religious DOGMA from their particular Christian denomination than they are going to give me the truth of scripture.

But we all need to make our own decisions and you need to make yours.

Oh, I almost forgot. I said that the NRSV is not a good translation to read when you are in crisis. That is because we want something sure when we need help not “ifs.”

In the NRSV they had a huge company of scholars argue over every verse before they wrote it down. I happen to know a man whose Father was involved in the process. Like the council of Nicaea where they decided what books were to be put in the Bible, they had a few yelling matches as people defended their positions. Eventually, they wrote a Bible in the NRSV that if it was vague in the Hebrew and Greek and people were not in agreement with what it said they left that vagueness in the English and provided a brief (sometimes all too brief,) explanation in a note. That is why I use the NRSV for Bible Study. I think it is the best English translation that I have read and most free of religious dogma from specific denominations because it had so many different representatives from the different Christian sects present to argue over the translation.

However, if you are up to your tush in alligators you don’t want to know that the instructions you have on how to drain the swamp are vague. You want something clear, concise, and comforting. So, I have other Bibles I read if my life is falling apart but I use the NRSV for study and Lectio Divina.

My family Bible that I kept for family Bible readings when my kids were little was the New International Version. It translated the above verses accurately but it was written so it was easier for kids to understand (and adults too.)

I have other Bibles. I often preach from the New King James, (or the NRSV, New International Version, St. Joseph’s Bible, or others). I have many. I take the translation that, in my study, seems to be the closest translation to the Greek or the Hebrew of the verse that I am preaching on. I have not found any Bible that seems to adhere all the way through. Anyone who knows other languages than English knows that some words just don’t translate very well.

For instance, there are many Greek words for “love” but we only have one. Whether the Bible is speaking of physical love, sibling love, spousal love, or whatever they are all translated into English with that one word.

If you really want to explore the truth of the Bible a handy tool is the multi-volume Bible Dictionary called the New Interpreters Bible. It is not cheap but there is a good chance that your Church pastor may have a set on his bookshelf. If he doesn’t then I would find yourself a new church because it may be that your pastor is taking everything at face value and is not digging for the truth in the scriptures.

Too me truth is too precious to leave to others or to trust to someone else’s opinion. I dig for it.

May the Grace of the Living Force and the Communion of the Holy Spirit be with you, now and forever.

Our Coming Task – To Recombine the Fragments of Divine Truth

Our New Task [Note: When this was written I believed it would be the last post I would ever be able to make so it is a stream-of-consciousness presentation of everything I wanted to say in the coming year…OK, some of what I wanted to say. Also, I edited this on 30 August AUC 2776. I thought of deleting it because it was a mish mash but that seems disingenuous so I edited it. Originally it was a rushed job before I thought the site would be deleted. It needed work. – Rivan Elan]

I have not given this website the attention it deserves. I concentrated on political and social matters through SabersEdge.Online. However, I have come to realize the actual sickness in our society is from a stunted spirituality that is confused and lost. Increasingly I came to understand that by addressing social and political issues I was playing an endless game of whack-a-mole that I could never win.

The real problem is spirituality or a lack thereof. The hunger in humanity can only be satisfied by the Divine Presence that our society has lost. If you truly have an encounter with this presence you will know it. God gave the gift of discernment and I have seen people who were Buddhist, pagan, and also Hindu that all radiated the presence of the Divine…sometimes more than some of my parishioners. This does not change that I believe the Bible to be the best information source available to the Western World to discover the truths of the Divine. It is not God, it is religions and dogma I tend to have issues with. But whatever discipline you follow the Holy Spirit can lead you to all truth.

I do not have the money to continue this website. I need 200$ to renew my subscription by the 14th of July and it is apparent to me that I will not get it now. So this is my parting message and gift to you all.

[Note: Obviously, we were received what we needed and good triumphed ;-).]

Initially, everyone should bury themselves in their religious tradition and learn all they can. But this is not just mental. You must connect with the Divine Presence. Seek out the mystical traditions of your faith; for in these lie the true answers and experience of the Divine Presence. Saint Paul said to Christians 2,000 years ago “I feed you on milk because you are not yet ready for solid food.” Sadly, 2000 years later Christianity is still wallowing in the milk of infancy and any attempt to grow in God’s presence and experience has often been crushed by religious institutions and marginalized.

This is not surprising. Religion is a good that can be twisted to harm. Religion comes from the word Religio which means “to bind us back.” In other words, it begins as an attempt to reconnect us with the Source of All Life, the Ground of All Being, the One of Many Names.

Unfortunately, religions create institutions and institutions are about power. Power does not like people who reconnect with God because earthly institutions cannot control them – so they attack them as they have Jesus and innumerable spiritual leaders and saints of the past. God and the Divine Power and Presence are always a threat to Earthly Power. Yet it is the key to reconnecting with Nature and Nature’s God. We must do it.

Once you have immersed yourself in your religious tradition, if you reach the point where you find that it is the way to the truth and the light you may notice what I did. Religion is a block to that Truth.

When I studied Greek and Hebrew I became increasingly aware of limitations in translation in English versions of the Bible. Rather than translating true to the original they translated according to the dogma that they followed, thus obscuring part of the truth and the path to God. Sometimes, this is simply a matter that there is not always a one-to-one correlation with words. Words in one language can carry levels of meaning that do not exist in another.

At some point, you may, if you seek union with the Divine Source, reach beyond the limits of the religion you follow. This is because an infinite God may not be fully realized in any one religion. We can connect to It but we can never fully experience It. However, we are each called to experience the Divine as fully as we are able.

There is not a “doing it right” or “I am farther than you” situation here. We are each called to do what we can when we can. We each experience the Divine in our own way. The Bible says the way to God is straight and narrow and if we deviate to the left and the right we will miss it. This is true.

However, religions often mean by this that you must follow their own dogma and non-biblical (or partially biblical) injunctions and if you deviate outside of that you are apostate. They limit your growth and understanding of the Divine to what their understanding is. This is a pale imitation of God.

The truth is that every life giving, thriving faith, has a piece of the Divine puzzle. Not every religion is equally true. Not every religion is the same. That is not what I am saying. But there is a unity in multiplicity and a multiplicity in the Divine Unity.

Rather, every religion is incomplete. Some are more incomplete than others. All have the truth obscured by surface levels of teaching that too many never seek to move beyond. In truth, I think that the majority of people are fine at this level. Many are fine enjoying the waters near the shore and have no yearning to explore the depths of the ocean. This is where religions are. They are the waters near the shore that everyone has access to. But every religion also has mystical traditions that explore the depths that resonate far beyond and away from the safety of the shoreline.

If you begin to explore these depths you will find that the Hebrew, Sumerian, Vedas, Brahmins, Chinese, Egyptian, and other ancient traditions lead us to a Divine Core and to the extent that it is reflective of the Source, the Creative Power of the Universe, the All, it is a reflection of the Divine. Similar imagery rests in each: Yggdrasil – the World Ash Tree, the Tree of Life, the Djed column of Egypt, and so on. This core pillar of creation that binds everything together, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge in Eden. There are always masculine and feminine principles that are present and a vast, unknowable, mysterious mystery that is behind it all.

I created ofNaturesGod.com to explore these for those who were ready but was cautious because too often I had seen students fall off a “deep end” drown and turn away because they had gone too far too fast. They were not ready. Too often we read and think but we don’t take time to experience and make those experiences a part of us.

This will only be here for awhile. On the 14th, if I don’t get support from somewhere this will disappear and all the posts will be erased.

Perhaps the world was not ready, perhaps I was not ready to fulfil the potential of the site. Either way I encourage you to devote your understanding and your heart to connecting with Nature’s God. This is the Creator/Creatrix of All and I invite you to broaden your understanding and experience thereof.

The existing religions have existed for thousands of years (except for Islam which is barely a thousand.) I believe the next thousand years we will be called to bring together the disparate parts of these religions – the elements of truth that lie in each – and to set aside the errors that have grown in each and to experience a spiritual enlightenment that will be as transforming as the intellectual enlightenment of the 17th and 18th Centuries was transforming. As the faith of Ahkenaton tried to be transforming. I believe this is what God is calling us to do and for that reason, many spiritual leaders have been placed here with us today to bring people to this understanding.

This is what God called me to do but I too often let events in my life distract me. Every time I approached the point he called me to be at I let myself be brought down by divorce, career failure, conflict with the church, or conflict in personal relationships. I am now going to do what I can to reconnect with the Divine and see if I can return reach the place that I first approached in my teens or early twenties before I was derailed by a sexual relationship.

Please understand, sex is powerful and good, but misused it can hinder our spiritual growth and create pitfalls that mire us down in a level of reality that is difficult to escape. That is why so many religious adepts swear off sexual contact entirely. It is powerful. Ideally, it should be part of a reality that embraces both spiritual and physical life in the oneness of God but I have only very rarely found relationships where that actually happened.

Too often, our societies prejudices separate the spiritual from the physical and the mental from the spiritual and the mental from the physical. We must achieve the point where these artificial barriers are broken down and ESP, spiritual healing, mental learning, physical wisdom, and our relationship to creation is all part of a Divinely ordered oneness. These are things that God has made part of our nature. Military experiments indicated that everyone has some extra-sensory ability but (like running,) not everyone has the potential for being an Olympic athlete.

I encourage you to find your own path toward that oneness with the Divine.

Beware of distractions. Only the Divine Spirit and an active relationship with it can guide you. You also must test any spirit that you connect with to ensure it is the One. There is evil. Although American Christianity is deceptive about it.

The Hebrew Bible speaks in only one passage about “The Satan”. But all through the Hebrew Bible there are little “satans.” Satan in Hebrew means enemy or accuser.

Because several of the early church fathers, such as Augustine, were originally Manicheans, they brought their ideas of an all-powerful good god and an all powerful evil god into Christianity with them. These beliefs colored their writing and made Satan more powerful and independent than he truly is. God is the Source of All Life and evil has to parasitically feed off of life to survive.

Evil can only exist as a parasite to the life provided by God to His created beings and order. If they were cut off from the Source of Life they would cease to exist. We are connected to the Source of Life so they feed on this life through us. Their only connection is to suck this life and joy from us. These are spiritual enemies that abound and seek our destruction. But English translations emphasize a “devil” and not the myriad of enemies the Bible actually speaks of.

My contact with these creatures has convinced me that they feed off our life energy because they have none of their own. Having cut themselves off from the Source of All Life all they can do is draw the energy of life and love from our own existence to keep them from oblivion. God is the Source of All Life and Satan, as well as the many other satans that English Bibles also call Satan are our enemies. I have stood between them and my parishioners more than once to help people resist their influence.

Here is a link to one of my videos. I may try to proceed with video and see if that works.

I was hoping to bring others to this understanding and thought this might be the venue to begin doing that. But God has not blessed my efforts and I do not have the financial support to continue. [Obviously he did before it vanished]. However, that does not mean that you should abandon the path. I encourage you to read Wisdom of the Mystic Masters by Mr. Weed or is it Reed? You can find it online.

There is one warning though. In it he has a meditation that activates the heart, throat, third eye, and crown chakras. He says that he won’t use the others because they are physical and we are too caught up in sexuality in our society. He is correct. What he failed to understand was that we need all the Chakra activated and interacting to lead a balanced life. It was not that the “lower” Chakra were too strong in our society it is that they are sick and warped in our society. What Indian religion calls Chakra exist in every mystical tradition on Earth, even Hebrew mysticism through the writings of the Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism. We need to bring everything (our lives and the chakra,) into line and order with the Divine Purpose.

Sexuality is for interconnection and procreation.

Current gender confusion is trying to further distance us from the created order that reflects the divine. As the Star of David represents the combination of the Male (the upward pointing triangle,) with the female (V shaped triangle) into a coherent whole so is sexuality supposed to combine us into a spiritual unity with our mate. This symbol too, is in nearly every religion on Earth and means essentially the same thing. It is a one-ness that is mentioned repeatedly in the Bible as man and woman becoming one flesh. The gender disphoria and homosexuality is not due to evil in our society but due to a separation from God. Too many religions point to these as unacceptable to God without fully realizing that ANY sin is unacceptable to God. We are all unacceptable in our natural state and need spiritual healing by unity with the Divine One.

Even if someone was fully healed I am not sure that God would desire a committed life-long homosexual couple to separate. They have already connected. Would not breaking that connection be wrong? I don’t know. The Bible says to remain as you were when you came to Christ. Obviously, if I was an axe murderer I wouldn’t keep doing that but they aren’t really the same. I remember the story of Amazing Grace [see: ] where the author wanted to be the best and most compassionate slave trader ever…it took a couple years for him to realize that being a slaver was NOT Christian no matter how “nice” he tried to be about it. When he realized that he wrote “Amazing Grace.” But it took time for him to reach that point. In the book the Screwtape Letters “uncle Screwtape” (an experienced demon,) advises his Nephew Wormwood to have his charge (who had just became a Christian,) to try to change everything at once. ‘He will become so frustrated in his failure he will be more surely ours than he was before.’ I don’t think we can judge in every case what another should do, they would have to make that decision with their God. It is not for us to fully know or understand everyone else’s relationship with their Creator.

The Bible says: Who are you to judge the servants of another? Meaning that we are all servants of God. When we judge others we are usurping the Master’s role. That is not good. Still, we are called to model the right behavior however we conceive that to be. We all must proceed with the understanding that we know but a part of the Divine Whole.

Above I mentioned that there is but one way to God and we must not deviate to the left or the right. This does not mean that any religion is totally correct. Think of this as like the lid to a soda at Kwik Shop. There is a circle perimeter and in the center is a little nipple where the lid was connected to the form (or Source.) We are on the perimeter. At any point we are at on the perimeter there is only one path for us to take to reach the center. If we deviate to the left or right of the line created by connecting the point on the perimeter to the Source then we miss the Source completely. There is only one path for each of us to the Source. It is not the exact same as your friend’s path or a Saint’s path but their journey CAN inform ours.

One of the strengths of the Bible, or in studying the lives of the Saints or great religious leaders like John Wesley, is that it provide many examples of how people faithfully lived out their lives to be true to their experience of God. Although I have talked with a Muslim and we compared the words of Christ and Paul with the teachings of Mohammad and found a wondrous similarity, one advantage the Bible has is that it was written by many authors and they each experienced the same God differently. Somewhere in there, we can probably find an example that is close to our own experience and speaks to us in our own path. Everyone has favorite Biblical figures and stories and they are all different.

One of the things a minister is asked to do is to ask themselves who they relate to in the Bible. I resonated with David because he was a soldier and a bit of a stinker. He repeatedly failed God but God described him as his favorite because whether he failed or succeeded he did it with his whole heart. I have noticed that Great Men succeed marvelously and fail dramatically. They all have human shortcomings but succeeded despite them. I have had my failures and some dramatic successes against evil. I also related to Samuel and Amos, and Hosea. I wear a Saint Joan of Arc medal around my neck to remind me how she kept to her path when everyone doubted her. Saint Ignatius was also a soldier of Christ and Saint Francis was an unsuccessful soldier who became a radical pacifist. I am not a pacifist but I also am drawn to Saint Francis. Find the Saints and lives that inspire you and learn from their successes and their failutes. But put your faith in God and not in a religion. By that I mean ground your faith in the God that the religion points to and don’t become a slave to the dogma to the point where you blind yourself to things God my be trying to tell you.

I have done both. Blinded myself to truth because it was against the dogma I was taught and so I was unable to believe in the God I was taught when I came face to face with evil as a counterintelligence Special Agent and turned from God. My turn away from religion ultimately led me back to it as I saw elements of the Divine in every religion I studied. The same elements. The same glimpses. Yet each religion seemed at odds with the others. Please understand, religions are not all the same. They are all limited but they are the best and most grounded starting points we have to Oneness with the Dviine. Most will live their whole lives and never need to go beyond that. I have a hunger to explore every aspect of the Divine so I probe deeply. I want to be fed on solid food and not just the milk of the Bible and Christianity that St. Paul spoke of.

For instance God never told us to put his writings into a Canon (the Bible) and to close that canon. The Bible is closed but God never stopped talking to us. He never said He was done talking to us or done sending messages to His prophets. We did that. We closed the canon so religion could have a core to prevent people from falling into error. If people were connected to the Divine they wouldn’t have needed that closed Canon. But they weren’t and false teachers were leading people into error. I believe God guided the Council of Nicaea in its choices but there is not one Bible. There are about three or four. The Bible originated in the Middle East and North Africa. The One we have is the one that predominated in Western Europe but the Eastern Orthodox and African Bibles include (although 95% the same,) a book called the Shepherd of Hermas and a couple others. In the West some of these books are preserved in the Apocrypha of Catholic Bibles. None of thie invalidates the Bible we use. The Bible is very useful but those who believe it is the final word of God worship the Bible and not the true Living God. And that is idolatry.

Anyone who has had an actual experience of the Divine knows that language is wholly insufficient to communicate the richness of the Divine Presence. IF you have not had such an experience fervantly pray for one. The Bible says that we should knock and the door shall be opened. Seek and you shall find. Ask and it shall be given unto you. The Divine will reveal its presence to you. Beware of imitations. The satans are also very powerful and can overwhelm our senses. Surround yourself with light in your mind and pray for Divine protection and then ask for God to reveal Itself to you and to come into you life in a tangible way. Ask until it happens. You will know when it does and it will transform your life. If you turn away turn back to it. Jesus said anyone who turns from the plow after he is called is not worthy of the Kingdom. I have turned away and the satans used that verse to keep me away until God pointed out to me that NO ONE is worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven it is all given by Grace. When people judge someone unacceptable they are usurping Divine Authority.

Now we ARE called to provide warning to someone when we honestly believe they are in error and they will need to work out there own salvation with fear and trembling. That is where we fail. Too often we have confidence in our own efforts and don’t proceed with the fear and trembling. God says many will come to me in that day and say, “Lord Lord!” and I will say, “Get away from me you doers of iniquity I never knew you.” and they will say that they taught, cast out demons, and did wonders in God’s name. But their heart was never one with God. God wants union with you whole heart and too often we keep back part of our hearts for our own use. We don’t devote all to the Divine. Those that do are rare. We call them saints, avatars, or great spiritual leaders. That is how rare they are. Sometimes we might call them aunts or grandpa’s or gramdma’s and they shine with a light that their family sees but does not transform the world. But it transforms the lives of those around them.

The Living God is worshipped in Spirit and Truth and in the way we live and is not solely found in what we live or believe. Western Society buts too much faith in beliefs. But in Hebrew the words are clear if action does not reflect belief then the words are not real. Belief must affect every aspect of your life or it is an empty mental exercise. It is not solely in the words we read. Jesus is called the Word in Greek. But the Greek word used is a word of command. It is a Word that creates immediate action. We lose this meaning in English. Just as there are four words for With in Greek, at leasts seven words for Love, and Hebrew distinguishes Satan from satans in English translations all of this is lost. But it is a start. For this reason, I have found that the Bible is one of the absolute best sources to discern God’s intention as long as it is read with the guidance and presence of the Holy Spirit and not just by the mind – which can make mistakes. The mistakes are small and the Spirit can correct us in our mistakes, if we open ourselves to It.

Anyway, sorry I was not more active with this site and devoted too much time to whack a mole with the political and social problems. Our Republic cannot survive cut off from God.

Our society lies to you everywhere. One of those lies is that Christianity is a white European religion. It is not and it never has been. It was inspired by Semitic peoples in the Middle East and has more roots in Eastern Beliefs than it does in Greaco-Roman beliefs. To some degree our merging of Christianity with Western Philosophy – while giving new and valuable insights – also obscured the original message. That is whay I said we would be better off to study the Old Testament in the original Hebrew and take it for what it says and not for what we are told it says.

One last thought. The Holy Spirit, Wisdom, Breath/Wind/Spirit of God in Hebrew is always female and Elohim the name of God is plural . What does this mean. You will have to ask the Living God. For this is my last post – unless God or one of His servants sends me $200.00 to renew my subscriptions for another year in the next few days.

This is from my site SabersEdge.Online and has contact info: (see also https://sabersedge.online/be-part-of-the-struggle-for-freedom )

SabersEdge strives to be your voice and the voice of everyone who has been driven to silence by people who will attack you if you speak out. I was a soldier and I will speak out. My whole life is about fighting battles. I have always fought for America and Americans and I am fighting for you but I cannot do it alone. We can do it together.

You can reach us at SabersEdge.Online@gmail.com ; or at PO Box 433, Leavenworth, KS 66048; or support us through Patreon: SabersEdge Association is creating Videos, Blogs, and Writings for Education and growth | Patreon

May the Force Be With You and Guide You and I wish you all the best.

Rivan Elan / Pastor Daniel

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