Bible Questions? III

I feel like I'm in Sunday School...which is an odd feeling, cuz I never went to Sunday School.

The harvest is the collection of souls for the Kingdom of God.

The laborers are those who tell everyone they meet about the Kingdom of God so that people will know about it and want to enter it.

We should pray for more laborers because there are so many souls that are ripe for entering the Kingdom of God.

Did I miss anything?

 

I don't know.

 

What can be said about the kingdom of god that would make this happen?

 

Hmmm...it's about the joy of complete freedom from the burdens of guilt and shame, and it's "at hand" - it already exists within/among us - there is nothing we need to do to claim it except to accept the forgiveness that is already ours.

Frankly though, what really attracted ME to the kindgom of God was seeing what it has done for the people who have already claimed it - they didn't need to tell me anything, really - just demonstrate the all-knowing all-forgiving love of God and the miracles that go with that - and when I saw that I knew I HAD to get whatever it was they had.

 

Teach by example then.

 

You can't impart it unless you have it to begin with. And it's fairly easy to tell who has it and who doesn't. If you don't have it you can't fake it.

 

To me the harvest is not a collection of souls for the kingdom, but the kingdom itself. The laborers of the harvest are those who establish the conditions of the kingdom within themselves, this produces a field effect, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
The laborers of the harvest are few is similar to the statement many are called but few are chosen, more so few choose to listen.

 

Freedom is our inheritance in creation, we are forgiven as we forgive. we are not guilty of God's judgment, (good, very good), but of mans judgment of himself and his brother. It is the son of man that has the power to forgive sins.
God has no need to forgive what he created. The last judgment is mans final one, then all is restored to it's proper order according it's kind, as opposed to the mad distortion we make of this world.

 

This is timely for me - my spirit guide Deanna is testing me severely today, and establishing the kingdom within myself is the only way to deal with it.

 

That's the test...

 

Not a test, a mechanism, a "key to the kingdom"

 

Yeah well, it FEELS like a test, but I'll try to think "mechanism"...a useful substitution insofar as I can make it successfully...

 

I have a question;
if, as the dope would have us believe, Jesus did not sacrifice himself why does he Bible at Hebrews 9:24-26 say; "For Christ entered, not into a holy place made with hands, which is a copy of the reality, but into heaven itself, now to appear before the person of God for us. Neither is it in order that he should offer himself often, as indeed the high priest enters into the holy place from year to year with blood not his own. Otherwise, he would have to suffer often from the founding of the world. But now he has manifested himself once for all time at the conclusion of the systems of things to put sin away through the sacrifice of himself."

or

Clear away the old leaven, that YOU may be a new lump, according as YOU are free from ferment. For, indeed, Christ our passover has been sacrificed. (1 Corinthians 5:7)

 

The quoted context would be useful - I spent some time looking for a post in which thedope said this, and couldn't find it.

 

What are the gospels of Judas and Mary (about?) and why are they not considered part of the holy bible? Thanks

 

I'm not an expert by any means, but I'll take a stab on the basis of what I think I know. The Gospels of Judas and Mary are writings, not by Judas and Mary but supposedly about dialogues about them, that were rejected from the Christian canon because they expressed views that challenged those of the "proto-orthodox" Christian faction that ultimately prevailed in the struggle for recognition as the official Christian viewpoint.

The Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic text denounced as heresy by Saint Irenaeus, who included it in his book Against Heresies, an attack on Gnosticism. Irenaeus was a leader in the movement to bring unity in doctrine and organization to the early church, which started out as a decentralized collection of house churches with different sacred Scriptures and belief systems. Gnosticism was one of the biggest challengers to the version we think of as being Christian today--largely the views of Saint Paul and his followers (See Acts). The Gnostics in their most radical form taught that the God of the Old Testament was an evil Demi-urge who created the material world, which is a kind of prison for the soul. Jesus, they said, came to enlighten us about the true God of the Spirit and give us the insight into the true nature of spiritual reality to liberate us. He was God in human form. The Gospel of Judas presents a dialogue between Jesus and Judas. Conventional Christianity of the Gospels views Judas as a traitor who betrayed Jesus, but the Gospel of Judas presents him as operating under direct secret instruction from Jesus to call in the Romans so that Jesus could fulfill his mission by dying. Jesus says to Judas "You will exceeed all of them (the Apostles) for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me."(ie., his human shell).

The Gospel of Mary is also often called Gnostic, but is less clearly so in doctrine. It does, however, stress the importance of inner spiritual knowledge, and also, like a number of other rejects from the canon like the Gospel of Philip, brings out Mary Magdalene's importance as a member of Jesus' inner circle--something that didn't go over well later with the male bishops who were asserting their patriarchal control of the emerging church hierarchy.

 

Thank you for the thorough answer. So, some of the gospels that are currently in the bible also have debatable origins. Do these books (Judas and Mary) not hold as much weight simply because they challenged the desired views of the church. If these two books were excluded for this reason, then it could also be that others (which were included) were fabricated to express a desired message, could it not? Whoever excluded these books would have had enough power to do as they liked in order to gain followers over its "challengers" (gnosticism).

 

I don't know that "fabricated" is the best word. Four anonymous people put the gospels together at different times. Matthew and Luke both read Mark and at least one other source they had in common--the missing one bible scholars call Q. Each was used by a Christian sect, and when the church fathers decided they needed some uniformity, the four were slapped together, and others, for various reasons, were weeded out. For example, the popular Gospel of Peter, featuring a giant Jesus and a talking cross. Many of the ones weeded out were suspected of docetism--the idea that Jesus wasn't really human and his crucified body was an illusion. So you're right. In that case, the church leaders who were victorious weeded out scriptures they thought were contaminated by docetist and gnostic ideas. This is classic evolution by process of natural selection. Three main views competed: Ebionites (Christians who kept the Jewish laws), Gnostics (already described) , and proto-orthodox, adhering to the teachings of Paul. And the latter won out for a variety of reasons giving them superior survival value.

 

So christians don't mind believing in something that was constructed and edited by man but is said to be the word of god? They essentially put together the parts they wanted and discarded the rest. That seems more than a little biased to me. We're most likely not getting the full story. There could be a lot people are missing out on simply because someone didn't want it in there because it was odd or against popular belief. In which case there could be parts written about how people should live (i.e. the commandments) that have been left out. That could sacrifice the integrity of modern christian life.

 

What reasons?