Category: Scriptures

Don’t Be Lawful Stupid – Wesley’s Rules for Life

May 5, 2024 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 0 Comments

It was Jesus that called upon all Christians to “be innocent as doves and wise as serpents.” Those in games and stories who equate the good guys with being “lawful stupid” don’t really understand good, (and having worked in the gaming industry,) they absolutely don’t understand evil. Equally so many Christians, who have fallen for the heresy of what I call “the Barney Gospel” (the idea that everything is about love and principles and violence is always wrong,) this is totally not Biblical, but the lies are regularly told from pulpits throughout Europe and America. [We will discuss Good and Evil and what I mean by those things in a future article.]

Despite the complete Biblical testimony which is balanced and designed for real life, ideologues from all sides have tried to make the Bible into something it is not. Humans like to follow rules and they want life simple. However, life is not simple, and neither is God. Jesus also said that “laws were made for man, man was not made for the law.” By this he was talking about his disciples being hungry and actually gathering food on the Sabbath when the Holy People said there was to be NO work done. Jesus acknowledged the law but said my disciples are hungry and they need to eat. The rules that the human church had made to interpret what the Bible said as “observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy” were not what God intended. He wanted people to take a break one day a week off from all their work (a radical idea in a world that had no days off except on the New and the Full moon.) God did not want people to go hungry when they were doing God’s work on the Sabbath. As a Pastor I regularly worked on the Sabbath, often more than 8 hours. In fact, some pastors have a problem in their 70-hour work weeks in that they don’t take time off for prayer, rest, and study. Burnout is a regular occurrence.

Many Christians have embraced the “innocent as doves” part but fail to be “wise as serpents.” In fact, some use the “innocent as doves” as an excuse to not have to act because it would stir up controversy. Remember, that “if you cannot say anything nice don’t say anything at all” is not a Christian way of life. It is a coward’s way that advises people to “keep your head down, don’t make waves.” Many call these people “sheeple.”

All over the world people attack the Bible for things either taken out of context or because of what Christians they knew have done to them that have nothing to do with authentic Christianity. They mistakenly use actions of Nominal Christians (people who wear a cross or call themselves Christians but do not know the first thing about being an authentic Christian,) as indicating what real Christians believe. Let me know in the comments if you have encountered this anywhere in your experience.

John Wesley was an Anglican Priest in the 18^th Century whose preaching fathered over 185 denominations from the African Methodist Episcopal to the Nazarene to the Global Methodist. He offered three rules to live a Christian Life – 1^st Do No Harm; 2^nd Do All the Good You Can; and 3^rd Attend to the Ordinances of the Church. Now language was used a bit different in the 18^th Century – the 1700s, even the late 1700s were a long time ago so lets talk about them.

The first two really aren’t very difficult at first glance. At least they aren’t difficult to explain – they require constant vigilance and effort to accomplish.

First, Do No Harm – God made the world and called it good. Then we began mucking it up. People like to blame bad things on God but most bad things can be traced back to people and their actions or inaction. Science is even identifying that cancer, hormonal imbalance, and infertility can often be placed at the door of industrialists in packaging, pharmaceuticals, and food production who use chemical ingredients not found in nature and that have not been fully tested for their effects on humans.

There is more to this rule than simply doing “good deeds” there is also the requirement to stand for what is right. That is what served to build Western Society in the way it grew. Repeatedly, men and women chose to stand for what was right against the general push of society.

As Saint Paul said, “He who knows what is right to do and does not do it, for him it is sin.” That, if we are honest with ourselves, is an indictment against all of us. We have all, at one time or another, remained silent when we should have spoken truth to power, or truth to massed ignorance.

These are not problems faced in most primitive societies. Rather, they seem to be problems that have to do with our ‘modern’ way of life. As corporations take cheaper shortcuts in order to make more money by using chemicals and artificial preservatives to give longer shelf-life to their already overly processed and artificial foods those chemicals, as well as the hormones and drugs they give to food animals, genetic modification of crops, and pesticides that carry through the crops and into our cereal boxes. It is in the ‘modern’ world that we find a proliferation of cancer, numerous digestion difficulties, clogged arteries, obesity, unexplained pain and bloating, and much much more.

If your father or mother has a heart attack or stroke you may well ask God why. However, perhaps you would be more accurate to blame the foods available and stresses of the corporate lifestyle than to set the blame at the foot of God. Imagine the way life would be if corporate leaders followed this first rule of the Christian life and really and truly “did no harm.”

When we were predominantly a Christian Country with Christian values there were numerous cases of businessmen who refused to take actions that would increase their profits because they were morally wrong. It is so bad today that universities have started demanding that business majors take an ethics class because we increasingly live in a world where no one knows right from wrong. They increasingly believe the lie that everything is relative when, amazingly across cultures, rules amazingly similar to the Ten Commandments have regularly cropped up. Either there is a universal idea of good, bad, loyalty, and betrayal, or we are hard-wired through evolution to believe these things because those who rejected them were banished from society and their genes couldn’t reproduce. Despite that, every generation has its narcissists and psychopaths. But America and the Globalists seem to want to make those traits into virtues.

Christianity used to hold capitalism in some degree of check. The government, corporations, and individuals knew that if they flagrantly defied Judeo-Christian principles the public would turn against them. Even those who denied Deity and Religion had ideas of right and wrong that were based on the Judeo-Christian principles. Indeed, without religion, (as we are finding out today in our society.) There is no check on the potential wickedness, selfishness, and greed of humanity.

Moses was drafted by God to be that check and to carry his message to the people as were and are the prophets. Christ was sent to embody that check upon our wickedness. Without religion the only moral imperative is survival of your own tribe and to hell with anyone else. This is how the world outside of the West operates. Western Civilization built on the foundations of Rome, Christendom, and the Norse/Germanic egalitarian society traditions where their philosophers and the Havamal came to conclusions that were very close to what is found in the Proverbs and Wisdom literature of the Bible. There was an understanding that in Christendom you could basically trust your fellow Christians (whether, Catholic, Amish, Protestant, Quaker or any of over a hundred other ways to follow Christ, to obey the rule of law, to not bear false witness, and to conduct themselves with honor and respect for life even in war.

“Do no harm” means to NOT remain silent when lies are being spread and injustice occurs. “Do no harm” is a rule calling us to dare to NOT look the other way when crime, extortion, or government or corporate power does wrong. “Do no harm” means NOT stepping over the one who is beaten and bleeding and NOT crossing over to the other side of the street as happened in the story of the Good Samaritan that Christ told. It was the Samaritan, the outcasts of Jewish society in the first century, who stopped and helped the man to an inn and paid for his room, bored, and medical care – even though he didn’t know him. While the “good” people looked the other way and didn’t want to get involved. “Do no harm” means acting sometimes even when we are scared to and fear ridicule, rejection, or legal consequences (such as hiding Jewish families in Nazi Germany.)

Indeed, the song Amazing Grace was written by a slave trader (obviously someone who prioritized money over what is right,) in celebration of his encounter with Christ and his salvation. When he became a Christian he gave up his life as a slaver and spearheaded the campaign in England to make the international slave trade a thing of the past. Not because of secular values but because of Christian values. [See: An Amazing Story – ofNaturesGod.com ] One man acting on principle made a difference in the world.

Indeed, you can trace most of the rights, benefits, and blessings of twentieth century Western Society can be traced back to Christianity, Western philosophers, Rome, or the Germanic peoples. It was people who took their own principles, refused to compromise and made a nuisance of themselves that changed the world. It starts with one voice raised and speaking the truth. We make a mistake when we tell ourselves the whole world feels as we do. This is the heritage of Western Civilization, Western Philosophy, and Christianity and the value it places on all people and life itself.

John Wesley’s second rule of life is Do All the Good You Can. Yet, we are not all wise. Indeed, for some Do All the Good You Can meant to bring the teachings of Western Civilization to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, they did not always respect local cultures. Over all, however, if you look at the nations that are doing the best economically, and have the highest standards of living, they are the countries that are still part of the British Commonwealth or who were linked to them historically. That is because colonizers not only brought domination, they also brought respect for law and order, libraries, hospitals, sanitation, and schools to places that didn’t have them.

Most people don’t know but one of the goals of communism was to attack colonialism and use guilt to get the West to abandon their colonies before the colony was ready to take on the responsibilities of a modern society. Then, in the resulting chaos, the Communists could step in and re-order the society. Despite Marx’ predictions Communism has only been able to dominate in societies that were per-industrial or behind on the industrial curve from the West. This is not the only thing Marx was wrong on. [See: Are We the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave? Or Did We Lose the Cold War? – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ; and Admitted Goals of Marxists in America – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ]

For some, deluded by the media and government misinformation, “doing good” was acting in ways that browbeat and isolated people who didn’t get vaccinated. The abandoned the principles of Liberty and America (if schools had taught even a modicum of understanding of Western Liberties – or even if they really believed “my body my choice” then they would have rejected these lies). But, as is so often the case, fear over-rode common sense and people acted in ways that were wholly against American Philosophy by marginalizing people who thought differently from them and who sought to exercise their rights over their own body. But even these natural rights are no longer understood in our society. [See also: Denial of Natural Laws and Natural Rights Endangers Our Survival – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ; We Now Live In A Totalitarian State – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ] (those who understood virology and still were thinking critically as opposed to those driven by irrational fear and ignorance.) Such people tell themselves they are good people but they are really self-interested people trying to cover their self-interest in a cloak of virtue. This is not the type of “doing good” that Wesley was speaking of. He was speaking of doing good in a rational and prayerful manner with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

This brings us to Wesley’s Third Rule of Life – attend to the ordinances and disciplines of the Faith. Because you cannot have any knowledge of the outcome of your actions – but God does know and by faithfully attending to the spiritual disciplines you learn those ways (although honestly, many who claim to be Christian don’t – as Father Hoolighan told me once: “Mr. Business went to church. He never missed a Sunday. But Mr. Business went to Hell for what he did on Monday.”

Ordinances and disciplines of the faith include studying the Bible and religious teachings, attend worship services, pray and meditate on the scriptures, seek communion with God, and grow in the faith. [If you want to grow in the Faith I have found the writings of the Benedictine Order to be incredibly helpful in living a godly life. See AUSCULA – Listen With The Ears Of Your Heart – ofNaturesGod.com ] Also, included in this was helping the poor and the destitute as Christ commanded and sharing the good news that we can escape this treadmill and the hell of this world we have made.

Christianity has been dumped on a lot with half-truths and out and out lies a lot in the 20^th and 21^st Centuries.

However, the world was arguably a better place when the West identified as Christendom. As for the Crusades, that deserves its own article but let me make it clear that Europe and Christian countries had been invaded for almost 400 years by Islamic nations before the first Crusade was launched. That is not opinion it is historical fact! And the first crusade was launched not to conquer Islamic countries but it was launched to defend the Christian city of Byzantium that was under attack by Islamic armies. Spain was conquered by Islam as was all of Northern Africa and now they were battling to destroy the Roman Empire whose capital was in Byzantium. Persia/Iran and Afghanistan were not originally Islamic. They were conquered and converted. Charles Martel turned back invaders in France or all of Europe would have been conquered long before now. Rome had been sacked, Christian Russia and balkans were repeatedly invaded, and FINALLY, Christendom rallied to defend Byzantium and the Eastern Roman Empire. Christians rallied again when Vienna was beseiged by the armies of Islam when an army of Germans and Poles led by Jan and the Polish Winged Hussars saved Vienna and saved Europe from the armies of Islam again in the 1600s.

Today we allow those armies across our border without restraint while Islamic Imams preach that after centuries of trying to conquer the West Jihad has a new form. They should now infiltrate the West have more babies than Europeans and Americans and take over their countries from within. This is not my idea. This is what THEY have said in their temples and websites. Why is it that we repeatedly ignore what our enemies themselves say they are going to do to us. Are we that fragile that we cannnot understand there are people in the world that hate us. That didn’t go well with Hitler and ignoring their aggression and stated intent to destroy America and the West won’t go well today. You can hide you head in the sand but it won’t change the result – it just means that you won’t see the sword when it falls. That is not skepticism that is denial and cowardice.

After the Crusades it was Christians that spearheaded the war against slavery and the international slave trade, not Muslims, not Hindus, not Pagans, but Christians. It was not secular society it was Christian society. Secular society didn’t give a damn about anyone but themselves and they have a long history of violating rights not preserving them. The most educated and advanced society in Europe in the 1930s was Germany and we all should know what happened there. While the Left is eager to distance themselves from the Nazis the more I study them the more clearly that they were, indeed, socialists. However, unlike the international socialist/communist movement they were nationalist socialists and after gaining power they broke the power of the right-wing conservative groups that didn’t toe the line of the national socialist worldview.

Oh, witches? Yeah, history has identified a few thousand witches killed by ‘the church’ which was horrible and wrong. But more witches were imprisoned and driven underground by secular doctors who accused them of practicing medicine without a license than were persecuted by the church and we don’t hear about that very much do we?

Its convenient for society not to mention the tens of thousands of Christians killed by pagans and the tens of thousands of Christians and Jews who are today still being killed in Islamic countries. If they mentioned it they may have to do something about it.

Somehow secular society, which has on its hands the 100 millions killed by Communists and the 6 million jews killed by Hitler. As I have said, Jews, like Christians, are still being killed in Islamic countries today. Israel is literally fighting for its right to exist. Palestinians don’t want a 2-state solution. “From the River to the Sea” means there will be no Jews left alive from the river to the sea, they are very clear about that in their own websites.

Selective morality is no morality at all.

Palestinians want to divest Jews of the lands of Israel and Judah that were theirs all the way back to the days of the Pharoah and the Babylonians. The Jews are the indigenous people of the area and the Palestinians the colonizers. They do not allow any Jews in Palestine but Muslims, Arab Bedouins, and more are allowed to serve as judges and in political office in Israel. Israel follows the values of a modern Western State including having one of the largest gay populations in Tel Aviv in the Middle East – one of the few places in the Middle East gays can live and not be killed.

But all of these facts are ignored or twisted by lying “fact-checkers” and other media magnates and their lackeys because they don’t fit the narrative. It’s easier to lie to people when you have stolen their education. [see also: Who Stole Your Education? Were You Indoctrinated in Ignorance? – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ]

The level of ignorance by the Left leaning political organizations of American campuses are disgusting to me. Universities are supposed to be centers of learning and not centers and instigators of anti-semitism. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised with all the Marxist professors because Marx was both of Jewish decent and flagrantly anti-Jewish…in fact Communism opposes all religions. I suppose because religious conflicts didn’t kill enough people to sate the blood-lust endemic to all communist states that have ever existed.

[But as I write this evidence is growing that many of those arrested in college demonstrations may not be students but agents of radical Islam and their sycophants.]

The ignorance of history is endemic in today’s society. As it has been for thousands of years. I guess that is why humans do the same things, and making the same mistakes, over and over again.

Fortunately, one of the ordinances of the church is communion. Communion should be taken only after confession and prayer. You don’t need to go through confession in the Catholic sense but before you become one with Christ through the ritual of Communion you must be sin free. For us humans that means we must repent all that we have done, and all that we have failed to do, that for us was sin. The glory of Communion is that when we repent and decide to turn from our failings that God throws those sins “as far as the East is from the West” and remembers them no more. While humans may nurse affronts and wrongs against us, God is able to completely forget transgressions that we confess and repent to God for.

I love Communion because I am a very imperfect servant of the Living God. I make mistakes regularly. Like King David I am not a paragon of virtue, however, I do love the Living God and my experiences and relationship with that mysterious indefinable but loving entity. Every time I take communion I know (from having read and taught the Bible,) that my sins are forgotten and as I take the elements into my body so Christ re-enters me in a special way and I am made new once again. A fresh start. Clean and new as Christ promised: “Behold, I make all things new.”

That is special and unique in human society. You cannot get that through the legal system. You cannot get it from Universities, and you sure as hell cannot get it from Communism and the Left who cancel, attack with law-fare, and imprison, people “at the drop of a hat,” as they say. But Christianity in each communion service offers a fresh start for all who legitimately repent of their sins. Maybe that is why secular society hates them so, because they know that no matter what they do they will never be free of their own past and Christians get fresh starts regularly.

Attend to the ordinances and disciplines of the Church and seek communion frequently. Especially if you are like me and need to make a fresh start often.

Whether you are Christian or not I suggest you consider at least the first two injunctions of 1^st Do no Harm and 2^nd Do all the good you can, as you journey through life and you will find that, ultimately, it makes a difference in society. Don’t be like those doomed to repeat history due to their own ignorance and stand up for truth wherever you may find yourselves. Don’t run from a “fight” but when truth is called for to oppose evil and falsehood stand in the gap. We don’t put our heads in the sand, or pretend not to see injustice. Draw sabers, ride to the sound of the guns, and cut through the lies to get to the truth, and…

[Edited version, the original was published on Sabersedge.Online another website of SabersEdge Foundation, an educational association that says the quiet parts outloud.]

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)

Don’t Feed The Trolls – A Fool And His Folly

January 7, 2024 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 0 Comments

Have you ever encountered a fool who was always talking but had no knowledge of the issue(s) they were talking about? If you have used social media I know that you have. If you have ever been to a cocktail party or a kegger, or listened to an “ex-pert” on mainstream news I imagine you have as well.

Maybe you have encountered such a fool who dismissed every argument you had because they didn’t understand, or maybe didn’t even care about data. Maybe they only cared that they are right, or just wanted the attention from talking/posting. Have you ever driven yourself nuts trying to deal with such a person?

There is a reason these people are commonly called trolls (in the old days in social circles they were called cads, or fools, or idiots, or worse. Troll is a good name because they stink, they’re rude, ignorant, bitchy, aggressive, impossible to talk to rationally, slimy, unedumicated, and they ruin any nice or beautiful thing they can, and they even seem to regenerate if you try to “kill” them. If you ban them they reappear under a different login.

In fact, many fools (trolls if you prefer,) can actually get stronger and more active if you try to engage them at all.

They are also living embodiments of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. If you don’t know the effect it was from a study by Dunning and Kruger that found the less intelligent a person was the smarter they believed themselves to be. Further, the less someone knew about a topic the more they thought they understood it. In short it essentially showed that the less you know the more you believe that you really do understand the topic. This is because the more you know about a topic the more variables you are aware of and you become aware of the vast body of knowledge that exists on the subject. If you only know a little about the topic you may feel you have a good grasp on it. A person aware of that field of knowledge essentially knows that they do not know while someone who is ignorant of the scholarship doesn’t and may well feel they have a good grasp of the topic.

Further, the smarter a person was the more they reflected upon themselves and second guessed their answers. In the tests they were fully aware of which topics they understood and which ones they knew little about and were nervous about the topics they were tested on that weren’t in their area.

The test showed that the smarter someone was the less smart they rated themselves (because they knew they had a lot to learn,) while if someone was less intelligent they thought they knew all they needed to know on the topic. Such people had a simple understanding and provided simple answers and they were confident they did well on the tests (even when the bombed.) Essentially, any fool could tell you!

As a political science professor Col. Phil Dyer once said in class, “I wish I could have taught this class in when I was a high school student. I knew everything then.”

Apparently, this is not a new phenomena. Thousands of years ago the Jews, Romans, Egyptians and Greeks all knew of these foolish trolls and their Wisdom Literature addressed it. I could write pages of proverbs on this topic and the just the Book of Proverbs in the Bible has dozens of verses about fools. Egyptian wisdom literature, Viking literature, and even Chinese and African literature and proverbs are very similar to the Hebrew.

As a reminder, Wisdom Literature is like early sociology and psychology (although it was less subject to fads and kooky theories.) To be a proverb a behavior had to be proven as relevant to human nature over generations. Sages studied human behavior and noticed tendencies in human nature and they then wrote proverbs to help people navigate through life with a minimum of pain and disappointment. Those who did not learn from such collected Wisdom were called fools because they insisted on living through all of the pain themselves rather than learning from others so that they could avoid pain and disappointment in their own life.

Its what my dad used to call the “School of Hard Knocks.” The “School of Hard Knocks” is that school of lived life where life beats you up and spits you out all demoralized and bruised. He would say, “You can either learn from the wisdom of others or you can learn from the School of Hard Knocks, son. Learning from the lessons of life experienced by others is less painful for you – both physically and emotionally.”

“But things have changed so much!” you might say. True, but people have not. We process our thoughts and emotions bio-chemically and we just don’t evolve that fast. We are genetically the same people as those who built the Roman Empire. In fact, humanity has not substantially changed in over 400,000 years! While our society changes our ability to process events through thought and emotions have not because they are primarily physiologically processed in our bodies. So human reaction to stimuli is often imbedded in us from millennia of experience and through the constant struggle for survival and passing our genes on to future generations.

Every night I would see my father sitting in his chair and reading the Bible for a while before he went to bed and when we were walking in the woods, around the block, fishing, or just sitting on the porch he would talk to me about things or I would ask him about things. Often he talk and explain things and then he would punctuate his point by sharing a Bible verse that summed everything up that he had logged into his memory.

So, what did these ancient sages say about these fools on social media? OK, for them they were just fools in the tavern, in the Senate, or at the social gathering or theater.

“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, Lest you also be like him.” – Proverbs 26:4

I have noticed that answering these trolls online often simply encourages them, sometimes I watch some well meaning person pour out their heart and their best efforts to the troll – perhaps thinking they just don’t know any better – and don’t realize that fools and trolls are only there to cause trouble and get attention. Sometimes, these people get so discouraged they drop off the list because trolls can be so emotionally exhausting. Thus the warning, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly,” because conversing with a fool is a waste of time and energy that you could best spend elsewhere.

Who knows? Maybe they are attention starved because no one in their right mind would want to be with them in real life. I know that in some cases bullies and real life trolls gravitate to churches because people there are often too nice to tell them no. These are people who thought their mothers advice, “if you an’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all” actually came from the Bible. It absolutely didn’t. The Bible is about truth and tells Christians to “Speak the truth in love.” The Bible hates lies and deception and so does God, according to it.

Unfortunately, some of the best discussion groups I have encountered online were killed by trolls and administrators who were too nice, weak willed, or wishy washy with their principles and allowed the trolls to run amuck and destroy what was a good site with world-ending destruction. One by one people would leave because the troll was dominating the list and no one wanted to talk anymore just to be attacked by the troll. I’ve even seen lists break in two because people want to leave the troll behind and the troll shows up on the new list! Sometimes under a false name! If you really want to understand these people you need to read M.Scott Peck’s book The People of the Lie. (M.Scott Peck is a professional psychologist but the book is very readable.)

If you ignore fools many of them will go away to somewhere that they can get the emotional “hit” of attention. However, others get their perverse ‘joy” from wrecking things, crushing real joy, and they delight in watching the list die even if no one even talks to them directly.

The proverbs of the ancient sages also recognize that fools cling to their own ignorance. They simply don’t want to learn! Now change may be hard but another saying my Dad had “It is better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” However, true to the Dunning-Kruger Effect the fool seems to have no idea that he or she is revealing themself to be either an idiot, a jerk, or both…or they don’t care.

Verse 4 of this chapter of proverbs recognizes that fools refuse to learn and tells you not to waste you time talking to them. It’s like the saying about “Don’t wrestle with pigs. They drag you through the mud and the pig enjoys it.” The foolish troll loves rolling in the mud and causing strife. This is why trolls are on the side of chaos and evil in games.

I used to have the liberal bias that evil, prejudice, and stupidity were due to a lack of education. But some refuse to learn and even when educated will remain a fool. This may be why the Bible repeatedly combines wisdom and understanding and says that learning is not enough. You have to have understanding. My sister was a college professor and so I learned early that some PhD’s were pretty dumb about life and how things really work. Education does NOT equal wisdom.

We saw what turning everything over to a “subject matter expert” did to the economy and psychological distress during Covid. They may have known something about virology but the destroyed the economy, small businesses throughout the country, and the psychological stability and development of millions doing it. We seem to have followed an “educated fool” on that one. OF course Fauci is the same doctor who in the 70s said everyone was going to get AIDS from toilet seats and fast foods. He was wrong on that too. But some other fool promoted him so he could do more damage.

I once had a relative by marriage once brag that she had never read a book after leaving high school! Why would anyone brag about that? Its like saying “I have chosen the path of ignorance ever since they could no longer make me learn.” As you all know I read 2-5 books a month (unless I read novels then I read 2-10 a week. I do read novels a couple times a year but there is so much out there to learn I just don’t have the time.) I thank my sister and parents for that who always promoted life-long learning.

They encouraged me to always carry a book with me (which is even easier electronically.) I encourage you all to learn and embrace the concept of life-long learning. Always have a book with you so if you are waiting in a line you can read and learn. Keep your mind busy because if you don’t use it you lose it and if you have seen the elderly in a nursing home you have a clear picture of what can happen if you don’t keep your mind and body sharp through using them. (Yes, I know some have other complications.)

So, don’t ruin your own enjoyment and energy by letting trolls and fools suck the life out of you. Even if they are related to you. You won’t get any enjoyment out of it and if you fight with them you are just making them happy because they love the mud and the filth.

So, now lets look at verse 5:

Answer a fool according to his folly, Lest he be wise in his own eyes. -Proverbs 26:5

Uh-oh! Well, that’s confusing. Yes, the Bible in English frequently is. It was a horrible language to translate it into and worse some people translated it to fit their own prejudices and dogma. (So I also encourage you to learn Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.) Philosophy seems to be so much better in German, Latin, or Greek, in my opinion. English has become a “mushy” language and the left’s attempts to change the meaning of words is making it even harder to understand. Get an old dictionary from 1965 or earlier and use it. Read ten definitions a week open it randomly and picking out words you don’t know for 2 a day at the start of each business day. Write the definitions in a journal or on you calendar if you can and you will remember better.

OK. What gives? Verse 5 cancels out verse four! Greaco-Roman culture likes to pin things down into concrete rules good for all times and places. But in the Bible it recognized that life is more complex and flexible that that. Righteousness in the Bible is not about following all the rules but knowing the right time and right place to place what rule in. In some cases an act would be reprehensible and in another it is laudatory. Murder is bad, that’s why its condemned in the ten commandments but killing is not necessarily bad. Killing a murderer could save your family’s lives. Killing the enemy saves your city. The Bible says there is a time to kill and a time to heal. You need to understand life and know what time it is and what act is appropriate. So the ancient Hebrews wouldn’t have the problem with this that we do. They would have just shrugged and said “DOTS! Depends on the situation.” (OK they probably wouldn’t have said that unless they were also in the US Army.)

Sometimes, a person will use a phrase that is common propaganda but utterly wrong. In that case I respond to them explaining my view and context. There is always the chance they are open to learning and are only repeating what they are told or that, conversely, I may learn something. I have made several friends that way! If a person is open to learning you may make a new friend.

However, real trolls and fools have no desire to learn they simply want to make waves or be right! Even if they are wrong! In that case it does no good to that person to answer them according to their folly. They won’t learn. If the person is just ignorant and they don’t know they will learn. However, there are times when the troll may say something that is a popular take on things and I answer because I want others on the list to know the statement was wrong. I am not engaging the troll I am putting out knowledge to the silent lurkers who never speak.

I have found explaining once gives me the option of making a friend or educating someone on a topic. If they show they are unwilling to learn the response demonstrates to anyone watching that the fool is not correct. I have always been concerned that fools could lead people astray. If no one is willing to speak the truth then how can others learn.

So, I tend to respond once to see if it is just someone who doesn’t know or if I am dealing with a fool. Or, if it makes sense I may respond a couple times until I discover I am talking to a fool or other fanatic and then I stop and I also tell them why I am stopping. They aren’t willing to learn, they are not discussing with an honest desire for knowledge or they are fanatics.

So, as you go through life, whether at a family dinner, business social, or on social media, don’t answer a fool according to their folly unless you think it is a learning opportunity for others.

This is something that your father should have taught you but I have noticed that a lot of people didn’t have a father like mine on hand. Thank you father.

Do not answer a fool according to his folly, Lest you also be like him.

Answer a fool according to his folly, Lest he be wise in his own eyes.

Proverbs 26:4-5

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.

A Prophesy or Warning

November 16, 2022 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 2 Comments

I have hesitated to post this. For over a month every time I do Lectio Divina I have received the same message through the Biblical passages I have read and prayed over. Lectio has always had a special place for me and it is one of the spiritual disciplines I use to get closer to God. It became clear to me that I was getting a message for the world and not just one for my own edification. I tried to avoid it but it kept coming up over and over again. Every session of Lectio continued on this theme until I finally came to believe that until I write it out for others I will not be able to move on in my spiritual walk. I have found that God can even be more stubborn than I am…that is saying something.

I told my wife about what was happening during my Lectio. “I have tried different Bibles because I was beginning to think that mine was just opening up in the same areas because of the way the Bibles have worn. Although, I don’t like to dwell on these “judgment” passages.” But no matter which Bible I used, we have lots, and the results were the same. “Here,” my wife said, “use my Bible, I just bought it and it hasn’t been used yet.” I opened it up and read the passages that follow.

First, a word for those who don’t understand Lectio. I used to teach this in my churches and at religious retreats and still have the materials I wrote for the Order of St. Luke retreat we held at the Seminary.

The idea of Lectio is ancient and has roots in earliest Christianity and possibly even back to ancient Israel. Lectio is on a similar principle to the Benedictine saying of “Ora et Labora” that the monastic life was a balance of Prayer and Work. In Lectio, there are the words “Lectio et Actio” which means “Reading and Action.” As it was first explained to me I was told that even if you don’t believe God speaks to you, you are using the Bible to guide your life, which can’t be all bad. However, I have been doing Lectio since I was a teen and it has been spot on so many times that I cannot believe it is anything but a spiritual exercise and communication with the Divine.

In Lectio, you pray and center yourself in the presence of God. You ask for God’s guidance and open the Bible prayerfully and begin reading where your eyes first fall. You read until a passage “jumps out” at you. Or you can pick a passage that is important to you and use Lectio to deepen your understanding of scripture.

Step One – Lectio – This is the Initial Reading. What does this passage say to readers?

Step Two – Meditatio – This is the second reading of the same passage. What does this passage say to you? What parts or words stand out?

Step Three – Oratio – This is the third reading. What part stands out specifically? What is it saying to you in your own life and what would you say to God in response?

Step Four – Contemplatio – This is a deep meditation on the scripture you have read. What is God saying? Bring together all of the thoughts prior so that you let the passage speak to you through you mind, your heart, and a message for your life.

Step Four – Actio- What does this say about how I should be living my life? What am I to do?

Before, I received what I thought were messages for specific people rather than myself. This is the first time in Actio that I believed that I had a message for the world; a message I am not sure how to spread but I am posting it here and leaving the rest to God.

This is what the Divine Presence said to me during Lectio. And I feel I need to share it. I find it disturbing. I have had this affliction of the Lord speaking to me for most of my life and although I tried to run from him you cannot run from God. It is a difficult thing to do what God wants you to do and I have often found his speaking to me to be burdensome and have turned away from time to time. These gifts of knowledge and discernment, and others can be a trial. But the gift of preaching was always a pleasure. I passed this on to Father Dean before publishing this to get yet another opinion. He agreed this was not a message for me but for the nation, if not the world.

I firmly believe that God raised this nation up to be a city on a hill and a light to the nations and there are many today who seek to extinguish this light. But more than that this light was Given to the Western Nations. Through them, an unprecedented level of learning and wealth has come into the world. The principles of the United States Republic came from the teachings of Rome, and the best minds of Europe and America but it is fully in the best of the Western Tradition which is built on the idea that the World was created by the Divine Presence and therefore it has value and each individual is special as a child of the Living God. It seems the west has turned its back on its foundations and simply embraced materialism…how is that going for you?

I started SabersEdge.Online and ofNaturesGod.com because God has directed me to and he is more persistent than I am stubborn. I pray before each blog post and he often wakes me in the wee hours of the morning where we share Lectio Divina and prayer and then I write what he has put upon my heart.

He has impressed upon me that our society has turned against God and our heritage of the greatest culture in the world has been betrayed. God raised up a culture that wove the philosophy of Greece and Rome, the Wisdom of Egypt, and the Word of the Lord so tightly together that it is difficult to distinguish one from another. We are now in a culture war that is also a spiritual battle for the soul of a nation and a world.

We come to the Church because we cannot serve God alone. I believe that we need a worship home, spiritual disciplines, and community to sustain us. Just as the Army has not and never will be an “Army of One” it is a community with a purpose. I believe we all must join a community of likeminded people for as the founders of America said, “If we don’t hang together we will certainly hang separately.”

Here is the Word the Lord has shared with me concerning the Nations for today:

Thus says the LORD concerning this people: Truly they have loved to wander, they have not restrained their feet; therefore the LORD does not accept them, now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins.

The LORD said to me: Do not pray for the welfare of this people. Although I hear their cry, and although they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I do not accept them; but by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence I consume them.

“Then I said: “Ah, LORD GOD! Here are the prophets saying to them, ‘You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you true peace in this place.’” And the LORD said to me: The prophets are prophesying lies in my name; I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds. Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the prophets who prophesy in my name though I did not send them, and who say, “Sword and famine shall not come to this land”: by sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed. And the people to whom they prophesy shall be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem, victims of famine and sword. There shall be no one to bury them – themselves, their wives, their sons, and their daughters. For I will pour out their wickedness upon them. You shall say to them this word: Let my eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease, for the virgin daughter – my people – is struck down with a crushing blow, with a very grievous would. If I go into the field, look – those killed by the sword! And if I enter the city, look – those sick with famine! For both prophet and priest ply their trade throughout the land, and have no knowledge.”

Then my eyes fell to the reading at the beginning of Chapter 15 where it said:

“Then the LORD said to me; Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people. Send them out of my sight, and let them go! And when they say to you, “Where shall we go?” you shall say to them. Thus says the LORD:

“Those destined for pestilence for pestilence, and those destined for the sword, to the sword; those destined for famine, to famine, and those destined for captivity, to captivity.

“And I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, says the LORD: the sword to kill, the dogs to drag away, and the birds of the air and the wild animals of the earth to devour and destroy. I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what King Manasseh son of Hezekiah of Judah did in Jerusalem…”

skip….[ Please understand. I cannot explain why the skips or how I know what I read was from God but I know just as I know the parts where he was speaking to us today rather than Jeremiah speaking to Judah. I is very hard to talk to someone about how God communicates directly to someone it has never happened to. However, once you admit it to others people will come to your privately and you will find it is much more common than our society beleives.]

“You have rejected me, says the LORD, you are going backward; so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you – I am weary of relenting. I have winnowed them with a winnowing fork in the gates of the land; I have bereaved them, I have destroyed my people; they did not turn from their ways. The widows became more numerous than the sand of the seas; I have brought against the mothers of youths a destroyer at noonday..”

then relevance continued at verse 13:

“Your wealth and your treasure I will give as plunder, without price, for all your sins, throughout all your territory. I will make you serve you enemies in a land that you do not know, for in my anger a fire is kindled that shall burn forever.”

and continued here:

“Therefore thus says the LORD: If you turn back, I will take you back, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall serve as my mouth. It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them. And I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze, they will fight against you, but they shall not prevail over you, for I am with you to save and deliver you, says the LORD. I will deliver out of the hand of the wicked, and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.”

Chapter 16:17 –

“For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my presence, nor is their iniquity concealed from my sight. And I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations….[17:3b] You wealth and all your treasures I will give for spoil as the price of your sin throughout all your territory. By your own act you shall lose the heritage that I gave you, and I will make you serve your enemies in a land that you do not know for in my anger a fire is kindled that shall burn forever.”

Verbum domini.

There was more. But it is not for me to share. The above is what is key and what I was told to share.

I give this to you because I feel I should. I don’t know why precisely. You are free to share this with any that you feel led to share it with but I ask you do so prayerfully and in consultation with God. If God shares a word with you for me please share it with me, in turn. You can write me at PO Box 433, Leavenworth, KS 66048 or at SabersEdge.Online@gmail.com

At a funeral recently, during the silence of Prayer, God said to me, “Do not hate people because they have been decieved.”

But at what point do those who are deceived become complicit in the destruction of God’s vision of justice and freedom that he raised up in this nation? This is something that I still struggle with and on this, God has remained silent.

Without A Vision The People Perish

August 5, 2022 / Rivan_Elan aka Pastor Daniel / 1 Comment

I think that an ancient proverb from the Middle East recorded in Proverbs 29:18a is a proverb for our time. Everywhere we look there appears to be chaos and we have been cut off from our roots. Without knowledge of where we came from, we have trouble telling where we are and thence don’t know where we are going. In other words without a Vision the people perish.

It is probable that this means without knowledge of the Divine Will and communication with the Ground of All Being we become cut off from who we are and who we were created to be. We flail about unable to find a course to our life, a purpose in this chaos, or meaning in … well, anything.

Religion has a bad rap these days but I find it interesting that “Religio” (the root from which the word has grown) means “to bind us back.” To bind us back to our roots. This is essential because without its roots a tree doesn’t grow. Similarly if we are unaware of our own roots and foundational beliefs we become lost and confused. Religion, properly conceived should bind us back to the Source of All Life/The Ground of Being/Das Ding An Sich – or The Thing in Itself or as the book says: I am that I am. We humans become too hung up on names and outer trappings like ritual, names of the Divine, and even each others skin color and tend to overlook deeper connection and meaning. The very connection and meaning that religion is intended to help us create with the Creator (or Creatrix if you prefer).

I have a theory about religions and you will find it on the Page: Religions. but I think at their source there is a reality that each religion stumbles toward and that is the Ground of Being. Our language is inadequate to describe it, as anyone who has had a “religious experience” and had contact with the Divine Presence knows very well. The Bible and other sacred works are our groping efforts to describe the indescribable. But it is exactly this experience of the Divine and our listening to its promptings (which the Bible says is partially reflected in our conscience,) that we find purpose and meaning. I will post guidance on centering and listening to this guidance in the days to come but I firmly believe that we are cut off from who we are and who we were meant to be.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations. – Jeremiah 1:5

By forgetting who we are and losing contact with the one who knit us together from the very first we are unable to find our path. Everywhere today we see the consequences of people, society, and religious institutions who have been cut off from their roots. They have lost their vision. We have lost the knowledge of who we are and are disconnected from the Source of Being. It is not surprising that so many don’t know who they are or why they are here. And then, depression sets in.

In my sermons I often said, “Children of the Living God remember who you are and who your father is! And then act like you remember.”

It is by remembering who we are we are guided back into a relationship with our Source and Ground of Being. It is where we find the purpose and vision to weather the trials of life and adversity and make a difference.

As I have said before, spiritual reality is a matter of poetry and song. It is emotion and feeling and not simply a mind thing but a heart thing. Here is what I was trying to say as this song sings praise to “the God of his heart.” I believe we will all find the Divine in the core of our hearts, if we center and look for it. (This one’s for you Chuck):

In thi,s the author praises the “God of His Heart” that Being which he hadthe deep and abidingexperiencef. Listen to what the author was trying to communicate of his experience that was too deep for explanation and could only be expressed in song. I know some have had troubles with people who are in churches and some doctrines. If you are one I ask you to set that aside and listen with the ears of your heart to what is being said.