Category: Divine Nature

We Are Too Often Blind; You Must Unlearn All That You Have Learned

May 21, 2024 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 0 Comments

Too often we are ill equipped to embark on a spiritual life. Even if we have been raised in the Church in Europe or America we are overly rationalistic and materialistic. Somehow we decided, largely due to the dominant fiction of Scientism – the cultic belief that science can explain everything of value in the world – that despite the fact that every human society and culture that has existed or does exist acknowledges (or at least explores,) the existence of a spiritual reality of some kind. Even in America we have begun to understand that sometimes health conditions are caused by mental and spiritual conditions. We are, as I have always preached, not physical creatures with a body, a mind, and a soul. Instead the truth is we are body/mind/soul creatures and everything is harmoniously interconnected. At least it is supposed to be harmoniously integrated and interconnected.

Welcome to the Nature’s God Blog for 20240519 Grace and Peace to you.

There is something very, very real about a war between good and evil. If you have been told there is no evil then please stay with me. I was raised with the idea of Spiritual Warfare, angels, demons, and many misconceptions that come with that – one of which you can read about if you read about the exorcism I conducted of a church – an exorcism that I thought was going to be a simple cleansing of residual negative feelings but found…suddenly…that I was facing an actual entity; an evil entity that according to all that I had read and be taught should not have even been able to enter church grounds let alone come to dominate them. I also knew that I was not alone that a Divine power was assisting me and communicating with me throughout the ordeal. The fight was by no means as certain or direct as you would see on TV or sometimes hear from a pulpit. As is so often true in life even if the end is certain because God is With You – that does not mean the resolution is going to be an easy matter or that you don’t have to work for it.

These entities I describe as evil. There is a deep hunger that can never be satisfied. It is a hunger for life that feeds on pain, fear, and suffering. In my mind the best way to describe such an overwheening desire and hunger for suffering and pain is evil. To me, living for the suffering of others or living in a way that causes the suffering of others is evil – or at the very least demonically insensitive.

One thing I have often mentioned is that most of the references to Satan in the English Old Testament are not a capital “S” Satan but a lower “s” satan. Satan means “enemy, adversary, prosecutor, etc.” There IS a big “S” Satan but most of the references to Satan that you read in the Old Testament are “enemies” of life and the Divine and not “The Devil” but devils, efreets, and other creatures just as most “angels” are a variety of creatures and not only the human shaped winged creatures we have been taught to imagine.

So, if you have trouble with “evil” maybe it is due to the over-used and sometimes comical simplicity of how good and evil are portrayed. I want to ensure that you understand my paradigm and definition.

Know that there is a Source of Life that I call God/the Divine/Source of Life/The Ground of All Being/etc. As I have said before I could care less what name you choose to give it if you are speaking of the Entity or Force that strengthens life, maintains or instigated the laws of physics and nature, and whose creative force initiated the Big Bang – quite possibly from the power of the Word. Then we are speaking of the same thing. I would include the Tao although those who follow Tao would say it has no intelligence, I have learned a lot about the Holy Spirit by studying understandings of the Tao. I suggest that perhaps Tao has an intelligence that you simply don’t recognize because it is not human.

The creatures that are evil have cut themselves off from this Source and therefore they are always “hungry” for survival. Since they have cut themselves off from the Source of life. But just as we need to convert food to energy to live they need energy to maintain their spiritual existence. They therefore have a parasitic existence by feeding off of (not the Source itself but by sucking the “life” out of,) the Source’s creatures that are still connected to the Divine Source – even if it is only residually so. They feed by creating “anti-life/anti-existence.” If truly living is having an abundant life they suck the energy of that life away by causing, fear, pain, suffering, and hatred. They do this not only just to survive but because of their jealousy and hatred of all things still connected to and created by the Source. They seem to feel they are exacting a kind of vengeance by twisting, warping, scarring, and destroying life and its quality.

We are born with our connection to the Divine but every decision we make that is “not God” [see also The Vital Truth of Life – ofNaturesGod.com ] moves us farther from the Source and closer to oblivion because we are not strong enough spiritual creatures to even survive in the “outer darkness” where the “evil” creatures were banished after they rebelled against the Divine.

So, that was all for anyone who have not been with us long enough to have “context.”

The battle between good and evil won a great victory for “evil” when the Western World became skewed and convinced in Scientism and the break between the spiritual and physical worlds as if they were different or even worse that there is NOTHING but the physical world. A lie that most of us have, at some level, been taught in America and Europe if we were born after 1900. It is a dead end that we are coming to that the Western World started down just over a hundred years ago. It is not the Western World it is a mutation of the Western World.

We are not physical beings but body/mind/soul creatures that are an organic/spiritual whole. The physical and spiritual are one but we have been raised in a world that directly cuts us off from the spiritual. We were conditioned by an infant “science” that could only focus on the physical and spread the belief of “radical materialism” that there IS no spiritual. This is really a fascinating development when testimony from every human society in every time and age has affirmed that there IS a spiritual world. Now medical science has come to realize that just as 50% of all cures with medicine are actually a “placebo” affect where the person heals themselves because they “believe” that they took a cure. So, they are beginning to understand that perhaps 50% or more of disease (read this as dis – ease) is actually caused by a dis-ease in the mental or spiritual whelm. Life is not physical or spiritual it is like science has discovered with the particle and wave physics (look it up with the particle/wave observer effect). They are both depending upon the observer but the physical reality is that existence is both.

Reality is a physical and spiritual reality that are not separate but a kind of unified field and we are not whole creatures unless we can perceive it as such. Because we have been formed in a world that told us all this is “just your imagination” or “that was a dream.” Then most of us have to do a great deal of work in order to learn to “see” because being raised in “radical materialism” we have to work at something that, when we are born, comes naturally to all of us.

I remember when my son first told me of “an invisible friend.” He was at an age where he could explain it and we could talk about it (about six or so.) I asked, “What did she look like?” He described a girl in a white shift that went down to her ankles. She had black hair beneath her shoulders and dark eyes.” I nodded an asked, “Did you feel scared or did she try to hurt you in any way.” “No she just surprised me and knocked me over. Actually, I don’t know if she knocked me over or if I fell backwards to keep from running into her.” I nodded again. “Yes, I have seen her too. I don’t believe that she means any harm she has just come to us because we are able to see her and most people have convinced themselves that what they are seeing isn’t real. So you need to be careful who you talk to about this because most people, even your mother’s family, are scared of this stuff and will insist it is your imagination because they don’t want to deal with it.”

I tried to raise all of my sons like that, however, my two oldest sons were the product of a marriage that was not a good match and my ex-wife worked very very hard at making sure they understood what she believed was “real” and what wasn’t. My sister maintained regular contact with her and by the time she was older I think she came around but she had rejected much of what we had encountered when married and convinced herself that it never happened. Likewise, when we ran out of gas on a Sunday and all of the gas stations were closed (yes it was a while ago and we were not near an interstate.) We prayed and drove an additional half hour on an empty tank. I suggest you not “test” that because “tests” where we don’t fully believe don’t do well. Somehow, my oldest son, convinced himself that we “had made that all up” for some reason. I asked him why we would lie to him like that? And he gave some vague answer that revealed he simply did not want to believe because belief held other ramifications for him he was not ready to deal with.

Be aware, don’t force this on people. Some cannot deal with it.

I had five parishioners/farmers standing around trying to get my tiller to work to get my garden ready. They all looked at it. We even took it apart. It seemed to be getting air, spark, and fuel so there was no reason why the simple engine didn’t work. But we had all tried it. One by one, farmers drove by and saw the pastor and others standing around the tiller and stopped to help. But none of us could get it to run. They all had to look for themselves and ensure that it had all three elements and that none of us could figure out why it wasn’t working. “Well,” I said. “We haven’t prayed over it and I’m the pastor so lets try that.” We joined hands and I prayed, “Lord, we have all tried to get this machine work and we cannot do it. We don’t see anything wrong with it but there is work to be done. Grant us your blessing and bring this machine to life so that I can get my garden ready for planting. In Christ’s name we pray.” We then tried the cord again and it started on the first pull. Eyebrows went up. There had been some chuckling when I suggested praying but, after all, I was the pastor so they did it. “Hmm” and “I’ll be damned, sorry pastor.” were the only comments I got, and then everyone left.

The physical and spiritual world are not separate. All are one. There is not a “spiritual reality” and a “physical reality” there is simply reality and the radical materialism found and propounded by modern scientism (the belief that science can find and define anything “real,”), and the emphasis on capitalistic consumerism, and communism which are all radical materialistic ways of understanding. Even our religions separate the material and spiritual as if “spiritual” is what you do at church and then you “put it away” to get on with life the other six days of the week. One advantage Catholicism can have is the availability of mass every day of the week in most places.

All of this is in the Bible because a unity and reality and omnipresence of the spiritual was assumed by everyone who wrote the Bible. As Jesus would say, “Let those who have eyes to see, let them see.” or “Let those who have ears to hear, let them hear.” Yet most of us have been taught to not see, and to not hear. We must unlearn, all that we have learned.

If this is very foreign to you you might try reading the Rhineland mystics like Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, the Gospel of John, Theresa of Avila, or any of the multitude of Christian mystics. There are other mystical traditions but the Western mind is not conditioned for Eastern thinking and most I have encountered who try make mistakes because they are looking at them through Western Eyes. They don’t have the “full moon sight” as discussed by good Shotokan Karate instructors and other marital arts ways.* Irish and Celtic traditions are closer but many who claim to follow them do not fully attain a Celtic way of thinking. The best introduction in my view is looking at Celtic Christian mystics because they are speaking from a Western way of thinking with a Celtic mindset – only without the blocks of “modern” Westernism. There is no way for us to fully recover ancient Celtic or Nordic thought because it died out due to lack of written record. We may approach it but it will always be colored by the radically materialistic world that we were raised in. Please note, as you will if you begin reading the Rhineland and Spanish mystics of the Middle Ages (although some translations work hard at translating these ideas into a radical materialistic paradigm and are not very useful. English, unfortunately, is an extremely materialistic language and not very good at spiritual matters. If you can fully learn German it will help open your mind – especially when you start reading German philosophy where the physical and spiritual are much more “real” and enterwined. Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft are a basic concept and we only really have half of it in English/American Western Culture. Again, our Western Culture is not real, it has been warped by radical Materialism but it is through Western Mysticism that we can most quickly and easily move back into the spiritual realm.

Christian mystics, Rosicrusians, can sometimes help depending on the prejudices of those you encounter. I am told the books The Burning Bush; Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy, and the Holy Scriptures: Terms and Phrases by Edward Reaugh Smith can help those well steeped in Christian background find the truths that they can glean from scripture. While Rudof Steiner’s book can. also be good books for beginners. The great morass of spiritual and mystical writing which you can find in an occult bookstore is a good way to spin your wheels and get nowhere for most modern books are written by dabblers who don’t really seem to understand what they are talking about and you will get lost in a surface study and never find your way out of the wading pool of knowledge they place you in.

You are a child of God and God’s Spirit was implanted in you at Birth (or conception,) and if you need help all you have to do is sincerely ask and then pay attention! The answer may not always come in the form you are expecting.

More advanced readers can find practices in Wisdom of the Mystic Masters by Jospeh J. Weed. I caution you though there are not a lot of advanced readers because, in the words of Yoda (and nearly every other mystic master you may encounter,) you must first “unlearn all that you have learned.”

The illusion of multiplicity that the Unity is sometimes presented as and the illusion of Unity of this Multiplicity is another “wave/particle” dichotomy you must come to understand.

The impatience of our society has caused too many students I have spoken with try to rush on to studies they are not ready for and sometimes disaster and destruction in their life has resulted and ultimately they turn away or lose themselves in the oblivion of drink as they are unable to reconcile their worlds, and return (with a vengeance,) to the world and paradigm of radical materialism. They, in the language of Star Wars, were tempted by the Dark Side and, because they were not yet ready for the challenge, they failed.

Somewhere, somehow, you must begin to unlearn your “radical materialist” beliefs to remove the blinders you were almost certainly raised with. People who are born with a deep understanding of this unity of physical and spiritual (in our society,) usually are drugged so heavily to make them “normal” that their “spiritual sight” is completely blinded. I was fortunate in that I had the parents that I had and a sister who was more than a decade older and had “the sight,” as did my brothers but one lost himself in alcohol and another simply seems to have ignored it. Even so, it was not an effortless journey for me and others seem to have a much harder time. I have come to realize that my upbringing and the writings I was exposed to were unique, then again, progressing to reading the Lord of the Rings in Second Grade probably gave me a head start as well as wondering through the dusty books of the stacks at the university among books that had not been checked out in over 70 years that probably helped as well.

There is no physical world and a spiritual world. There is a physical/spiritual world that is all around us. There is no “supernatural” all is natural and part of the Design, it is supranatural to our understanding.

So, I wish you good growth as you unlearn all that you have learned. Grace and Peace to you.

Above I made a comment of martial arts and full moon sight. Here is a more detailed explanation to introduce the idea to you:

*The full moon sight is an example of ideas of East and West and the depth of ideas. Like the existence of cherry blossoms as a sign of the brief and fleeting beauty of life and the immanence of death, in Japanese stories one need only show or mention a cherry blossom and all of those ideas and understanding are brought to the fore but for the Western it is just a flower. The Full moon sight is a simple phrase that Westerners may have to spend months or even years studying to fully understand. he concept of the moon hold significance in various martial arts philosophies (so martial artists may have some concept of this, that was where I first learned of it in Shotokan Karate by Sensei Schmidt and his classes on Martial Arts and Martial Culture through the classes, and practices. Martial Arts that does not try to teach the philosophy is like a child building blocks but never learning engineering.

For instance, in Karate, there’s a stance called Hangetsu-dachi or Half-moon stance1. This stance is part of the Hangetsu Kata, which emphasizes breathing, focus, and the flow of movements that are both circular and powerful, much like the phases of the moon.

Moreover, martial arts philosophies, such as those expressed by Bruce Lee, often draw parallels between the adaptability and formlessness of water and the moon’s influence on i 2. Bruce Lee’s famous quote, “Be like water,” reflects the idea of being adaptable and resilient, qualities that are also enhanced by the calm and reflective nature of a full moon night.

The full moon can also symbolize the peak of one’s martial arts journey, where the practitioner has gathered knowledge and is now reflecting upon it, much like the moon reflects the sun’s light. It’s a time for introspection and understanding the depth of one’s skills and philosophy.

In traditional Chinese philosophy, which influences many martial arts, the moon’s phases are linked to the Yin and Yang, representing balance and harmony, essential principles in martial arts training and executio 3.

Overall, the full moon can be seen as a metaphor for the martial artist’s pursuit of balance, clarity, and the peak of their personal development. If you’re interested in exploring this topic further, I recommend reading about the philosophies of martial arts masters and how natural elements are incorporated into their teachings. All of this, and more, are encompassed in the phrase “full moon sight” but if you weren’t raised in the background of it then you have to relearn all of it before it can make complete sense to you. This is just a fragment of one example for you to consider.

The Vital Truth of Life

March 3, 2024 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 1 Comment

Today’s Society and Life is a lie. You can tell it is a lie and that nearly everything is in service to The Lie because it makes you feel empty or anxious inside. It doesn’t call to you. Real life stirs something in your soul and makes you feel alive.

Thousands of years ago Herodotus wrote: “All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.”

About a thousand years later Jesus said, “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly.” Same sentiment.

You see the Truth does not change over time. Humanity is basically the same as he was thousands of years ago and we react and live responding or not responding to life activating or not activating the emotions, passions, and acts that we are called to do. Our best chance at real living comes when Our Truth most closely aligns with The Truth. The idea that there is no truth is part of The Lie.

The lies they feed you change constantly.

A Marxist radical from the SDS once wrote: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” This statement highlights the idea that the apparent cause of a political action—whether it’s civil rights, women’s rights, transgender, or any other issue—is not the true focus. This is what people don’t get as good honest people fight one lie after another and wonder where they all come from. They come from the BIG LIE.

The Big Lie has two radically materialist ways of thinking – both take you farther from the Creator. One Lie is that of Neo-Marxism while the other is Robber Baron Radical Materialist Capitalism that devours everything it touches and crushes the free market under its totalitarian control of the market, crushing all seeds of opposition and competition as its poisons our lives and our environment and defies any hope of Free Enterprise. But, while we are distracted from the Truth by these Lies we see that both lies solely serve the diabolical path of the accumulation of power and resources into the hands of radical materialists underscoring the Machiavellian approach of prioritizing of the means over the end. Flexibility and opportunism is the key to revolutionary agendas and the Lie is that we must choose between the totalitarian Neo-Marxist’s Lies or the totalitarian world-eating consumerism forced on us by Robber Barons and Finance Capitalists.

From one we have a history of over 100 million lives snuffed out in the 20th century on the altar of Marxism and on the other we are handed a marketing triumph by people who are happy to see millions die of complications to a “perfectly safe” vaccine that causes greater instances of myocarditis and blood clots than the disease it was created for had of instances of death. Apparently, all is fine as long as it gives good returns on the balance sheets. And if it kills millions of youth between 18 and 52 – (an age group that was not even at high risk for Covid), apparently that is an idea that the caretakers of Societies Lies don’t feel they need to look into.

I suppose a third lie is the lie of Scientism where Dr. Fauci claimed that even if millions were to die because of a compromise of the security of a lab doing gain of function research the price would be worth it. Well, it did happen, millions did die, and it wasn’t worth it.

The Lie brings Death. God and the true path brings life and vitality.

Neither of these lies are Truth. They are not our only choices. I would call the Truth to be a Vitalist Truth. What I call Vitalism is that very essence which gives society, politics, family, and life itself meaning. The Vital Essence of Life is action and passion; it is fully participating in the life you have been given. Christ did not come and lock himself away in a monastery (although some may be legitimately called to do that, a monastic life if NOT a life of doing nothing but of actively engaging in prayer and the life of the monastery Ora Et Labora – as Saint Benedict would say,) Christ came and lived vitally and fully, The prophets came to call the World back to life; to bring it into accordance with the Vital Essence of Life Itself. As Herodotus said:

Truth does not change with the needs of the Revolution. Truth is Eternal.

There is a Divine Truth embedded in the Creation and science was originally envisioned as a way of learning about the Creator through the study of the Creation. It is only with the assumption that the world makes sense, that it was created with Intelligent Design that the pursuit of Science makes any sense at all. If the creation is random and without purpose then there would be no way to study it and no underlying order to discover. But there is.

By studying the very essence of Creation as a way of getting into the mind of the Creator – just as you can get to the mind of an artist by studying their creations. Now Science has delved deep enough it is leading us back to the Creator as it repeatedly points to an Intelligent Design and the God Hypothesis as the most logical answer to the questions that the cutting-edge scientists are now asking. Of course, that is only the Scientists who are dedicated to finding the underlying truth of the facts and data wherever their science takes them rather than modern science which is enslaved to the monetary donor of the research dollar or simply to the lie of Scientism.

The idea that Science has all the answers is a non-theist religion called Scientism and it is as empty as the Materialistic society that it has co-opted and poisoned against the vital message of Life and the Creator.

America was originally called to be a shining city on the hill, ONE NATION, UNDER GOD! But the lies in our society have warped it away from the vital essence of Life itself. An essence the founders believed in when they said “We hold these things to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Herodotus said it first, but Jefferson and Adams could have just as readily have said: “All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.” Jefferson, Paul Revere, John Adams, Sam Adams, and Ben Franklin and Washington were all vitally engaged in the actions and passions of their time and as such they are an example to all who have silent in the silent majority.

Do you feel passion in your life? For your life? Do you wake up with a joy to face the sunrise of another day with your children, your dog, and your cats (both of whom are already waiting at the food dish for you!)

Do you feel the joy your dog does at the simple reality of another meal?

Herodotus said all life is action and passion, Jesus said, I come that you might have life and have it abundantly. He wasn’t talking about things that leave you empty inside and fill your house choking your joy of life with clutter or things that keep you too to busy to actually live. He was talking about being filled with the experience of Living! Do you feel it? That is the Vitalist Essence of the message and meaning of life is.

The secret meaning of Life is that you are supposed to LIVE IT;

Tony Campolo said that many of us say the prayer “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my Soul to take.” But, he says, what we should be praying “Is if I wake before I die,” because most of us go through life as if we are half dead already.

Experience it and let it fill you with wonder at the bloom, the wind in the trees, or the toddler taking his or her first step. Interestingly enough Hebrew mystics taught that the orgasm was the moment when we most closely felt the joy that God felt in the moment of Creation the Bible says that the Spirit of Wisdom danced for joy with the Creator at the Creation. Our moment of Creation is a sign of The Creation. Only God didn’t abort it, even in the time of Noah he preserved the seed of new life.

Jesus called us to abundant living. Living each moment to the full! That is so different from the empty and angry existence Radical Materialists like the Capitalist Robber Barons and Neo-Marxist demonstrators that see us only as consumers and the Godless Marxists who see us as tools to bring about the Revolution, and angrily shout down reason and thought.

In Ecclesiastes 9:7-10a we find one of my favorite passages to preach on and which I have never heard anyone else preach on (the lectionary misses it by one verse) – probably because they have a translation that views Ecclesisastes as totally cynical instead of reading it with acceptance for the world God has made.

Now I am not Catholic, but the New Catholic Bible gets the essence of this passage right:

7 Go forth, then. Eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God long ago approved what you do. 8 At all times dress in white garments and always anoint your head with oil.

9 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love throughout all the days of your allotted span of life that have been given to you under the sun, because that is your lot while you live and labor here under the sun. 10a Whatever task your hand finds to do, expend all your efforts on it,

Here is just one example of the lies our society shoves into our lives. Such examples can be repeated by you many times over, pick a search engine. (I won’t say which I used but it is common for both Google, Bing, and some others that the big names have bought up and mutated to serve their anti-life, consumerist, radical materialistic agenda, ignoring what you really want to sell you a cheap substitute even as it offers a materialistic and cheap substitute for life itself. I typed in the search engine “Canva.com official website” (yeah, I should have just used the icon I had saved but I come from a time when Search Engines actually tried to find what you were looking for instead of feeding you more of The Lie. My search came back, and the first page didn’t even have canva as a choice! And, excuse me but I think that “Canva.com official website” is specific enough so that if the search engine actually wanted to serve it could do so.

But, like everything else in this sick society of lies it takes you on it’s own twisting algorithm away from the real life that God is calling you to and into an empty substitute. I got Vistaprint, Ninja Transfers, Lulu.com, RocketLawyer? and Paperculture, but NO CANVA.COM. Apparently, Canva didn’t bribe them sufficiently to be on the first page. NO CANVA.COM when I very clearly asked for it. If you are still using Bing, Google, Yahoo, or any of the conglomerate owned algorithm driven monstrosities you are just asking to be lied to and manipulated. I don’t know. Some people may feel more comfortable in the anti-life because then they never need to address the emptiness that is in them that way they can just stay busy doing nothing all day and not thinking or living. Our society that has been warped and wrenched from the natural world is an aberration and parody of life. It is so antithetical to the one we were created to live in that we don’t even notice there is anything wrong, the lie is too big, repeated too often, and yelled at us daily that we cannot hear the truth.

And too often our churches are empty echo chambers of an empty society that don’t stimulate us to life either. Jesus didn’t come to uphold the institutions and to be an opiate of the masses. He came to call us back to life!

We just lumber on like mindless zombies in a Romero Zombie Movie blindly shuffling back and forth to work or to the mall but understanding no more of what we do in the heartless and mindless shuffle that we never realize that whether we are a zombie or “living” we are existing in an evil construction of the Enemy. We live in An Anti-Life Parody of the true LIFE that God calls us too.

“I come that you might have life and have it abundantly.”

That is what the noise of society is trying to distract you from. Are you living abundantly? Is your life full? Are you living with the wife that you love and among the children of your youth, or old and among your children’s children? Does your job leave you fulfilled and full of life? Do your thoughts? Are your musings something God would welcome?

I had a seminary instructor who said that he liked to call John the Baptist John Hinge because it was like God swung open a door and changed everything with the New Testament. The Old is a God of Judgment and the New a God of Mercy and Grace. BULLSHIT! (He and I didn’t get along very well.) I say the New Testament is the Old Testament for Dummies. It doesn’t change the message it distills it down to the core so everyone who missed it in the original can get it. The Pharisees certainly missed it and, apparently, so have most Christian pastors, since they didn’t notice the continuity between the Old and New. But that’s OK most pastors have never read the Bible all the way through anyway. And if they did they read it with a closed mind thinking they all ready new what was in it rather than in an open mind and spirit guided by the DIVINE.

Have you read about the God who led his people out of Egypt. Before Moses had even received the Ten Commandments and after they had seen the plagues upon Egypt, the Red Sea part for them to cross and swallow up the army that was after them. (They have actually found Egyptian chariots on the bottom of the Red Sea by the way – I don’t think Pharoah put them there just to lend weight to some “Jewish Myth.” Like most things people say they don’t believe in they have never looked at the actual word or evidence themselves.)

They had been led by a Pillar of Cloud by day and a Pillar of Fire by night. THESE people, who had actually SEEN THE PROOF of a GOD who interacts with us. They turned away and built a golden calf and started partying and debauching themselves with one another (no love just sex – like modern society advocates in feminism – “men are horrible creatures who have sex just to satisfy lust” so Feminisms answer to that is to make women equally as contemptable? ) THAT is the way this society of Anti-LIFE works on every level. It is all a lie and calls you to live that lie just as it called the people of Israel to worship a calf of Gold instead of the God of LIFE.

Which will you give your life to? The gold or Life Itself?.

So, THESE people having seen all the proof that you might have asked for in your life, SAW it and STILL turned away. God was pissed. God continued to get pissed at this complaining, whining group, over and over again through the Old Testament. What did he do? He forgave them over and over again, personally I would have lost my temper, crushed them, and started over. So it is good we are not God.

You know a pastor doesn’t understand the Bible if he says that the God who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow is different in the Old Testament and the New. It’s the same message and the same God it is only a superficial reading that makes it seem different. Both the New Wine and the Old are good. Don’t feel bad if you missed it. Jesus came because nearly everyone missed it.

The Shema, “Hear Oh Israel, the Lord Your God is One.”

Nearly everything that Jesus is quoted as saying is a quote from Old Testament Scriptures. I think that the idea that the New and Old Testaments are different is just one more lie that society feeds us and it is just one of many lies that the modern church has swallowed, (along with social justice, and DEI).

Any JUSTICE that has anything else attached to it is a lie. Social Justice is a Lie the American “Justice” system is not only a lie but has been proven in the past few years to be a complete travesty of Justice as people named Clinton can compromise national secrets, and normal people are jailed for taking a tour of the Congressional Building with the guards. Biden can be a senile agent of the CCP bought and paid for and Trump is fined 354 million for non-crime with no victims by a lying New York Court. I am not saying Trump is a Saint by any means but our court system and government has shown its true colors as a totalitarian system leaning toward the Woke Neo-Marxist Agenda repeatedly against Trump because he dares to challenge the BIG LIE that has trapped us all in modern society.

God called us to Be fruitful and multiply, to live life abundantly, to live our lives with joy and enjoy our family and put our whole might into the life that we have while we have it. But our society would rather trap us in a lie as cogs of either a consumer materialistic capitalist wheel or the soul-crushing, life-destroying cog of a lifeless Communist radical materialistic wheel that destroys everything, criticizes everything because EVERYTHING in Marxism exists to serve the REVOLUTION. The current thing is never the thing, it is the revolution.

Feminism is not the issue it is toppling the society to make way for the Revolution, Prayer in schools is not the issue it is toppling the society to make way for Revolution, Transgenderism is not the issue it is toppling the society to make way for Revolution. Trump is not the issue it is the revolution. Justice and bail reform is not the issue it is toppling society to make way for the revolution, queer theory is not the issue it is the revolution, Ukraine is not the issue it is revolution, inflation is not the issue it is revolution, corruption is not the issue it is destroying faith in our institutions to make way for the revolution. As the Marxist said “The thing is never the thing, it is always the revolution.”

So Neo-Marxists are busy destroying our society as well-meaning people try honestly exhaust themselves dealing with the endless issues they raise. Until honest men and women are too exhausted to prevent the revolution from occurring. They don’t realize that none of these issues truly matter to the Marxists they are simply tearing apart our society of the LIE to replace it with the NEW LIE .

Actually, they are the father of the lies in both societies since Neo-Marxists twisted the current society with their agitation since the 1950s. They have been twisting and warping American society for almost 80 years if not more moving it away from God. (Remember Marx was writing before and during the American War Between the States)…of course everything we see feels like a lie. The Lie has corrupted it all. But then Jefferson and our founders foresaw that:

The Constitution is not unable to deal with modern society, that is just another lie. The over-riding and watering down of the safeguards of the constitution and Bill of Rights that we have done over the last 200 years is what has brought us to this point. It is our changing and opposing the Spirit of the Constitution which, in my opinion, was divinely inspired.

Then they raise the LIE again. “You who want to return to the Constitution and want to put blacks back in chains?” The Constitution didn’t make anyone a slave, it just acknowledged the aberration of slavery as a fact marring the free society that was envisioned today there are no legal slaves, and the Constitution doesn’t and didn’t make slaves. That is why Jefferson originally wrote in his draft of the Constitution:

But they didn’t tell you that, did they?

That is because, like everything else they don’t tell you it doesn’t serve the lie.

We live in a hard time. But those who say we shouldn’t bring kids into this world have swallowed another of the Lies and are living according to it. God proclaimed the World to Be GOOD and it is only where we have deviated from the DIVNE PATH that we have sullied it and made it empty of the passion and vital essence of life.

Is this time harder than World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, or when the Mongols swept out of Mongolia to cover a third of the globe, hurling thousands of heads of their slain over the walls of cities to get them to surrender? Is today really harder than that? Every generation has faced the LIE and the ENEMY of their time, but we need to bring forth the vital truth of life with passion and action of our own to live life abundantly and truly; to suppress the Lies with Truth.

To quote a line from G. Michael Hopf’s post-apocalypic novel “Those Who Remain”:

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”

To this Herodotus answers –

“Adversity has the effect of drawing out strength and qualities of a man that would have laid dormant in its absence.” and “All of life is action and passion, and not to be involved in the actions and passions of your time is to risk having not really lived at all.

CHRIST CAME THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE LIFE AND LIVE IT PASSIONATELY AND VITALLY. and not to simply exist.

Who Are the Children of God?

January 31, 2024 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 0 Comments

Epictetus and the Bible both had the same answer. The first century Roman Philosopher writes: “If a man could only take heart to this judgement, as he ought, that we are all, before anything else, children of God and that God is the Father of gods and men, I think that he will never harbor a mean or ignoble thought about himself… We ought to be proud, but we are not; as there are these two elements mingled in our birth, the body which we share with the animals, and the reason and mind which we share with the gods, men in general decline upon that wretched and dead kinship with the beasts, and but few claim that which is divine and blessed.” -Epictetus, Philosopher of Rome 1st Century AD

This passage comes from page seventeen Chapter III of the book The Discourses of Epictetus and the Enchiridion which is available through Royal Classics; the 2020 Edition.

Today we will look at the wisdom of Epictetus and how it dovetails closely with the teachings of Saint Paul in the Christian Bible. Epictetus was not a Christian but, as I have said repeatedly Wisdom Literature appears to be remarkably the same from culture to culture. This is not too surprising because, for the most part, humans are genetically the same from continent to continent and people to people. Wisdom, offered by sage observers of human nature provided teachings on how to live successfully in a challenging and troublesome world based upon their observations of the world and their observations of people and their actions and reactions.

One of the philosophies of human nature and how to act that developed in the ancient world was Stoicism. While some stoics completely rejected emotions, and I do believe that is unhealthy, I do agree with the stoics that if we let our feelings and emotions dominate our life and our decisions then we are embracing an animal nature and denying our ability to reason and rise above the animals. This reliance on human reason and logic is a hallmark of the Western World that we rarely teach in schools or universities today. It is an ability that, ultimately, has created Western Civilization through logic, mathematics, and scientific inquiry. This is a civilization and society which is the most advanced and richest society the Earth has ever seen (at least that we can verify within our historical record.)

Stoicism is a philosophy that centered around self-control, self-knowledge, and maintaining a positive mental attitude as well as knowing your place in the Created Universe. Which, as Epictetus said included the knowledge that we are all children of God. Many of the philosophers referred to this as ZEUS or IUPITER as they were familiar to all. But most of the philosophers actually spoke of a God of Nature behind both Nature and the popular concept of gods.

Christianity told people the same, that we were children of the Living God and that our body was the temple of the Holy Spirit. Saint Paul said in one of his letters “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” The indwelling of an immanent God was indwelling in the entire Divine Creation (an idea called Panentheism – See Below,) but in a unique and special way in humans. In the Bible God speaks to the others and says, “Let us make man in our own image.”

This recognition that we had a divine nature eschewed complaining and whining about bad luck and stoics would have scoffed at today’s epidemic of professional victims and constant whining on social media about how tough life is or how you have been wronged. Many stoics became powerful men who had command of themselves and could therefore command others. One of the most famous and admired emperors of ancient Rome was the stoic Marcus Aurelius and he wrote a book of meditations that we can study and read today. I am actually much more familiar with the stoics Seneca and Marcus Aurelius (which is why I bought this book on Epictetus – to fill in gaps in my knowledge, I hate not knowing things. No matter how much I learn in this life it will just be a drop in an ocean of knowledge, but I believe that you must embrace your own drop of life to be part an active part of that ocean.)

Epictetus was a Roman and a Stoic who lived in the first Century AD. He was born a Caucasian slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia (now called Pamukkale, Turkey,) and spent his youth as a slave in Rome, owned by Epaphroditos, a wealthy freedman and secretary to the Emperor Nero. Epictetus was intelligent and had an interest in philosophy so his owner let him study Stoic philosophy under Musonius Rufus. As was the way in Rome the more educated the slave became the more status he had and the more valuable he was to his master. There is some confusion as to how Epictetus became crippled. Simplicius states that he had been lame since childhood while Origen stated that he had been deliberately crippled by his master when angry. We will probably never know.

Epictetus was freed sometime after the death of Emperor Nero in 68 AD when the youth was in his teens but we don’t know the year. We do know that Emperor Domitian around 93 AD banished all philosophers from the city of Rome and Epictetus went to Nicopolis in Epirus, Greece where he founded a philosophical school centered around stoicism.

I mentioned that his words were similar to several of the teachings of Saint Paul and this is not too surprising. In fact, I think it would be surprising if some Stoicism had not crept into Paul’s “gospel” because he grew up as a Jew but also as a citizen of Rome in the city of Tarsus. This was a city that held one of the three great centers of the Stoa (A College of Stoic Philosophy,) in the ancient world.

“If a man could only take heart to this judgement, as he ought, that we are all, before anything else, children of God and that God is the Father of gods and men, I think that he will never harbor a mean or ignoble thought about himself…We ought to be proud, but we are not; as there are these two elements mingled in our birth, the body which we share with the animals, and the reason and mind which we share with the gods, men in general decline upon that wretched and dead kinship with the beasts, and but few claim that which is divine and blessed.”Epictetus, Chapter III, p.17, The Discourses of Epictetus and the Enchiridion by Epictetus

So, in brief, Epictetus says everyone has two natures. An animal nature which is tied to the biology of our physical body and a Divine nature as children of the Father of gods and men through our higher brain functions. He encourages us to live up to our Divine heritage and not lower ourselves to acting on our baser impulses like animals.

I find it interesting that modern feminism has encouraged women to act out and sate their baser passions (like animals in heat,) rather than aspire to a higher idea or goal. In a sense they somehow believe it is liberating (?) to imitate the basest and most visceral failings of men and animals. I have noticed in my dogs that they really don’t have much ability to resist a bitch in heat. I have known one or two men with the same lack of self-control.

I will never understand how lowering yourself and giving full play to your animal nature somehow will make you a better person worthy of emulation and pride in self. I have watched numerous videos of women insisting that their body count doesn’t matter only to refuse to say what theirs is. This must be because down in their heart they realize that it very much does matter. At least a gentleman doesn’t tell or brag about it. But Gentleman, like Ladies, both seem to be a dying breed among the youth of today.

Still, everyone is entitled to ruin their own life in their own way. I cannot be terribly sympathetic when there are thousands of years of anecdotes, testimony, and tales that let us know that such behavior generally leads to ruin. My father always pressed the Biblical Proverbs on me telling me that I can either learn from the mistakes of others or learn by “the school of hard knocks” by getting knocked on my a** by life again and again. He told me that its much easier on you and your friends and family to learn from others. But, as I said, we are all welcome to fall on our faces and refuse to learn any other way, in fact many do so.

I cannot say that I always listened to my father. No, I first had to fall on my face several times until I recalled, “Oh, my Dad said something about this from the Proverbs in the Bible.” Eventually, I chose the easier path of going back to read philosophies and proverbs of the past. They have stood the test of time for literally thousands of years. Why? Because human nature evolves very slowly. This is why philosophies, such as communism, which rely on “creating a new man” are all dead-end philosophies because we evolve extremely slowly. Therefore, every generation needs to be retaught what previous generations have learned. Otherwise, you are forcing yourself to start over from scratch when the knowledge may well already be out there.

I remember complaining to my youngest son that it seems that all the movies of the last ten years are crap. He didn’t know what I meant until we sat and watched some old movies from the 70s and 80s that are classics. “You’re right he said. They are much better stories and have deeper characters.” I think the problem has to do with something the YouTuber Call Me Chato once said: “I have never seen a generation of directors, scriptwriters, camera men, and others who were LESS interested in learning the art of film making. They just throw something together and expect it to be good without considering the decades of trial and error that went into developing the movie industry.” That seems to be a problem that exists in other fields besides movies. Talk about doing everything the hard way.

Contemporary generations, more than any previous to them, seem to be unaware of the continuity of human knowledge. Every thing they know, every device they use, and every technology they covet has been built upon a long history of scientific discoveries preceding it and preparing the way for it. Knowledge is like people in a way. If you do not know where you have come from, and do not know where you are in relation to everything else, you have little to no chance of finding your way to where you want to be.

The worst work I have EVER seen is the Rings of Power by Amazon (well, except perhaps The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and The Banana Monster). I could go on for hours (and I have,) about all the problems there are with the elves and story in this Amazonian monstrosity… and I was really looking forward to it. But I never even got through the third episode before I gave up on it. But I have watched several excellent movies since 2020 – none of them were made in Hollywood though.

OK, that was a tangent, but it is an example of not listening to the wisdom of people who have gone before. I talk about that a lot. One of the things that is ancient knowledge is this idea that we have, in us, a spark of the Divine and we can either feed it so it grows or embrace our animal nature.

This brings me back to Epictetus. To realize we were created by the Living God, the Father of gods, is to know that we have a place in the universe and are not here by accident or chance (as radical materialism tries to ram down our throats…a theory that is no longer even sound scientifically although that is where it supposedly came from.) I believe that for fulfillment we need to have the higher mind engaged in what we do. While we should not indulge the animal self exclusively, I would point out to Epictetus that we are, in fact, also animals and we should not ignore our nature either. I believe in finding a harmony between the two.

Now, let us go no farther without addressing the warped character of American religious communities. Thanks to the Neo-Platonists and Manicheans (like St. Augustine,) who have had such a lasting effect on Christianity we view ANYTHING material or “of our animal side” as (almost) evil or at least dirty. This is not what I am saying. As the rabbi said, “God’s first commandment to humanity was to be fruitful and multiply.” Further, the ancient Hebrew mystics taught that it was in the moment of orgasm that we got a glimpse of the joy that would be ours in the world to come. A glimpse of the feeling of being one with God in the mutual climax of sex as two people come together and become one (even if only for a moment). You have to do some serious thinking of why did God put that there? It certainly wasn’t because he hated our bodies and our natural desires. God created those as well. Scientists today, although many don’t want to use the word God, they say there must be an intelligence behind everything because it all fits together with a mathematical precision.

Please note, I am not a Platonist or Manichean or Puritan who believes all nature is bad and spirit is good. We aren’t creatures with a body, a mind, and a spirit. Instead we are body/mind/spirit creatures. They are intertwined.

It was God who created the world and called it good. What we need is a full realization of that fact to find a balance, living in accordance with the world God gave us and feeding our spirit and our body, our reason and our heart. This is what is needed to make us “real” and not artificial. To give us life and that abundantly (as Christ promised.) Much of Christianity in America seems to hate sex – I think it goes back to our puritan roots. They say they don’t but then they act like they do. So, I am definitely not talking about rejecting our animal nature entirely.

But to focus on “that wretched and dead kinship with the beasts” as Epictetus says, while it may bring brief moments of pleasure that pleasure will be paid for by hours, or perhaps even years, of strife and sadness. It is the lingering regret that pays for the fleeting moments of joy and feeling, but regret is a feeling too and it is a poor exchange. Further, whichever side we feed…whether it is our kinship with the Creator or whether it is the beast within us that will be the side that grows in us and will eventually obtain dominance.

In the words of another Roman proverb we have discussed “Do what you are doing.” Be wholly present in everything you do bringing together the body, mind, and soul as one united effort that is wholly present in every aspect of your life.

This is something the younger generations desperately need to learn. Their life is empty and lonely, I believe, because they are not even living it. Friends can be sitting together at a table and absolutely none of them are even there. They are all electronically off doing something else on their phones and completely missing the visceral interaction with other human beings that produces the oxytocin and other chemicals that keep us happy and ward off depression.

Virtually no one is actually “doing what they are doing” and wholly present in the moment with their body/mind/soul fully engaged. They are too busy doing something else, checking their cyber world and getting cheap hits of artificial “likes” or “comments” and missing the real thing which is at the table with friends. In trying to keep track of everything and not be “left out” they are being left out of their own experience of living.

As they walk from point A to point B they are not experiencing the world. They are missing the singing of birds, the smell of flowers and trees in spring, the fresh smells of grass or cleanliness of a summer rain, they miss the rustle of leaves in the fall and the crisp cold air of winter and the crunch of snow under their feet. The are slaves to the notification chime and each time it rings, like Pavlov’s dogs (look it up on your phone,) they respond to the chime. They are not lords or their own life, neither is God, rather the media companies are.

I speak from experience about not living your own life. When I was a counterintelligence agent my mind was always on a case or the “fate of the free world” that hung in the balance. I went for years when I would be getting in my government car and I would look around and say, “Wow, the trees are full of leaves…I think I missed Spring.” Then suddenly the leaves were all about my feet and it was starting to sleet. After that, I turned back to heed what my Father had taught me long ago but I had set aside as “old fashioned” or as “wisdom for a happier day” which was to “listen to the trees – their talking to you if you listen. Cottonwoods talk to us more than any other tree. You can hear them in the rustling of the leaves in a breeze.” I finally, after missing years of my life, realized that it was as relevant for me today as it was for him decades ago…just as it was relevant for St Paul and Epictetus in the first years of the Roman Empire and as it was for every other human who has ever lived.

In the Proverbs it says that the female personification of Wisdom (the Holy Spirit) danced with God for joy at the moment of creation for God and with God. It is this sense of the Divine that takes joy in the act of living life and doesn’t let life fall by the wayside as we look dreamily toward heaven, the next life, or tweeking our profile picture. We all need to find our joy in the here and now and we need to dance a little ourselves with our friends.

As one theologian said, every moment we are either choosing “God” or “not God” and moving closer to our Divine nature or farther from it. I urge you to heed Epictetus and feed the Divine nature within you and remind yourself of that nature when you need to strengthen your confidence and resolve. I used to preach, and I often said to my congregation, “Children of God, remember who you are!”

So, while I agree with Epictetus, we all need to realize that we are the children of the Living God and start acting like it. Choose to live out of our higher nature and remember that we were made “stewards” of this world which we are a part of. A steward protected and cared for the estates of his Lord while the lord was doing other things. Somehow, our English Bibles have translated this idea of “stewards of Creation” as us having “dominion.” A steward does have such authority, but a steward is subject to answering to his or her Lord and will not be absolved for responsibility for his or her Lord’s creation. We need to accept our identity as children of the Living God, children of the Emperor of the Universe, that is truly something. But also we must accept our roles as caretakers of all that is natural and that we are a part of this world and that when it was created, with all its sex, emotion, desires, and reason God said that it was “good.” That too, is truly something.

“Do you not know that your body is the temple of the holy spirit and that God’s spirit dwells in you?” – Saint Paul.

Realize that you are a child of the living God while simultaneously you are part of Creation created to be stewards of that creation, linking the Divine and the material in the dance that we call life. You are supposed to live it and be wholly present in your life, and (as God said,) be fruitful and multiply. Live your life to the full, find someone to love and share your lives with each other, marry, raise the next generation and delight in watching your children grow, and learn to be wholly present for them as well. Then, eventually let yourself slow down as they replace you and get their own chance to lay on the grass and look up at the clouds, or to ride their bike as fast as they can, or to walk hand in hand with their mom and dad, and later with their lover and have a chance to live THEIR life and overcome THEIR challenges and make a mark on their world.

“I came that you might have life, and that abundantly.” That was Jesus mission but it seems many of us have missed that.

That is the meaning of life. It was right before us all the time. The meaning of life is to simply live it. Remember that you are a child of the Living God, created as one with nature, and you are to live life to the full.

That is the secret of life…to live it and remember that you are somebody. A child of the Creator and we are all family. Called to live our life as those who went before us. Live and grow, find a mate, have and raise your children and let your grandchildren be your joy in your declining years as you watch the next generation live and grow.

Saint Paul calls for us to be transformed by the renewal of our minds as we learn new ways to live and think of God, the world, and each other.

NOTE: Pantheism and Panentheism

Pantheism can speak of many gods or it can include an idea that everything has a divine spirit or is a god it its own right. Panentheism, in contrast, does not mean that everyone is God, but that God is immanent in everyone and everything. Immanent simply means that God is permanently pervading and sustaining the universe by Its presence through the Holy Spirit, or the Shekinah in Hebrew. It is similar to the idea of the Force in Star Wars which Obi-Wan Kenobi explained surrounds us, penetrates us, and guides us. Many churches today emphasize the transcendence of God while neglecting His presence and day to day interaction with His creation. Ancient Hebrew mystics taught that all of the universe existed in the mind of God and if God would ever stop thinking of us we would blink out of existence. I find the similarity between this ancient belief that we exist in the mind of God and the modern idea that we live in the “mind” of a computer matrix to be uncannily similar.

Panentheism was embraced in the concept of the Force in Star Wars and was developed by George Lucas in talks long into the night with his friend Joseph Campbell, a philosopher and expert in religions and cultures of the Earth.

Original version was posted on SabersEdge.Online with some differences.

Who Are the Gods?

January 18, 2024 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 0 Comments

I have often said that English was a terribly unclear language to translate the Bible into. Now English is not bad at everything but it seems to have some unique weaknesses in the fields of theology and philosophy where I think Greek, German, and Latin manage better. I say this because of all the poor translations that I have found in the Bible in the translations from the original Greek and Hebrew.

As yet another example I offer the word “love” which is so often used by the writers of the New Testament who wrote in Greek. In Greek there are 8 different words for love and each of those words is simply translated as “love” in English. There is eros – sexual love; philia – brotherly love (as in Philadelphia); agape – unconditional/sacrificial love; storge – familial love; mania – obsessive love; pragma – love through obligation or duty – such as love of country; philautia – is self-love; and there is ludus (ok, this is Latin/Roman but some translations are translated from the old Latin texts instead of the Greek or Hebrew,) – ludus speaks of playful or non-commital love and can include courtship and flirting. Rarely, do pastors and parishioners seem to bother with a full explanation of what the original passage meant (see more here: 8 Greek Words For Different Types Of Love | Dictionary.com ). In addition, koinonia which is a state of fellowship, community, or partnership can also be spoken of as love.

Also, there is shalom, shalom is simply translated as “peace” in English from the Hebrew. However, shalom actually means a state where the entire earth is in a state of mutually supportive and fulfilling relationships – this includes our relationship to the environment, each other, our animals, the animals of the wild, relationships between nations, businesses, and anything else that you can imagine under creation. Cornelius Plantinga brings this out very well in his excellent book Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be; A Breviary of Sin,. Yet, in your Bible shalom is translated as “peace.” Shaqat, which means to be quiet or undisturbed. In some bibles this is describes as peace or peaceful. For other translations of shalom in the bible see: The True Meaning of Shalom // Defining Shalom — FIRM Israel

I have already spoken of the frivolities of translation that go with “diakonos” depending on whether someone is a man or a woman [for more on this see: What is a Good Bible? – ofNaturesGod.com ] and the mistranslation of the word for murder ratsahk/mut as “kill” in most versions of the ten commandments. For further discussion on the ten commandments you can see: Why is “You shall not murder” in the Ten Commandments? | GotQuestions.org and You Can Kill, But Not Murder: The Case for the Ten Commandments – The Dennis Prager Show

This did not include harag – which can also be translated as kill but means to slaughter, murder, or to slaughter the enemy after the battle.

Let’s talk about the plural Elohim. Many ministers will buy off this word as saying it along with the statement “Let’s make man in our image.” is simply referring to God as the Trinity. Others will just say it is the angels (from the Greek Angelos which means “messenger” and is used for nearly all of the different servants of God in heaven that are often mentioned by name or species in the Bible.) Yet Elohim really is more accurately the court of the gods. El means “god” and “him” refers to a race or a people. Elohim represents the entire heavenly court including the various children of God who were the gods of the nations of the Earth (such as the Prince of Persia.) You will remember the Ten Commandments says “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Repeatedly the Bible says that God is the God of gods whom they all have to answer to and that he is God Most High. All of these are unnecessary distinctions if there are no other real gods.

I always find it fascinating when people say they believe in the Bible exactly as written make all kinds of exceptions for things that don’t fit their theology or lack of belief in ghosts or spirits, or their belief in other gods, or lack of belief in demonic possession or magic all of which are taken seriously in the Bible.

In the book of Job, it mentions the divine court at the beginning where these heavenly beings are all assembled, and the Satan comes before God to accuse Job. The Bible also mentions some of these gods mated with the “daughters of men” and begat the Nephilim in the Bible and god was not pleased.

This is all a very complex concept and I can see why most pastors and teachers take the easy way out because many parishioners ask because they want comfort and reassurance not knowledge.

When I had rejected God (long story that but it was after I had been a counterintelligence agent and seen some dark things.) I studied the religions of the world, analyzing them as an investigator or intelligence agent to see if I could find any truth in them. (You would rightly find it significant that after I did this study I became a pastor of the United Methodist Church – before I decided they had turned from the Biblical message and were indulging in heresy.)

In the Greek and Roman pagan religion we have hints of a supreme being the gods must obey. For just one example Jupiter/Zeus has his lightning bolts. He can strike where he will with the first, to do more he needs the concensus of the major gods, to launch the final lightning bolt he needs the agreement of some force greater than the gods of Olympus. This force is unexplained and many assume it is the fates but the fates are named and this force is not. Like the example I will offer next you have to dig pretty deep into Greek texts to find this out but it is there.

In Norse mythology there is a force that goes beyond simple destiny that the Gods are subject to. It is a deep and mysterious force that was there when the gods were born and will be there after they die in Ragnarok to preside over the rise of the new gods. In this aspect, the tree Yggdrasil which shelters the new gods during ragnarok and connects all the universe together bears, in some texts, an interesting similarity to the Holy Spirit. The Well of Wisdom is at the base of Yggdrasil just as Wisdom (which was there at the beginning of the world with God) is a trait of the Holy Spirit. This force too, is not clearly defined (although Yggdrasil is more clearly defined.)

Let’s look at a good teaching that explains this further. I cannot give you an embedded video because Youtube has it as age restricted. Apparently, children cannot understand it. Personally, I think children understand so much that their parents would be uncomfortable if they knew. Anyway, here are two links to the same video: The Unseen Realm (youtube.com)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV2CUWcKMa8

Another interesting post on this is from a different perspective where Metatron examines the words around the name of God from a literary standpoint – Metatron is a highly competent scholar on ancient studies and several languages from a secular standpoint: The Truth About The Biblically Accurate Name of God (youtube.com)

What is a Good Bible?

July 29, 2023 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 1 Comment

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

July 9, 2023 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 0 Comments

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 14^th 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 14^th, 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 17^th and 18^th 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

Tested and Proven in Struggle As Children of the Living God

April 3, 2023 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 0 Comments

It is common verbiage of Christians to ask if someone is “saved” and it was an important question in a society founded on predominately Christian culture and values. But it doesn’t make sense to most people today. It is confusing language. Saved from what and for what? Here, in Romans 5:1-11, Paul refers to us being “reconciled by the blood of Christ” but he goes on to use stronger language and says that we are no longer “enemies of God.”

Romans 5:1-11 – Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

This idea that we might be enemies of God will be surprising to some. “Surely,” they may say, “I am not an enemy of God. I’m basically a good person.” But it’s not so much a matter of good or bad but whose side are you on? Are you building a better world according to God’s plan or are you working against it?

To bring this into focus let me tell you a story.

Our society spreads the lie that we and the environment are like machines and so with certain actions, we can predict definite reactions. This is a lie. Neither we nor the environment is machines rather, we are organic and organisms have complex interactions that are hard to predict while machines are…well…mechanistic and much easier to predict.

As for the environment, we know that is not easy to predict because in the early 1970s, we were all taught in school that we were in an ice age and that pollution was going to cause an accelerated cooling that would destroy the world by the 1990s and cover all of North America and Europe in glaciers forcing the entire population of the US to move to Mexico and Europe to move to North Africa. Unless we acted immediately to do what society told us needed to be done – which was to stop killing trees. We needed to switch to plastic bags and cups instead of paper – thus giving our money to the petroleum industry so they could make us plastics. By the 1990s It was clear that no ice age was coming so they changed the emergency. About that time Al Gore began spreading the lie that global warming was going to destroy the world in about 20 years – that was over 30 years ago, but who is counting? We were told that an increase of a few degrees would melt the polar ice caps and flood all the coastal cities of the earth. We have already passed their initial period and the hypersensitive panicky people never bothered to notice that the temperature increase would put us back to the ambient temperature that existed in the year 1000 A.D. A time when humanity flourished and was not dying en masse. No the environment is not a machine nor is it easily predictable. Anyone who watches weather reports should know that. Predicting a week of weather can be hard enough without thinking about years from now. The world is an ecosystem made up of living organisms that must be treated with respect; a respect that the elite of our society does not have. They want us to trust them to fix the problems that they created. This is not only in the environment but in nearly every aspect of society and wholeness yet the experts have presided over the steady dissolution of a healthy environment. Now the plastic they encouraged us to use to “save the trees” (and make them richer) is polluting our oceans. Even those meaning to do well can be enemies of God and creation because they don’t know better and are not led by the Spirit of the Living God. They are strangers to the Divine Plan. And if you don’t know the plan how can you work with it?

In the same way that the world is organic and not a machine so are we. If we were machines we could replace our parts and continue functioning without a problem. But we are not and we cannot. For years I weighed over 350 pounds and had a 54-inch waist. I was too heavy and my back, my knees, and my feet always hurt. I never actually felt good during that time. My body was not made to carry that much weight and even stairs were difficult for me. I lost over a hundred pounds and now weigh closer to 220, but I was overweight for long enough that I gained a fatty liver as my body tried to purge my great mass of toxins by filtering them out. Eventually, when I caught Covid it seemed to attack my already weakened liver and my liver started to fail. If I was a machine we could replace it with another liver and I would be fine. However, I was told that even if my liver was functioning at only ten percent efficiency it would still work better than any transplant I might get. The liver I was born with was created for me and grew with me and would always work better than anyone that was added from another source – as long as it worked that is. Unfortunately, my fatty liver, abused by years of being overweight and eating over-processed foods, did not survive the assault of Covid on my body. It spiraled into oblivion and I was hospitalized more than 27 times in 2020 for my liver. In January 2021 it failed and I was rushed to the hospital from Lincoln to Kansas City in an ambulance.

Now, because I am not a machine but a complex organism, I have to take medicine every day so that my body doesn’t decide that my new liver is a foreign body that it must destroy. In other words, my body, trying to protect me from a foreign body would actually be killing me by attacking the liver that I need to live.

My own body can kill me by trying to save me. It would be my own worst enemy and it would just be doing what it thought was best for me. In the same way, we, a part of this world, can be enemies of God and attack the creation, harmony, and interaction of the Divine Order.

The cells of my body don’t know that if it attacks the liver it will die. My own body can become my enemy – although it doesn’t mean to be. It doesn’t know any better. In the same way, someone who is not “reconciled to God” can be an enemy of God without meaning to be. They can go about what they think is a good or even a compassionate act, and be working against the will of God. Perhaps this is what the Bible means when it says “There is a way that seems right to man, but it is a way that leads to death.” We don’t mean to be an enemies of God (unless we are a psychopath or a narcissistic sociopaths,) we just don’t know any better. Like my antibodies, we don’t know the plan and are acting against it to our own detriment.

As it happens, through meditation, my body has healed more than twice as fast as the doctors said I would need to recover. I believe this is because I can, in some rudimentary way, communicate with my body through meditation and prayer. Something has made a difference that the doctors weren’t expecting and I think that is what it is. In the same way, we need to be open to communication from our Creator, the Living Force if you will, and what it intends for us so that we can learn our natural place in the natural order of life.

The Greek word used by Paul here (that is translated as “reconciliation” is the same word that is used by Xenophon in the work Cryopaedia to signify “being brought into the royal court and introduced to the king.” This is the concept that Paul is using to communicate what happens when we are reconciled to the Living God through the cosmic sacrifice of Christ. Paul goes on to describe that this is necessary for us to live a life of “peace” with God. But not just peace, Paul who was a Jew, understood “peace” to be “shalom.”

This is another place where our language has a poor substitute for the original concept. Shalom is not just peace. Like so many words I have noticed translating from Hebrew, Greek, or even German into English the English language is a poor language for discussing the concepts of philosophy or theology. Ideas that other languages can encompass in one word we need a full paragraph or more to communicate the same idea in English. Our words are just too vague. Shalom, we translate as “peace” but Shalom is not just peace. It is a state of the mutual state of interdependence and universal flourishing in a universe in the truest meaning of the word. By that a mean a universe that is a “one-ness” of interconnected relationships where everything affects everything else in a ripple effect that ties us all together. Shalom describes a ripple effect that is mutually uplifting and enlightening throughout the Creation.

What Paul calls “reconciled to Christ” and what common vernacular just calls “saved” is a rich concept where we are introduced to the Living God (Divine Monarch of all existence,) so that It knows us and we know the Divine not as a stranger or as a slave but as a friend and ally. But more than that. We are taken into the family of the Living God and welcomed as children and heirs of the Divine promise and Realm. This is so complete that we are transformed from being an enemy of the “king” to being an ally and heir as a child of the Living God and by entering into the “kingdom of God” or Divine reality we enter into a state of mind where we can be led by the Divine Spirit and understand the mutual interdependence and flourishing and our place in it. A healthy relationship with, not only the Living God but with all of Creation.

This is a relationship with our environment that secular environmentalists can only dream of.

Through this reconciliation and we are brought into the “Divine Relationship” and a unity with the Living Force that created the Universe; we are united with the Creator of the universe and brought back into harmony with creation (or at least we have the door opened so that we can reach that point – if we so desire.) But, like everything else in life, it takes practice to live in harmony with the Divine and the Creation. We have become alienated from the natural order and, as Yoda says in the epic Star Wars, “You must unlearn what you have learned;” or as Paul says in his letters “you must be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Unfortunately, as Rev. John Wesley once said, most Christians sit on the threshold of the Kingdom of God and never fully enter into it (by which he meant they were reconciled but never fully entered into interaction with the Living God and Creation as we were designed to live). This is where so many Christian churches fail in my opinion. They act as if once you are saved it is all over. Instead, it is only the beginning of a new life in the presence of the Living God. You still need to learn to live in harmony with the Living Force. Only through being reconciled with the Living God can we ever truly reach our full potential in life and live in harmony with the rest of God’s creation. It’s like swimming against the current. Most people in life are swimming against the current but when you learn to walk in the Presence of the Spirit of God it’s like swimming with the natural currents of life instead of against it. Only then is the door open to us to truly be all that we can be.

This passage does not stop with being “saved” (the reconciliation that Paul speaks of.) No, this passage starts there. Reconciliation with the Creative Force that created the Universe and whose Will maintains the natural order is where we begin living the life we were intended to live. But we live in a world of challenges and trials because things are not what they were meant to be. Christianity describes this as a “fallen” world in which so many have turned away from the Divine Plan that the creation itself is “groaning” awaiting the “revelation of the children of the Living God” This passage goes on to describe that as well. But, it says, our challenges and trials (once we are reconciled to the Living God,) help us to become the people we were meant to be.

To use our bodies again for an analogy we are born with bodies that will become able to walk and even run. But we have to learn how. Our muscles must be strengthened and we must learn to coordinate our movements and learn to balance on our feet. If we never faced the trial of falling down and being unsteady, if we avoided this basic challenge and struggle of life that God intended, we would spend the rest of our life crawling (but even to crawl that was something we had to learn.) In the struggles we face in life, we learn how to do more. When we watch our children pull themselves up on furniture and move along it they use the furniture to aid their balance. We know, as parents, that if we don’t let them try and even fall sometimes, they will never learn to walk. Eventually, they try to take a few steps to move from the couch to the table. They always fall. They fall repeatedly and if we didn’t let them try and fall as parents we know that we would condemn them to crawl the rest of their life. In the same way we must learn to walk in life we also must learn to walk in the Holy Spirit. And that starts with reconciliation and living in the Spiritual Disciplines to improve and strengthen our relationship with the Living God.

The word Paul uses for the trials we face in life is thlipsis, a Greek word meaning ‘suffering, trials, affliction, hardships, trouble.’ We all face these things in life, and some people – those not strengthened by the Holy Spirit, may be broken. Once we are reconciled to the God of Nature/the Creator of Nature itself we are not broken by our trials but strengthened by the Spirit of the Living God through those very trials as part of the spiritual body of believers. Through this, Paul says, we have hope and our hope does not disappoint us.

These sufferings, trials, and afflictions that we face in life teach us how to maintain our equilibrium (or balance,) as we walk through life and adversity. Paul says these struggles build our endurance and help us to more clearly see God’s plan for our life and creation more. This endurance leads us to the character we need to become the people that God created us to be and to reach our full potential in life. This character, Paul says, then brings us back to the hope we had when we were brought into the royal court and introduced to the Divine Monarch of the Universe.

Here Paul uses another word, dokimus, it is a word that means that we are now “proven” and “tested.” Here Paul says that through our struggles we have “stood the test” and proven to be trustworthy, or of “sterling worth.” The words he uses indicate the process by which valuable metals are heated and their impurities are burned away to stand pure and of increased value. This is the process of making fine silver, gold, and even iron or steel. In each case, metallurgists test the metals for their impurities that degrade the metal. The heat of the fire burns those impurities away making a finer product. More beautiful gold or silver or weapons and armor that are stronger and more durable. Paul uses this word on purpose because he knows that the trials and struggles we face in life purify us just as the heat of fire purifies the metals. In so doing we become stronger. The impurities and distractions of life burn away and we see more clearly what is important. Only in this way can we be “proven” or “tested” for the life that is to come. This is how we become the person we were intended to be when the Living God formed us in our mother’s womb (as it says in the book of Isaiah.)

With greater endurance and character we become the tools for creating a better future in which we can boldly go where no civilization has gone before. Let’s look at that passage again:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace [shalom/harmony/universal flourishing] with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand [a cosmic sacrifice that wipes clean any wrongdoing or failure in our life and gives us a fresh start, if we but claim it we are “saved”]; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God [as Children of the Living God and Creator of the Universe]. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings [thlipsis, the Greek word meaning ‘suffering, trials, affliction, hardships, trouble.’], knowing that suffering [suffering, trials, affliction, hardship and troubles] produces endurance [testing, purification, and strength], and endurance produces character [we are now proven and purified by the fires of our struggle strengthening our character], and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit [our guide and spiritual source of renewal and strength] that has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners [enemies of God working against the Divine Plan,] Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood [reconciled by being introduced and adopted in the Divine Court], will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life [through the death of Christ we were reunited with the Divine and now, finally, can truly start living]. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Romans 5:1-11 [Annotated with comment]

We become the tools for the Tikkun Olam. This is the Hebrew phrase that means the repair of the world. Reconciled, proven, and tested, where we now work side by side with the Creator to repair and heal not only the Creation but also our fellow Saints in the spiritual body of believers. In other words, we are no longer “enemies” of God as we go through this life but co-creators with the Living God working together to create a better future and bring things more into alignment with how God intended things to be. Every day we choose to be faithful, or not, to the Divine Plan. In every act, we choose to work with the Divine or against it. We must be faithful to the same Living Force that gave us life and created the very universe itself, no longer as enemies, but as companions and Children of the Living God, heirs to the Divine Realm fulfilling our potential and becoming all that we were created to be until the universe is restored to a state of Shalom and universal flourishing.

Groping in the Dark for God

February 14, 2023 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 2 Comments

There is an old story about the Blind Men and the Elephant. Where it came from varies according to the accounts I have read but the stories all agree that the blind men in the story represent religious leaders and philosophers and the elephant is the Divine Presence. Here is the story in my own words:

Some blind men were very curious. They were fascinated by the tales they had heard of this creature called the Elephant and they wanted to explore it further. After careful and sincere study enhanced by their own experience, they came together to share what they knew with others who sought the truth about the Elephant.

“The Elephant is an amazing creature! It is vast like a wall. Vast and unmovable. You reach it and you can go to the right and the Elephant is still there. You can move to the left and the Elephant is there. The Elephant is like a great wall that protects us from harm!”

“Pfah! I don’t know what you found but it is not the true Elephant! The Elephant is not a wall, by no means. The Elephant is like a mighty tree planted in the ground. I myself experienced the true Elephant and far from being a wall, I could wrap my arms around the Elephant even as I wrap them around my children or a tree! It is, as you say, unmovable. But other than that you don’t understand the Elephant at all.”

“He is right about the tree! I myself have experienced the Elephant and it was like the Palm Tree. While I don’t know about this trunk – I did not experience that – but trees have trunks. We can postulate that. But truly it is not a wall. My experience of the Elephant is like a gentle Palm Tree whose leaves sway and move, creating a gentle breeze even in the heat. Yes, I think we can agree the Elephant is a tree and not a wall. This one has a demon and is a false teacher!”

“You are all false and deluded! These trees and walls! None of them is the one True Elephant! The One True Elephant is like a snake, strong like a python but gentle and kind. As I approached the Elephant with fear and trembling it acknowledged me…ME! The Elephant wrapped personally around me like a mighty serpent and even lifted me off the ground and set me gently back down. I felt the tough leathery skin of the Elephant-Serpent. This is the True Elephant and you are all deceivers and liars!”

“What is this talk of the One True Elephant? I too have explored the Elephant and I think it called to another and was answered! I think there may be a Divine Trinity of Elephants all of the same nature only different.”

Heresy! the others screamed. And the discussion of the elephant ended as the wise men began swinging sticks and throwing rocks at one another. Meanwhile, the elephant, who was looking on. Just turned and walked away.

The first man came to the side of the Elephant and experienced it as a wall that he couldn’t get around. When he moved to the left the Elephant walked forward and when he moved to the right the Elephant backed up so he thought it was like a wall. The second man came to the Elephant’s leg and as the Elephant was tired of moving he just stood there immovable like a tree. The man reached around the leg with his arms and tried to move it and when he couldn’t he left – confident that he now understood the Elephant. The next blind man came to the Elephant’s ears and the great floppy ears of the African Elephant seemed to him like the great leaves of a palm tree. He was cooled by the gentle breeze caused by their movement. The other man approached the front and the Elephant wrapped his trunk around him and even picked him up gently before setting him back down. The man left, overjoyed that the Elephant had a personal interaction with him that no one else had.

Each blind man felt that HIS experience of the Elephant was correct and true. He believed that he understood the Elephant and felt that the differing experiences that others had threatened his own belief and understanding because it was different. What none of the blind men realized is that the Elephant was great and powerful and beyond their ability to perceive in its entirety. They were all right about their perception of the Elephant but each one was so small that they were all wrong and none of them understood the elephant in its entirety, nor could they.

Similarly, Moses was told by God if he ever saw Him all at once he would be consumed in flames and simply said, “I Am, That I Am.” But, unfortunately, humanity has tried to place this vast transcendent entity that formed and interacts with the entire universe into a small little God-Box” collection of ideas that they can understand. All of these are a mockery of the Mystery of the Divine, in that our finite little brains can never understand the Mystery in its fullness. I believe that the founders of these world religions were experiencing the same Divine Presence and that the, if brought together, would recognize the truth in the experience of the others.

However, after every great religious leader dies the followers try to “standardize” their beliefs. Too often trying to copy what the leader did and said instead of maintaining their own relationship with the Divine.

I have even heard people say, “God wouldn’t do that.” As if they had such a thorough understanding of this vast mystery that they could tell what God would and wouldn’t do. They MAY be able to thoroughly understand the scriptures but this, to me, is not the same as understanding God. For one thing, people turn to the Bible, as I do each day. However, I understand that the Bible is not God and that God, quite frankly, never told us to close the canon into a book. That was the idea of humans.

The God who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (if you believe the Bible,) must still be speaking to His servants. If He didn’t then that would seem to indicate that he has changed. Some scholars came up with the idea that God’s power has different “dispensations” but this is not Biblical and I don’t think it is a godly idea. The idea of dispensations is used by scholars in the West to explain why we don’t see miracles like they used to. John Wesley, whose preaching spawned over 150 different Christian denominations said that there are no different dispensations. The reason we don’t see faith and miracles like they were in the Bible is that “our hearts have grown too cold.”

Indeed, if we are to believe the Christian Pastors of the Third World such miracles still occur with regularity. I find it interesting that they don’t tend to occur as much in enlightenment countries.

I was speaking to a fellow pastor about people who experienced their loved ones coming back to speak to them or encourage them and also about encounters that I had that I can only describe as “demonic” requiring an exorcism for me to end the hazard. His response was interesting. He said he had a close friend who was a Catholic Priest and the Catholic Diocese of Nebraska had investigated hundreds of supposed demonic encounters and only a very minute number seemed to be supernatural. This pastor insisted that “demonic” encounters were psychological or emotional in nature and not real. I responded, “But Michael, some WERE considered to be actual demonic possession.” That ended the discussion as he changed the subject to a game we both enjoyed.

There are mysteries out there that we don’t fully understand and God is one of them. Also, I suspect that some people have developed an idolatrous relationship with the Bible and are worshipping IT instead of the Living God. I used to tell my parishioners that the Bible is just “dead words on a page” unless you read it in the presence and under the guidance of the Presence of the Divine. God is still speaking to us…if we but listen, and he will do it directly or through the Bible as HE/SHE/IT wills it.

Deus Vult!

Join me, share this page, and walk with me as we explore the nature of the Divine Presence. I don’t care what name you use for God as long as you respect the ancient scriptures and the beliefs of others and are open to learning about God. Like the Blind Men I think our modern religions are somewhat “blind” and encourage everyone to follow the religion in which they find the truth but to open themselves to the Divine Presence and give IT precedence over the religious teachings of human organizations. There is an old belief that if we ever learn all the names of God at that point time will end. In English, we look in the Bible and see God but in the original languages “God” is a vast myriad of names and titles. Similarly, “Satan” is not what we would assume reading an English version of the Bible. But that is for another Blog.

I am Rivan Ělän’. (Prounced Rivǝn Ělän´) I used this name in my BlogTalk Radio Show but my parishioners know me as Pastor Daniel.

Of Nature’s God

July 30, 2022 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 2 Comments

Here we are talking about whatever it is that is out there that gives meaning, life, stability, patterns, and some semblance of order to the Universe. It has been called many things, “Das Ding an Sich” (the Thing in Itself), the Ground of All Being, the vast otherness, the Divine, the Force, the Living Force, the Ancient of Days, Fate, Destiny, the Universe, YHVH, Allah, the God of Nature (or Nature’s God), or simply God (and for some this concept is a unitarian one, for others a trinitarian one, and still others a multiplicity. )

I believe in Panentheism. Most people understand pantheism and many confuse these two terms just as so many confuse cavalry and calvary. Like the two “c” words the two “p” words are very different.

Panentheism is the belief that the divine is in all things. Not just reflected in all things but it is what Paul TIllich said is what we live in, move in, and have our very being. That is another word for God I forgot…Being. What Moses was told when he asked what God he was talking to he was simply told “I Am” or “I Am That I Am” or more colloquially “I be what I be.” Obi-Wan, in a galaxy far far away and a long time ago described it as an energy field that surrounds all and connects all living things. It can and will guide us if we let it. Master Yoda said it surrounds us and protects us from harm.

Some people have trouble separating these two thoughts: that everything is itself divine of its own power and might, and that everything is infused BY divine power and might. Saint Paul in the Book of Romans says, “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and the God’s Spirit dwells in you.” God is not only close but part of us. If you look at The Call you will get an idea of some of what I am speaking of here.

But why bring up Yoda and Obi-Wan they are fiction. Be serious. I am. The Force was developed when George Lucas spent long hours of conversation with a great scholar of gods, heroes, and myths named Joseph Campbell. The roots of the Jedi lie in ancient Eastern Culture and it is no accident that they resemble the mystic masters of antiquity in powers and attitude.

But I’m a Christian and that was developed in the West not some Eastern religion, some would argue. My Bible instructor at Seminary would have disagreed with you. He would have said that Christianity is largely Western Greek Philosophy artificially grafted onto an Eastern Religion and to properly understand the Bible you have to understand that the Bible came out of the Middle EAST and they had a more Eastern than Western mindset in the Old Testament while the New Testament was a mix.

For me, it is a vast mystery that we can interact with and I have no interest in arguing whose God is better or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I am interested in exploring what people have said about this bewildering vast presence and expanding my knowledge of it. I invite you to come along. I will often refer to this power that created the Universe, Natural Laws, and the fascinating pattern that underlies all existence at the micro and macro levels as The Divine, God, the Force, the Living Force, Tao, Nature, the Universe, Nature’s God, or by the name that is used by whatever source I am quoting to give knowledge.

In general, I honor the ancient scriptures and will try to meet them where they are, mediated by my own experience of the divine, my powers of reason, and tradition.

I invite you to come along.

I am Rivan Ělän’. (Prounced Rivǝn Ělän´)