Posted by Roberta Grimes • December 18, 2021 • 48 Comments
Afterlife Research, Jesus
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.
– John Mason Neale (1818-1866), translation of an 8th century Latin monastic hymn
At Christmas we celebrate the beginning of the most astounding and mystifying set of events in all of human history. Nothing about any of this is religious, since we know now that religions are man–made. By now, we have grown beyond the need to approach inexplicable events with superstitious terrors that made us need to build religions around them. But when these amazing events took place, religion-creation was still our response, so the religion of my childhood attributes a nonsensical set of ideas to some genuinely amazing facts. Knowing that, it may not surprise you to learn that the core Christian teaching that Jesus died to redeem us from God’s judgment for our sins is nonsense.
In all my fifty years of looking for proof of that basic Christian belief, I never have found any evidence at all that the crucifixion of Jesus has made an afterlife difference for a single human being. And the volume of detailed and consistent evidence about the genuine afterlife that is available now is such that if Jesus actually had died for even the sins of just a few of us, we would easily find some confirmation! As I said last week, I love my childhood religion. Since I was eight years old, I have wanted to learn what happens at and after death so I could better understand my experiences of light; but more than that, I have so badly wanted to confirm that my Christian beliefs were real. I didn’t need much evidence. Maybe a single glimpse of a physical God on His actual throne? Some hint that there was a divine judgment? Maybe pearly gates and St. Peter with a list, or maybe even a celestial church with people saying how glad they were to have picked the right denomination? God, Jesus, and Christianity were my personal trinity. If I lost one, I feared that I might lose them all. So when at the age of 51, and after thirty years of earnestly trying, I finally gave up on finding any evidence that Jesus had died for our sins, I just closed my Bible and set it down. I stopped doing further afterlife research, and I spent the next two years pretending that none of that had ever happened.
I have talked here before about the rainy afternoon when I finally trusted Jesus enough to pick up and read my Bible again. In one sitting I raced through all four Gospels, feeling nervous at first because I knew so much by then about what is actually true, and I loved the Lord with everything in me. I couldn’t bear to learn that He had been wrong! But Jesus had been right in breathtaking ways that I never before had noticed. He knew things two thousand years ago about God, reality, death, the afterlife, and the meaning and purpose of human life that I had learned from the afterlife evidence, but that really still can be found nowhere else. For example, Jesus told us in the Gospels at least the following facts:
There is much more, too. Some of it is subtle or debatable, but these four points were enough on that rainy day to prove to me that the Being Whose words are reported in the Gospels came to earth two thousand years ago knowing things that He could not have known if He had not come directly from the highest Godhead!
Jesus did in fact live on earth. We know that now without question. If my own evidence from the dead is not proof enough, there are Christians who have found and offer proof in abundance! Erick-Woods Erickson is a radio host who just this week spoke again to the fact that Jesus did indeed exist. He said, “If he did not exist, then neither did the Greek philosopher Socrates. We have no writings from Socrates himself. We only know of his existence through the writings of other people. But no one would doubt Socrates existed. We actually have more eyewitness accounts of Jesus’s existence than of Socrates… The Apostle John was Jesus’s best friend. We know this from scripture. We also know this from Polycarp, Ignatius, and others. They studied under John, recounted his stories of being with Jesus, including stories not in scripture, and confirm John, Peter, Paul and others as eyewitnesses to Christ’s resurrection.” Erickson doesn’t mention the fact that there also are contemporaneous surviving notes of the existence of Jesus in nearby countries.
So Jesus did indeed live on earth. We also know that He was crucified and died on earth, and He was interred in a cave, as was the custom. Then three days later He literally rose from the dead.
And furthermore, the Jewish Law and the Prophets which became the Christian Old Testament contains a series of prophesies that can reasonably be tied to the birth and to the work of Jesus. To mention just three examples:
The prophet Jeremiah said of the Lord’s earthly ancestor, King David, “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteous Savior” (Jer 23:5-6).
From Isaiah comes, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and you will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”) (Isaiah 7:14).
And finally, also from the great Isaiah comes my favorite prophesy of all. Jesse was King David’s father:
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.
He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:1-9).
I love that passage! I see it as encompassing all of human history from the birth of Jesus to the farthest future. Simply replace the word “fear” with “love,” and know that we are only about halfway there. The beautiful promise of those last four lines sometimes feels like most of what sustains me now.
So even though the proponents of the religion that still bears His name have misunderstood who He actually was, we know now that the Baby whose birth we celebrate at Christmas grew to be a Being truly unique in human history. He knew things two thousand years ago that we can confirm today only by means of the testimony of those that we used to think were dead. And He was an amazingly powerful Being. He even was able to reanimate a body that had been dead for days!
With all of that in mind, it is time for us to ask a new and important question. Since the religion is wrong, and it has always been wrong, what was this gigantic series of events really all about? What was actually born in Bethlehem two thousand years ago? And why?
O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory o’er the grave.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.
– John Mason Neale (1818-1866), translation of an 8th century Latin monastic hymn
Dear Roberta,
I have long wondered where the silly and really harmful idea (because it casts God as vengeful needing a great hurt to satisfy His wrath) that Jesus came here to exonerate the sins of humanity, not only from the past but into the future by suffering the crucifixion. Have you discovered who proposed this idea and who supported it so well that it was adopted? Does such a mean spirited idea have roots in the OT and/or the HT?
My dear Jack, the idea that you are talking about – that Jesus came to die to redeem us from God’s judgment for our sins – was only one of many ideas about His mission that were current in the first and second centuries A.D. It wasn’t even the biggest theory at the time. In fact, among the millions of burials in the Roman catacombs, there is not a cross to be seen! But the Roman Emperor Constantine seized on that concept, apparently because he loved the fear that it inspired. He ruthlessly eradicated every other idea about Jesus as heresy, and he thereby founded the Christianity that survives to this day.
Dear Roberta,
It is wonderful to know that the Infinite Creator sent a spark of Itself to incarnate on Earth, as Jesus, to experience incarnation and to teach us about the importance of love and forgiveness.
This is not so difficult for me to believe, as I now believe that my current incarnation is a fraction of my eternal soul that has come to Earth to experience and learn and grow.
So I thank my Creator, for my creation (and that of my wife, family, and soul group) and I thank Jesus for loving and teaching me.
God bless us all to love and forgive others and be thankful this Christmas season.
David D
Oh my dear beautiful beloved David, thank you for such a sweet set of thoughts with which to enter the Christmas seeason!
Typo, as I meant NT not HT. But while at it, I’d like to offer the idea that Humanity may have been gifted with a Christmas present in the form of a natural vaccine for the Covid diseases. Consider that the Omicron variant is extremely contagious but also as mild as the common cold. By catching it, broad spectrum natural immunity would develop, rendering the dangerous mRNA vaccines and their infinite boosters unnecessary. Bolstering these ideas were similar statements made by the mRNA contributor, Dr. Robert Malone, a few days ago. The pandemic scare is a political tool for tyranny, but the Omicron may defeat the Fascist tactics of vaccination mandates for employers/employees, as well as for anyone else still breathing.
Dear Jack,
Love your post as it will help me decide whether or not to sign up for a booster shot. But, I wonder if calling the proponents of mandates Fascist may actually be more accurate if you labelled them Faucist?
Yours,
Cookie
The booster may decrease the immune system’s effectiveness against all other pathogens, and focus it narrowly on a Covid variant it may not encounter. In other words, the boosters may be practically more harmful than helpful. Furthermore, the spike protein that the body is induced to replicate is itself a pathogen which the immune system attacks creating a form of autoimmune disease; the epithelial cells are attacked creating blood clots and damage to heart muscles. Good supplementary nutrition is best (5000 IU to 10,000 IU of D3, quercetin 250-500 mg, melatonin 3-10 mg, 250 -1000 esterified Vit C, and black elderberry pills or syrup). Ivermectin works (I get it as horse paste even though yucky). Fauci is pushing vaccines, when there are now available good treatments.
Oh my dear David, thank you for this little joke – you’ve made us all smile! But as I look down this thread, I see that unfortunately now what I had hoped would become a discussion about the wonder of that ancient, miraculous life, and speculation about why it might have happened, has become a discussion about… vaccinations??
I agree, it’s better to bring foward positve statements, not the negitives.
Roberta, is there any christen religion that shares your beliefs? Or should I say one that you can identify with the most?
Oh my dear Maria, what a great question! And the answer is, no. I don’t think so. The problem is that right after the Lord’s death and resurrection there was a rich flowering of ideas about what just had happened, what He had said and done, and what it all must have meant that went on for decades. But then the Roman emperors – and especially Constantine – killed all of that. Literally. Only one interpretation was allowed to survive, and it was the one that still survives today.
Hello to all here. I liked the comment about Socrates, as a fairly well educated person, I always believed that he existed. It seems that children are raised to believe what they are taught in school which makes it interesting why church and state have become separated. I also ask myself the question of why a mind can be a terrible thing to waste from the educational system? Now, I feel that it is certainly all about what someone or some people want you to believe. Thank you.
Dear Terry, there are truths beyond beautiful truths to be explored! What we have found as we have sought to understand reality is that in fact it is all a great deal simpler and more perfectly lovely than anyone has heretofore ever imagined. It’s too simple, really. But it is what it is. Yesterday I signed the contract and the check for Seek Reality Online. Now it begins.
Congratulations on signing the Seek Reality contract, Roberta! Best wishes for success.
Hi Roberta, What a complex conversation. I love the reinterpretation of who Jesus was and is from the near-death experiences. We live in a universe of love and grace. There is no condemnation. Not all Christianity is fixated on the idea that Jesus died for our sins — Jesus may have reframed the idea of sin. Sin in A Course in Miracles is simply alienation from God. If Jesus showed us this, he saved us from the concept of “sin” as hurting others. Hence there is no guilt or fear. We are here to learn. If we hurt another, that is part of their journey. By showing us how to live he showed us how to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. God is bigger than scripture (Raymond Moody’s new book). Jesus is head of the church. The Holy Spirit moves among us spreading grace, love, acceptance, and guidance. The church is reformed, ever reforming. It learned to reject slavery. It is learning to reinterpret sin.
Jack, How you got to COVID from this escapes me. If this coronavirus (Omicron) were as mild as the common cold (it is about half as serious as delta), why are hospitals filling up? Why have a dozen states resorted to calling in the National Guard to man hospitals? Why have 800,000 Americans already died and at least as many been left unable to work from long-COVID? We need to respect reality and get vaccinated. “God is in control, but He doesn’t expect you to lean on a shovel and pray for a hole!” God works through medicine.
Politicians are expected to protect people, just as physicians are, just as leaders of faith are, just as teachers of truth are. You apparently disagree with the tactics being used by politicians. As Shakespeare said in Hamlet, “Diseases desperate grown by desperate appliance are relieved, or not at all.” Not an easy problem.
Charles, You are properly describing politically inspired panic. Here is some more info on adverse effects:
“STORY AT-A-GLANCE
“Worse Than the Disease: Reviewing Some Possible Unintended Consequences of mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19,” by Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., and Dr. Greg Nigh, is one of the most comprehensive descriptions of the many possible unintended consequences of the mRNA gene transfer technologies incorrectly referred to as “COVID vaccines”
As of December 3, 2021, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has logged 19,886 COVID jab related deaths. Pfizer — the only company that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted full licensing for an as-yet unavailable COVID shot — accounts for 13,268 of them
Calculations suggest VAERS COVID-related reports are underreported by a factor of 41. That means that in the U.S. alone, the actual death toll may be closer to 374,576. Including international deaths reported to VAERS would put the death toll at 815,326
Key side effects that are now being reported in massive numbers include miscarriages, heart attacks, myopericarditis, thrombocytopenia (low platelet count), shingles, Bell’s palsy and a variety of permanent disabilities, many of which involve neurological dysfunction
The side effects we now see being reported were entirely predictable based on the known science detailed in Seneff’s and Nigh’s paper
MIT scientist Stephanie Seneff’s paper,1 “Worse Than the Disease: Reviewing Some Possible Unintended Consequences of mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19,” published in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice and Research in collaboration with Dr. Greg Nigh, is still one of the best, most comprehensive descriptions of the many possible unintended consequences of the mRNA gene transfer technologies incorrectly referred to as “COVID vaccines.”
December 9, 2021, their paper was reprinted in the Townsend Letter, the Examiner of Alternative Medicine.2 Seneff, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at MIT who has been conducting research at MIT for over five decades, has spent a large portion of her career investigating the hazards and mechanisms of action of glyphosate.”
Re the Excess Deaths attributed to Covid, you are aware that the CDC statistically biases the figure higher by counting all cases over the norm of a reporting unit, but replaces any data falling below the historical mean with the mean; and the CDC correctly notes that the Excess Death rate is surely inflated by suicides, reduced medical care, and drug overdosing. Comorbidities also tend to inflate the death figures by hospitals incentivized by the fed health agencies.
Jack, 800,000 dead from COVID is “politically inspired panic.” How can you say this? Have you not seen the ICUs with dying patients? Yes, there is fear involved – no one wants to die this way. But it has nothing to do with political motivations. It is reality. It is science. It is medicine.
Stephanie Seneff PhD has a doctoral degree in computer science (1985). She is known for contributions in computer-human systems. In 2011, Seneff began publishing articles on topics related to biology and medicine in low-impact, direct access journals. She has received heated objections from experts in most every field she’s delved into. She is known for publishing unsubstantiated theories. Greg Nigh ND received his degree from the National College of Natural Medicine. He is into natural cures, the use of hypnosis, naturopathic treatment of strokes, and energy medicine.
“mRNA gene transfer technologies incorrectly referred to as ‘COVID vaccines’” – What is this? Are you saying that the vaccines having been given to over 2 billion people are not vaccines?
The U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) was set up by the CDC to seek out possible adverse reactions to vaccines. Such reactions are rare, but it is important to have a mechanism for detection. It plays a vital role.
Unfortunately, VAERS is used by anti-VAXERs to terrify the public. Any unfavorable or unintended sign, lab finding, or symptom (including death) may be submitted without any objective documentation. Anyone is free to report an observation. In Canada, such reports are submitted by doctors, nurses, or pharmacists and a standardized report form. In this country a determined group of anti-vaxxers figured out that they could swamp the system with false claims. VAERS cannot be used to conclude anything. Where reports for the past twenty years averaged about 12-15 megabytes, this past year they exceeded hundreds of megabytes.
Jack, I am afraid you have bought into a field that shows your gullibility to false information. When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa in the 1960s, I prided the USA for its objectivity, and I looked down on the false information coming out of Europe and East Asia. Today I am afraid that the disease of errancy has infected our country. We live in an era when entities like Russia love to sow misinformation and deceit. This sounds like such an instance. Whether it has to do with easy access to on-line misinformation or to the nefarious intent of pride-motivated individuals or foreign deceivers, it is emblematic of the decline and imminent collapse of democracy. It is not objective. It is not science. It is meant to subvert truth.
Dear Charles, It is interesting to see how you are locked into Establishment medicine so well controlled by government funding. The Web MD site is likewise controlled by the establishment and so pushes patented, relatively expensive medicines. It is also interesting to see that your first line of attack is ad hominem and not substantively on point. With my own PhD concentration as a fully funded fellow in research design and applied statistics, I have been trained to deal with substance, not ad hominem, My training as a lawyer, Antonin Scalia Law, class of ’95 likewise trained for evaluating evidence. My career was entirely as an active researcher for the US Army and then one of the top defense firms across some 40 years, Your poke at me is rather childish, but reinforces your disposition to deal in personalities over substance.
Experts in the field, such as Malone and McCollough, have made it plainly clear that the mRNA is simply not any traditional vaccine that employs damaged pathogens that cannot reproduce themselves when injected, whereas the mRNA treatment injects an active pathogen, the spike protein, that induces an autoimmune type disease, especially harmful to the epithelial cells lining the veins, arteries and heart. McCollough recently reasserted this position that the government has diabolically shunned the use of good treatments in favor of the dangerous mRNA treatments ( https://www.cardiovascularbusiness.com/topics/covid-19/cardiologist-joe-rogan-covid-19-vaccines ). HIs testimony to the Texas Senate was scathing about government behavior in pushing dangerous mRNA treatment over reuse drug treatments ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAHi3lX3oGM )
Your disparagement of VAERS as scary serves to establish your views are politicized, not scientifically disinterested in data; and as I pointed out, and you ignored, the VAERS under-reports adverse effects on the order of twenty times too low (recent paper from Columbia U on point).
Dear Jack and everyone, please don’t inject all this Covid silliness here! Covid is just a kind of flu. We’ve got flu every year, and it tends to take the old and the infirm. It strikes me as plain silliness now that we are wearing germy paper on our faces nowadays for no good reason. let’s start acting like grownups again for heaven’s sake, and go back to living our lives!!
Oh my dear Charles, at this point my eyes are permanently crossed! To talk about NDE experiences and ACIM in the same sentence seems to me to make no sense at all, since NDE experiences are essentially personal experiences in the astral that have nothing to do with actual death (or anything else that is objectively real), and ACIM is a book that was channeled in the 1960s. Oy.
Dearest Roberta,
I love the way Thomas and your good self ask afresh, “What was actually born in Bethlehem two thousand years ago? And why?”
At once the questions sweep away the reliance on the encrusted conditioning we have about Jesus’ birth, and encourage us to take a deeper look by engaging the soul view. And as always Our Lord is present at the intimate, personal level that He lovingly nourishes in us, as well as being at the very source of the grand, cosmic big picture.
Perhaps we can only touch the fringes of His garment concerning the truly big picture – but our hearts know Him to the core. Whether we are conscious of it or not.😊
Therefor we can meditate or contemplate what was born and see what occurs to our hearts and subsequently our minds.
❣️
I don’t reckon it’s a matter of any one right answer; it’s more about receiving what comes to heart-mind gratefully as with being gifted something very, very precious.
🙏🏼
Oh my dear Efrem, thank you so much for really engaging with that question! The question really just has struck me, in all its rich complexity: from the Godhead’s perspective, what really happened there? And why did it happen? Why did it need to happen?
Dear Roberta. It is funny. I was almost going to ask you last week what you thought was some of the best early textual evidence for the historical reality of Jesus, but something told me to wait – just as well. I remember being partly pulled in myself by some of the Jesus-as-myth ideas or Jesus as a composite of more than one historical person many years ago – but not anymore. One early source that I find intriguing is by Papias of Hierapolis, although his book has not survived, but was quoted by others. Another interesting angle not widely known in the West is the extensive traditions in the Egyptian Copic Church around the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt after the birth of Jesus, with many holy wells, holy trees, monasteries, and churches located at the various places where tradition says they stayed. Some of the churches go back to the first century, with one dated to the year 70! So there we have brick and mortar evidence as well. A church at one of these holy places, in Zeitun, but only dating to 1924, was the site of some pretty amazing Marian apparitions in 1968. This leads to a second question, which is what are your thoughts on all the Marian apparitions over the last few hundred years?
Oh my dear Scott, I don’t really know what to make of the Marian apparitions, and I feel stupid about that answer since you aren’t even the first person to ask me that question. I was a Catholic for 25 years, for heaven’s sake! I’m supposed to care about the Mother of God! But I think that Marian devotion is more a thing for cradle Catholics. When I have looked at Marian apparitions – which has been very little – it has seemed to me that they were more like group delusions than actual visitations by a genuine supernatural being that I wanted to learn more about. My interest has always been just in Jesus. The Big Guy. Is that sexist of me?
Most of the time people just assumed they were seeing the Virgin Mary. When Bernadette of Lourdes asked her what her name was, she didn’t answer until she kept asking, and finally the vision told her she was the Immaculate Conception. This was a concept that was a big deal in Catholic countries, and she only appeared in Catholic countries. Why did Bernadette have to ask her 5 times what her name was? Why didn’t she just say that she was the Virgin Mary or whatever? At times, she appeared with fair skin and blue eyes, which would be simply impossible if she was “real.”
At the Fatima apparitions, the sun appeared to dance and scared everyone. Hundreds witnessed a silver disc that was in front of the sun. These were not delusions, but there are too many red flags for me to accept that the Virgin Mary was responsible for any of this.
I have wondered about that myself, Lola. Sometimes she’s just “The Lady.” Hindus have had their visions, but see one of their versions of the Sacred Feminine or Goddess. Maybe some of the ancient myths of Greece, Egypt, etc came out of similar experiences. Does the phenomenon adapt to the teligious beliefs of those who experience it? In Zeitoun there were photos taken of her, whoever or whstever she was, and thousands watched her walk around on top of the church, bless the crowd, kneel and pray in front of the cross on the roof, etc, and sometimes the phenomenon went on for a couple hours.
Scott, I read about Zeitoun but to me, it seemed pointless and designed to emulate the beliefs of the onlookers, To think that the Virgin Mary would genuflect and walk back and forth over the roof of a small church in Egypt for 2 hours is just downright silly. This has been witnessed by hundreds of people, so it isn’t an hallucination. I just wonder who or what is causing these, The scary part is that if you believe this is the Virgin Mary, then you have to bring hell back into the picture, as she shows visions of it and says it is real.
As someone who has never commented on any forum, I felt compelled to say how disappointed I was to see that half of this thread is an argument about COVID. I come to Robertas sight to grow and learn as part of my spiritual growth process. If I want to read anything COVID related I will go to the appropriate websites.
Wow, my dear Jeff, we all are honored that you have made this the first place that you have chosen to comment! And we’re sorry about all the Covid stuff. Yes indeed, there are times when I feel as you do! And especially, I think, I feel that way about this post.
I have not easily come to the conclusion that Jesus is in fact an aspect of the Godhead born in a human body. And it has taken me even longer to decide that such a conclusion is probably inescapable. OMG. So having reached that conclusion, the very least we can do is begin to capitalize His pronouns! And with that, don’t we also owe Him the courtesy of beginning to try to understand why He has made the effort? Being born into a human body is no little thing, even for one of us. For an aspect of the Godhead, the effort seems gargantuan. So… Why?
Dearest Roberta,
The fact that Jesus is the Godhead born in a human body became an inescapable conclusion for me too:
All of a sudden other ideas, philosophies, theories, historical and religious figures vanished and I was left with Jesus the Godhead, the One Teacher. I just simply knew.
And the blog question continues to resonate through this week. Wonder and wondering arises.
Humans were born from God. Homo Sapiens Sapiens were born in this simulation we call earth and the universe. How has the birth of humankind ‘changed’ God?
The Godhead Jesus was born from humans two thousand years ago. How has His birth changed humankind?
There is so much in all this!
🙏🏼🕊🌅
Ah yes, my dear Efrem, and more to the point, how has His life been meant to change humankind? The events of two thousand years ago were plain extraordinary. We know that now. We know that! But what does it all really mean?
Roberta: Has Mikey ever commented on this? Has anyone even thought of asking him?
You know, my dear Lola, I don’t think that’s a Mikey-type question. We can ask Mikey what God is, and in fact he is the first one of whom I am aware who ever hinted at what I now realize very likely is true, and I hit my forehead to realize it: of course! God is a Collective. A Godhead. Mikey can answer that kind of external and objective question. But we can’t ask Mikey how God operates, and expect an answer. I mean, does the Godhead work like a corporation, with managers and sub-managers? Do all the perfected minds work together in perfect sync, or do they delegate? I can’t imagine even forming the question. Can you?
Hi Roberta, hi everybody! Albert Einstein is said to have said something like, “I want to know God’s thoughts as He created the universe.” I would add that I also want to know God’s heart. My own beloved guide says, “You don’t know, you can’t know, and if you knew you wouldn’t know it.” Hers is a true mystic’s point of view! Merry Christmas, all.
Yes Mike !
I do love your own guide’s mystical point of view here –
It feels beyond the capacity of our human mind to really get it, in any case.
I too want to know God’s heart; that is where I wish to be.
Sometimes asking a deep, core question may well prove more important than the answer: Contemplation on this question draws me closer to the Divine Heart.
🙏🏼🌅❣️
Yes, it is important to have the questions to contemplate. This is where the power of wonder fills in.
My dear Mike, I love it!!
I ;have the same questions i.e. does the collective work in sync or delegate? If they work in sync, it would indicate a loss of individuality. I guess that even asking the question would involve too much of a long and complicated answer. I tend to agree with Mike (see below) that we wouldn’t be able to understand the answer even if one was given to us, especially while we are confined to this physical reality. For years, we have projected human emotions and qualities onto God, which I feel is absurd, so any answer we would get would likely be incomprehensible and entirely foreign to us.
I meant to say “see above” not below ……………..sorry
The Collective works in sync, my dear. Every collective is one of united minds; I don’t think it can work in any other way.
In recognizing that we are eternal spirits created by God who were gifted with the life and teachings of Christ, we also recognize that our lives here have the purpose of spiritual growth aided by having to deal with the hardships of life, and also by aided if we apply the Golden rule to our fellow beings. We do not by design live in any isolated spiritual cocoon, and any attempt to do so would betray our mission in having life on Earth. That means we must engage the moral issues of our times to fulfill our life’s mission.
Currently in America, and throughout Western culture, we face many troubling issues in society. In America, one of our two major political parties has evolved in the past few years as the tool of a Godless, anti-Christian mob. Progressive Democrats at their Presidential Convention even booed out loud the mention of God. The Progressive, really, Socialist/Communist inclined wing in power under Biden/Harris, actively pursues an agenda which overrides the individual Constitutional rights of personal freedom and free speech in favor of a new Woke religion.
As moral beings with free will, we can ignore how the Democrat Party, in league with the profit making Planned Parenthood as they mutually support each other, is all out in favor of murdering babies in the womb with violent means tearing them apart, as if dead meat. This is perfectly consistent with the Progressive policy that denies there is a God Creator who decides on life and death for Humanity.
The Progressives deny that the to sexes have God given roles in raising a family. Thus, biological men may compete in sports against biological women as fair play. Raising children without the presence of a Father, and supported by welfare, is valued, even thought the data are clear that boys raised without fathers do not generally work at school, and many instead join gangs for companionship, and to get money from selling rugs. They lead a Godless life of crime, and that’s OK with the Democrats.
The Progressive wing has seized on a flu-like disease to demand that each person surrender their body to the dictates of the state under the pretense that taking mRNA genetic shots, and now endless boosters, is patriotic, even though vaccinations to not stop carriers spreading the Covid. Although the shots play no role in suppressing the spread of the Covid and its ongoing mutations, the government now demands obedience in taking shots, and carrying proof of having been so vaccinated to participate in society.
The new religion replacing any form of Christianity is Green in favor of an illusionary Mother Earth, with the threat of global warming, shifted to Climate Change when the public became aware that warming over the last century was slight. We are now to live a Godless life with the government dictating what is right as the party in power finds useful from day to day.
So, we may live the life trying to be aloof and sheltered from society’s immoral pursuits, or instead try to live an actively moral life.
Oh my, dear Jack, I hope you feel better now, having gotten all of this off your chest!! We try to stay clear of politics here, but I would only point out that all of what you mention above does give us a great deal to push against spiritually, and perhaps that might be something that is at least somewhat worthwhile…?? Another factor worth mentioning if you are of the party out of power is the notion that the party in power seems to be in the process of self-immolation as the very acts that are so greatly irritating you seem to be having much the same effects on most of the rest of the country. I lived through the Carter Administration, of which a lot of today’s events are reminiscent, and I must say that compared to today that felt like a kind of boom time….
Dear Roberta. Just thought you, and whoever else who reads this forum, might be interested to know that two wonderful interviews with former guests on your podcast, Father Nathan Castle and Betty Kovacs just came out on the BuddhaAtTheGasPump Youtube channel. An interesting bit of news is that Father Nathan is thinking of starting a podcast of his own (and is looking for advice from fellow podcasters like yourself 😉)
Dear Jack. As a progressive/liberal myself, ( who also loves God, Jesus, ethics, and spirituality) I respect your perspective on things and do not make any moral judgements on you, and wish you would afford me the same courtesy and not paint folks like myself with such a broad brush. Mikey Morgan addressed this very issue in Roberta’s latest podcast. We all have different experiences and different perspectives. Nobody has the whole picture. This sort of divisiveness is a big part of what is tearing this country apart. Different perspectives being heard and respected should be seen as what makes this country great, compared to the forced conformity we see in authoritarian or theocratic countries around the world, so I say, “Vive la difference!” I will echo Jeff above and say I’d rather keep the political and Covid warfare out of this forum.
My dear friends, these comments are all getting mixed up together. No, politics doesn’t belong here at all! One virtue of what is currently happening in the United States at the moment, however, is the fact that the frog is getting boiled fast enough that it is choosing to jump out of the water. At least, I think that is what is in the process of happening. We’ll see!
Oh that’s great news. I don’t know much about Betty Kovacs but I really love Father Nathan and love to listen to his encounters with what we call spirit guides.
Oh, how wonderful! Thank you for letting everyone here know about this, my dear beautiful Scott!
Dear Scott, I appreciate the comity of your reply, although I obviously do not agree that we ought not be applying Christ’s guidance to how we conduct ourselves and our politics. I do wish for you an enjoyable Christmas.