God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible (52 page)
Read God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible Online
Authors: CJ Werleman
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The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right.”
G.K. Chesterton
The second letter of Peter is addressed to all churches in common and reminds the followers of Jesus that the Messiah had promised believers salvation in heaven for obeying his word, maintaining faith and godliness.
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For if you do these things, you will never fall and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 1:10-11 NIV)
Peter warns against false prophets who will pretend to be the Messiah in the ‘final days’ and that slick wordsmiths will attempt to convince Christians to leave the church. However, Peter does not mince words when he warns against backsliding:
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It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed onto them. Of them the proverbs are true: ‘A dog returns to its vomit.’” (2 Peter 2:21-22 NIV)
Peter makes a clever statement, more a sound-bite that current day Christians can hold onto in explaining why Jesus and Paul, falsely prophesized that the second coming of Jesus would occur in the living generation of the first century. Peter writes:
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With the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day.” (2 Peter 3:8 NIV)
Problem being that Jesus was a man, a human, and therefore he lived human days and human years. Further, this statement is made only from a Christian apologist and not from Jesus himself. As Jesus said quite clearly he would return before his disciples had passed. Peter tried to sneak a touchdown on a 4
th
down long play, but more often than not the old Hail Mary gets swatted away by the defense.
Peter climbs aboard the ‘fire and brimstone express’, like his contemporaries, in painting a doomsday picture, in which the believers will be saved and the non-believers destroyed:
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But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.” (2 Peter 3:10 NIV)
So watch-out you!
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What is light must endure burning.”
Victor Frankl
The author is believed to be the same author as that of the Gospel of John. Whilst a number of modern biblical scholars remain in disagreement as to the identity of this author, there is general consensus that it was written ninety years after Jesus’ death.
John states that he writes this book to warn his readers that evil men will try to lead the believers astray.
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Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour.” (1 John 2:18 NIV)
John also asserts that the reason Jesus was sent to earth was to destroy the devil’s work. If this is true, he failed. And how is it that God permits the Devil to survive? God created everything and therefore can destroy everything. What is he waiting for? Why doesn’t he just destroy the Devil now?
John makes four plain and simple statements as to what must be believed by Christians to join Jesus in Heaven at the time of the rapture:
That Jesus is the son of God.
That Jesus is the
only
son of God.
That God is love.
That Jesus is the Savior.
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The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.”
Richard Francis Burton
Comprising a mere thirteen verses, this book is the shortest of the Bible. The most remarkable statement in this book is the following:
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Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world.” (2 John 7 NIV)
This suggests that not only were there those that refused to acknowledge Jesus as the son of God, but there were also many that refused to acknowledge that Jesus even walked the face of the planet. Arguably, a fair claim, as the first recorded words of Jesus’ life were written approximately one hundred years after he was alleged to have lived.
John does some damage to Paul’s claim that Jesus’ crucifixion effectively abolishes Old Testament law in writing that:
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The man who says, ‘I know him’, but does not do what he commands is a liar and the truth is not in him.” (2 John 4 NIV)
The 613 commandments are back in play Christians, so make sure your business suits do not contain wool and linen together, or it will be ‘smackin’ time at the Pearly Gates for you.
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I believe there is something out there watching over us. Unfortunately, it’s the government.”
Woody Allen
The second shortest book of the Bible, containing only a few more words than its predecessor, the Book of John is a letter written to a man named Gaius. It reads as a private letter, and complains about a man named Diotephes, who John claims has been spreading nasty rumors about him and thus causing division within his church.
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I will call attention to what he is doing, gossiping maliciously about us. Not satisfied with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers. He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church.” (2 John 10 NIV)
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Kill them all, for God knows His own.”
Pope Innocent III, to his troops in the Albigensian Crusade of 1209
The Book of Jude is a letter written to no one church in particular and most interestingly he refers to himself as a servant of Jesus and a brother of James, which in fact makes Jude a brother of Jesus too. We assume both James and Jude were younger brothers of Jesus, because two of the four Gospels claimed that Mary was a virgin at the time of conceiving Jesus. If this nature defying immaculate conception were to be true, then at least we can say now that Mary didn’t have any qualms about a good ole hanky-panky after giving birth to the proclaimed Messiah, as she and Joseph had a few years of getting down and dirty in their modest middle-class mud hut on the shores of Galilee.
The letter contains only a single chapter, with a mere twenty five verses, but makes the promise of doom abundantly clear for the non-believers, as stated in the fifth paragraph:
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I want to remind you that the Lord delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.” (Jude 5-7 NIV)
I really have trouble with the whole ‘eternal fire’ thing, as a punishment for those that may be ordinarily law abiding citizens but because of a lack of proof, choose to disbelieve the merits of the Christian doctrine. I mean it is one thing for God to punish the non-believers with death, but torture for eternity? Isn’t that extreme wickedness? Not to make light of a tragedy, but at least when Hitler sent the Jews to the gas chambers, their suffering was over once they died. But God on the other hand wants to inflict suffering forever and ever. Truly dastardly!
Jude promises that the time for perpetual torture will soon come for those who doubt the word of Jesus:
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See, the Lord is coming with thousands and thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone and to convict all the ungodly acts they have done and the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” (Jude 14-15 NIV)
Harsh words spoken against God? Well I am royally screwed aren’t I?
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Kill them all. God will select those who should go to heaven and those who should go to hell.”
Abbot Arnold de Citeaux, during the Fourth Crusade, 1205
I must confess that I have looked forward to writing this final chapter of the Bible more than any of the others, as Revelation could be the basis for a book on its own. But like a child must complete his dinner before eating dessert, I too have kept the best for last, denying myself the temptation to summarize the most bizarre of books ever written before I had done so with the preceding sixty five books. Revelation is a trove of profound absurdity, that even the most imaginative fiction writer would have difficulty in equalling. If the title
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
had not been already taken, then I would have been quick to grab it as my own as the sub-heading for this chapter.
The book is a letter written by the Gospel John and addressed to the seven churches in the province of Asia that included: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatria, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. John penned this letter whilst exiled on the Greek island of Patmos. As this letter unfolds before you, you can assume John was either suffering from heat-stroke or one too many pool-side piña-coladas whilst on his island retreat. John writes that this revelation from God was revealed to him in a dream. More likely a drunken stupor!
John’s inspiration, or moreover plagiarism dressed as inspiration, stems from the Old Testament prophecy of Ezekiel. And if you return to the opening chapter of Ezekiel for a moment you will see the similarities.
Admittedly, it is fairly safe to assume that John is writing in a metaphorical tone, as the unfolding story of this book emulates the story of Christ, that being rise, reign, ruin, resurrection, and restoration. Well, let’s hope it is a clever fiction, because this story will have you sleeping with the light on.
John confirms Paul’s and the Gospels’ proclamation that no one shall enter the kingdom of heaven until the end of times. NOW LET ME MAKE THIS CLEAR! (I apologize for shouting) You have been lied to by your Priest, Pastor, Clergy, there is no going to Heaven until everything in this prophecy comes to bear. In other words, THERE IS NO ONE IN HEAVEN ON THIS DAY EXCEPT FOR JESUS AND GOD! Bet they never told you this in Sunday school, did they? The priest delivering the sermon at your grandmother’s funeral never said this. This is, I believe, the biggest sin of propaganda perpetuated by the protectors of faith, the lie that Christian believers travel to heaven at the point of their death.
Wrong
! When one of God’s good Christian soldiers dies today, he will be buried in the earth and the earth is where he shall stay until all events take place as promised in this book of Revelation. Which means that the earliest believers of Christ who died 2000 years ago are still buried in the top soil. They haven’t gone anywhere. The big dirt nap, as Mafioso types like to say, is a big dirt nap. No doubt the disciples, whom Jesus promised that the end of times would occur before their generation had passed, are royally pissed off as their 2000 year sleep in the soil continues.
Revelation is going to reveal some crazy shit to you, but just remind yourself that if you want to travel to Heaven via Jesus Christ, then here comes your leap of faith...
The first three chapters of Revelation are letters individually addressed to the seven churches. Whilst the fourth begins the recount of his wondrous dream in which God spoke to him:
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After that I looked and there before me was a door standing open to heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, ‘Come up here and I will show you what must take place after this.’ At once I was in the Spirit and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.” (Revelations 4:1-2 NIV)
Where would heaven be without harps and trumpets?
I have to hand it to John though, because unlike other prophets such as Moses and Abraham, who claimed to have seen God and did not describe his features, John does provide a very descriptive narrative of what heaven looks like and according to him, it looks like this:
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A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne. Surrounding the throne was twenty-four other thrones and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God. Also before the throne was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.” Revelations 4:3-6 NIV)