Last week, I had a chat with a Christian zionist podcast host named Peter Demos regarding my analysis of history, my affiliations with Lyndon LaRouche, my concept of evil, and what has been done to disrupt oligarchical attempts to enslave the world throughout the centuries.
I appreciate your openness about your stance. So many people when asked about their beliefs, are elusive and don’t answer. You shared James Delingpole’s post and video about David Ike, which I read and watched. In the video Ike is very elusive and almost robotic in his responses, repeating the same refrains over and over as if they were different programmed tracks on a CD. He reminded me a lot of Trump and his showmanship, in an eerie kind of way.
I am Christian, or at least I try to be. I appreciate you not wanting to repeat the magic words that so many Christians want to hear for affirmation purposes. For so long evangelical churches have taught what I call “fire insurance Christianity” and give no other discernment to their congregation than that repeating “Jesus Christ is my Lord and savior” means you are a “Christian.” And in order for people to “know” they have spread done their duty to spread the gospel, is to get others to repeat these magic words. Having now read the entire Bible several times this is woefully lacking in depth and it grieves me to my soul.
I appreciate your long articles about paganism as my husband and I accidentally started studying the subject in depth several years ago and there’s very few people talking about such subjects. I like your thoughtful and thorough approach. Because you are writing about religion, it begs the question “where do you stand on Christianity?” So thank you for answering it honestly. I’ve learned from my wonderful husband to always be discerning, even (especially?) when people claim Christianity as a title. So while I have been curious about where you stood, I wouldn’t have suddenly felt “safer” consuming your content if you had boldly declared yourself a Christian. I think people want a quick take so they can determine if they’re “wasting their time” on someone, but the Bible doesn’t even promote that either. If you dignify a person by listening to them long enough, what they say and often what they don’t say should be enough to allow for discernment. But like I said above, most Christian’s don’t build up their discernment and other biblical qualities and they end up using tricks because they lack the ability to see and are impatient for a result that affirms their shallow position. (In person, it’s not “a waste of time” to build friendships with people who believe differently, in fact, according to Jesus, people are each the most valuable thing aside from God.)
Once people like Ike reveal their delusion though, I have trouble consuming their content. I hadn’t followed him in particular, but after watching that video I won’t ever be able to. Others that I suspect are in the new age and truther movement are Dr. Zach Bush, Dr. Cowan, David E. Martin (he claims to be an actual prophet), Derek Broze (and Alison McDowell though they seem to be enemies). I see them as hopelessly lost right now and I cannot follow their content, but they are not “bad” people per se.
So thank you again for your in depth articles and your willingness to be honest.
In this talk he goes through the “alchemy” of Jesus or something like that with his chart of hexagons, I didn’t rewatch the whole things since I knew the prophet talk was at the end of his 2 part slide show speech. The second half is the alchemy stuff. At the very end of the video, like 5 or maybe 10 minutes before the end he compares himself to Noah and the prophet Joseph and says he was “sent ahead” to give this message about Covid. https://www.bitchute.com/video/EfA7s8uRmeEd/
If you to listen to his podcast you’ll hear him talk about his wife and her “Kimness.” You can visit his website and see it is full of all kinds of new age stuff, especially his (second) wife Kim. They have or had a “butterfly of the week.”
He doesn’t seem like a bad man, but there’s something I just don’t trust about him. Something I can’t really place. He quotes a lot of the Bible, says he was raised by Mennonites, but there is just something I can’t really put my finger on. They have a lot of questionable symbols on their webpages. Such as on his about page he is bald and eclipsing a red sunlike or mars like light. His wife has mushroom people on her site, mushrooms are present at birth or rebirth…. Just things that give me pause.
I’m not condemning anyone here, I’m just looking to be discerning. I don’t pretend to know God’s calling on anyone else’s life nor where their journey will lead, but there are places I personally can’t go.
He has a tattoo of the eye of Horus with a lightning bolt on his left shoulder.
Matt always teaches us not to rely on pattern recognition thinking, but I have a hard time with this one, especially after seeing the logo of his firm M CAM.
I was taught that there is an external source of powerful spiritual opposition to GOD. This powerful spiritual opposite of GOD seeks to destroy the agency of man. By “agency” I mean the ability and privilege GOD gives man to choose and to act for ourselves and which is essential for salvation in GOD’s kingdom.
We have been taught/ programmed to believe a lot of things since infancy. That does not make those teachings correct or incorrect, for that matter. As children we are given an education in lots of areas. As adults we have to challenge all of it when we see incongruencies in life. We actually appear to be programmed by evolution or God or both since in our teen years we become busy challenging everything and working to separate ourselves from our parental teachings. We test everything as teens but unfortunately our oligarchs as he calls them through our media takes those years and captures those vulnerable minds, leading them into all sorts of deeper, harmful programming. We don’t need a devil as we humans are our own worst evil. While we can start with a set of teachings a free mind has the responsibility to research those and challenge those teachings in order to ensure we remain free. That is paramount and sits right next to becoming as god-like; loving; and harmonious with our world and each other as we can in a free and right-minded manner. The walking with God or Spirit oe even the planet which is quite aware and intelligent and connected to God as anyone. But a lot of undoing has to occur these days in order to even learn to feel that loving presence.
I would agree that most religions at the organizational levels (the authorities) do not want you to achieve connection with God without being guided by them in interpretation or experiences or even whether you should even be allowed to achieve such connection based on some hierarchical growth. I think Jesus was a bit of a savant and broke the hierarchical steps to the inner Jewish mysteries and he pissed off a lot of people in the process. To me it seems he wanted to bring those mysteries to the masses and get folks to understand anyone can do “miracles” and we can all talk to God and hear responses on our own as well as introducing the very odd notions of unconditional love and forgiveness. The latter two notions which NO religion - Christian or otherwise - seems to have grasped to this day. Which leads me to believe that religions in general don’t want us to grasp and exercise those concepts.
I remember as an 8 yo listening to the priest in Catechism class one week extol Gods unconditional love of us. Made me feel warm and fuzzy. The very next week that same priest taught us about Hell and eternal damnation. I’m not stupid and I wasn’t then, either. You cannot have both. Either we have a Good, loving God or we don’t. I challenged the priest. Got beat for efforts both in class and at home (where I was abused and the Church did very little to stop that). Needless to say, the programming didn’t stick. A good thing and I now feel I have, after much study and reading and meditative practices I feel that the loving God we pray to does exist but that humans seem intent on blocking that out due to some inherent wrongness in our programming. I am in the stage of questioning that loving God about it’s perfection and its own intentions but we don’t need a devil. We need to clear that tendency to evil from ourselves and move on.
I didn’t learn about the exact term called “agency” until my young adulthood, specifically age 23. I suppose that there could be a rigorous and robust and systematic and comprehensive debate as to (1) the existence of GOD (2) the existence of opposition to GOD (3) the existence of “agency” (4) the existence of an invisible and supernatural realm. These types of debates never seem to resolve anything. Especially when it comes to the existence of an invisible realm — e.g. “Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; for the hearts of this people have grown dull” — people will believe what they STRONGLY DESIRE to believe and people will disbelieve what they STRONGLY DESIRE to disbelieve. If you desire to look into a philosophical approach to STRONG DESIRE, then see Plato’s analogy of the chariot and the winged black horse whose gaze is toward the earth, juxtaposed with the winged white horse (whose gaze is toward the heavens) and the charioteer (who is guided by reason and who holds the reins of both horses).
“We don’t need a devil as we humans are our own worst evil.” I think it’s a tie between the devil and the humans who are the most evil & devilish, i.e. the psychopaths. I’m unsure if you are aware of the term “pathocracy”. If not, see https://www.systemsthinker.com/interests/systemsthinking/humansystems/pathocracy.shtml You might like the author. He’s a nonbeliever in organized religion and in the supernatural.
I believe both of you are 'almost' hitting the bullseye: "“We don’t need a devil as we humans are our own worst evil.” I think it’s a tie between the devil and the humans who are the most evil & devilish...."
If you accept there is a spirituality in the world by referring to "good" vs "evil" you have recognized "the battle" is really about God vs Satan/Devil. I've read the last chapter - - God wins! (That is - in the end....and there will be an ending)
A desire to know truth whatever that happens to be is my current path. Knowing, also that that may be a carrot on a stick in life. Which itself tends to argue for a flawed creator at best. The entire universe is flawed so that whole concept of “made in God’s image” given the reflection we supposedly are, is fairly daunting. I’ve studied programing and cults and also helped folks who wanted to try to get out of a cult do that. Usually not successfully. Most people switch from one cult to another or to the therapist. If one is lucky the new cult is maybe more benign. And that is if the psyche getting help doesn’t suicide on the way which they often do or try. We ought to be reading the folks who designed our programing and then go stand in front of a mirror and work on un-tweezing our own threads. I’ve done that numerous times and it’s very, very messy.
I read philosophical things like this substack and your recommended book above for fun sometimes but the tendency to twist words around and play with them along with concepts seems to muck things up as much as anything else. To demonstrate one’s facility with language and inject one’s interpretation of it all. It’s good to read. Good to debate a bit.
With regard to human evil, we all have that in us. It seems the dualistic tendencies to do wrong things and to do good things both exist in us. We can justify keeping silent about one’s next door neighbor obviously abusing his child until the cows come home. I’ve heard my share of those justifications in my clinic for decades. But remaining silent and allowing that child to continue being hurt is evil. Conversely, turning the child over to a government based organization that is deeply involved in child trafficking is evil, too. In fact, no matter which way one turns, there are more wrong choices than right ones. And if you stretch out all the philosophical nonsense, you can also run smack dab into the freedom thing where the parent has free choice and can choose to abuse his or her child and neither God nor humans nor anyone else is going to interfere. Unless the karma/balance thing can be seen as interference somewhere down the line. But does that mean God is evil, too, for allowing the abuse and torture? A million dollar question I’ve seen batted around by all sorts of “knowledgable” folks and have yet to see an answer to. In fact, you can circle yourself around, eventually, to wanting a definition of evil vs good. As with the two-headed god, you wind up seeing they sort of flow into and out of each other. Happens in deep meditation, too.
With regard to a devil you have to see the Creator as having created it all. Or starting a spark to see what will happen. So far, either explanation, if you know anything about psychology, leads you into a psyche that isn’t right. And if we are reflections of that Creator, that’s pretty obvious. Psychopaths are just extreme presentations of things that exist in all of us. I would say saints and angels are, too. You get to choose but you also get to choose to learn which one you are at any given moment and what you do about that revelation.
I like these aphorisms when trying to understand the origin and nature of human evil and divine evil, respectively. It seems like absolutely ridiculousness to divorce evil from desire.
Aphorism #1 — “But whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth ‘good’; and the object of his hate and aversion, ‘evil’.”
Aphorism #2 — “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”
while being aware of our surroundings and act responsibly, seeking harmony rather than individual, temporal satisfaction (hence, perhaps, the Ten Commandments).
Well, there’s harmony with GOD and harmony with the world. I’ve taken this teaching to heart. “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” Too radical and extreme?
they're interrelated: assuming God created the world, He might really like us to be a friend of the world. however, first comes harmony with(in) oneself.
To me, “the world” = the social system, that is the governmental-political-financial complex, while “the world” isn’t the logical equivalent of the earth and of Nature.
As for self-harmony, this gets into the nature of the (so-called) “self” or the dissimilar and disparate elements of one’s personality.
You just posited what looks to me like a universal claim: “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” (Your quotes, by the way, probably from the Bible. Be specific: correct my guess if it’s wrong. People appreciate transparency.)
Then, you drastically limited that floating claim to an explicitly personal claim: “To me, “the world” = the social system, that is the governmental-political-financial complex.” I’m grateful for the clarification of what you meant, which was not evident initially.
A limited, personal claim might be shared by one other human being, or a million. It may or may not come from the Bible. But it is not universal, in any case.
Matt has a really well-though-out position, backed by evidence of his own claims and a constructed argument I can engage with, and that is why I respect him.
Moses was trained in Egypt? Jesus also trained there so both graduates of that wondrous locus of learning contributes much to humanity. Another train of thought today is The Grand Biocentric Design by Robert Lanza. You might enjoy taking a look at this idea. I think Lanza is a Christian in childhood training. I wish LaRouche had red Lanza’s books although LaRouche future tended to be more specifically political. I hope you and Connie are able to give some feedback on this biocentrism and it will withstand being misunderstood better than Hamiltonian system of directed credit.
A mate of mine listened to a recording of a chat that you had with a guy who was arguing against divine purpose from a mechanistic point of view. My internet was too slow last night to give it a listen myself, but he apparently said something like “define what you mean by ‘purpose’”. Although I am not religious, I do get annoyed by smug atheists. I’m not an atheist either. My response to such people is to say “define what you mean by ‘machine’ without invoking the idea of ‘purpose’.” Descartes tried. He failed.
I cannot remember which one of RTF talk it was but had a huge aha recently when someone said God does not ‘let’ bad stuff happen, it’s a Moral universe, that word Moral, we have free will but end up distorted and stunted by those who are not moral, merely long range players.
Ok, firstly taking philosophy of religion in college, gave me a human perspective into faith. I have been a born again since I was 8. I fell on and off, seeking truth in other religions, but being a faith based person, I do believe in your comment to a degree. The devil, cannot take away our free will, we have to give it. Consent to it. Why are you not presenting the issues we all share about the WEF, this agenda goes totally against God. A collection of people, with whatever their religious affiliation are, should be talked about and stood up to as the very free will God has given us to believe in ANY AND ALL RELIGIONS is being destroyed. Food for thought…religion does matter, but the relationship between God and man is a wonderful PERSONAL journey. Why are we destroying our own selves?
Well said! It's important to know our history and that there were great minds and souls who loved and served humankind and made a difference as much as they could at their time and place; their legacies live on but I agree that the battleground is now ours and today's issues must be met head-on and challenged by us alone; world-wide the masses have relinquished freedom and consent and even belief in free will; they are now characterized by a "collective stupidity" (Bonhoeffer) and acceptance of their victimhood; there are rare exceptions as there have always been in history but we all suffer from a lack of leadership and the loss of those leaders who would still believe in the sovereignty of both the individual and the state; I believe that same sovereignty has its roots in the knowledge that we have all been endowed with the gift of life by a Creator and must act responsibly to honor that gift. "I am now giving you the choice between life and death, between God's blessing and God's curse, and I call heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Choose life." Our choices have always been there, including guidance to make the right choice which leads to life but so many have chosen to follow the purveyors of death.
I'll never forget when I was enrolled in the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston, my instructor told us all to make lots of ugly art. At the time I thought she just wanted us to not judge ourselves or each other and just work at it but after I saw her raise up only the students who's art was dark and depressing it really turned me off. We see them pushing this ugly art all over and it gets all the headlines. Thanks for sharing your journey, enlightenment, struggles and indeed the trauma we've all had to push through to get to real they try to reconstruct with ugly, dark, death, disconnection instead.
What I believe all true religions have in common is some expression of the Golden Rule. Jesus asked us to love God and to love our neighbor. When asked who is our neighbor he related the parable of the Good Samaritan. He was very sparing with prophecies, and with these there is the problem of authenticity compounded with the question of translation. Some say the most authentic account of Jesus's teachings is found in the Gospel of John. I recommend "The Wisdom of St. John" by Bô Yin Râ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, 1876-1943). Regarding the Book of Revelation, there are some striking passages, but it's way over my head, and I've never met anyone who seems to know what it means. So I don't worry about it. Regarding "End Times" prophecies and all that, I have yet to hear anything convincing or rational. Many "prophecies" are self-fulfilling or wishful thinking.
Yes, John loved God, so much. Believe it or not, and it does say in the scripture, Jesus’ favorite was Judas. Judas was intelligent, well versed. But Jesus knew who he truly was. At the last supper not only did He claim to Peter, his denial, he also said one will betray Him. Betrayal and denial are 2 different ways of thinking. Knowing the apostles are man and Jesus is the son of God. Paul denied Jesus before converting and traveled with Peter and Luke, after Jesus ascended into Heaven. The gospel was spread by mainly those two, and both met great adversity. In fact, they were crucified upside down for their beliefs. Jesus and His apostles are amazing with all they endured, we should be so thankful and revere all of their accomplishments. Faith in the face of adversity! John, wrote Revelations while in prison on the island of Patmos. That is an amazing feat, in itself!
You are highly aware, sir. The so-called Christian Zionists are an undercover operation of useful idiots who are funded, bribed, and even blackmailed by those elitists who don't have our interests at heart, not those of any other freedom-loving peoples.
Institutionalised religion is problematic IMO as they use the same tactics as the oligarchists. In fact they have done a great disservice to Almighty.
With all the beauty that is apparent in the skies day and night seasons to seasons and on the earth and in the universe, it must have been created by a massively powerful entity whom we refer to as the Almighty or G-D. Mankind is incapable of this creation. We are all specs of dust in the greater scheme.
I agree with most of your 'general' comments as being very positive. However, it's interesting that you reference Jesus, Constantine, and Christianity.....but no reference to the Jewish/Christian Scriptures(?)
I appreciate your openness about your stance. So many people when asked about their beliefs, are elusive and don’t answer. You shared James Delingpole’s post and video about David Ike, which I read and watched. In the video Ike is very elusive and almost robotic in his responses, repeating the same refrains over and over as if they were different programmed tracks on a CD. He reminded me a lot of Trump and his showmanship, in an eerie kind of way.
I am Christian, or at least I try to be. I appreciate you not wanting to repeat the magic words that so many Christians want to hear for affirmation purposes. For so long evangelical churches have taught what I call “fire insurance Christianity” and give no other discernment to their congregation than that repeating “Jesus Christ is my Lord and savior” means you are a “Christian.” And in order for people to “know” they have spread done their duty to spread the gospel, is to get others to repeat these magic words. Having now read the entire Bible several times this is woefully lacking in depth and it grieves me to my soul.
I appreciate your long articles about paganism as my husband and I accidentally started studying the subject in depth several years ago and there’s very few people talking about such subjects. I like your thoughtful and thorough approach. Because you are writing about religion, it begs the question “where do you stand on Christianity?” So thank you for answering it honestly. I’ve learned from my wonderful husband to always be discerning, even (especially?) when people claim Christianity as a title. So while I have been curious about where you stood, I wouldn’t have suddenly felt “safer” consuming your content if you had boldly declared yourself a Christian. I think people want a quick take so they can determine if they’re “wasting their time” on someone, but the Bible doesn’t even promote that either. If you dignify a person by listening to them long enough, what they say and often what they don’t say should be enough to allow for discernment. But like I said above, most Christian’s don’t build up their discernment and other biblical qualities and they end up using tricks because they lack the ability to see and are impatient for a result that affirms their shallow position. (In person, it’s not “a waste of time” to build friendships with people who believe differently, in fact, according to Jesus, people are each the most valuable thing aside from God.)
Once people like Ike reveal their delusion though, I have trouble consuming their content. I hadn’t followed him in particular, but after watching that video I won’t ever be able to. Others that I suspect are in the new age and truther movement are Dr. Zach Bush, Dr. Cowan, David E. Martin (he claims to be an actual prophet), Derek Broze (and Alison McDowell though they seem to be enemies). I see them as hopelessly lost right now and I cannot follow their content, but they are not “bad” people per se.
So thank you again for your in depth articles and your willingness to be honest.
Really appreciated your feedback. I didn't know Dr. Martin claims to be a prophet... can you send me a link to that?
In this talk he goes through the “alchemy” of Jesus or something like that with his chart of hexagons, I didn’t rewatch the whole things since I knew the prophet talk was at the end of his 2 part slide show speech. The second half is the alchemy stuff. At the very end of the video, like 5 or maybe 10 minutes before the end he compares himself to Noah and the prophet Joseph and says he was “sent ahead” to give this message about Covid. https://www.bitchute.com/video/EfA7s8uRmeEd/
If you to listen to his podcast you’ll hear him talk about his wife and her “Kimness.” You can visit his website and see it is full of all kinds of new age stuff, especially his (second) wife Kim. They have or had a “butterfly of the week.”
I found this blog of his also: http://www.invertedalchemy.com/2011/12/dark-matter-generation-faster-than.html
He doesn’t seem like a bad man, but there’s something I just don’t trust about him. Something I can’t really place. He quotes a lot of the Bible, says he was raised by Mennonites, but there is just something I can’t really put my finger on. They have a lot of questionable symbols on their webpages. Such as on his about page he is bald and eclipsing a red sunlike or mars like light. His wife has mushroom people on her site, mushrooms are present at birth or rebirth…. Just things that give me pause.
His wife’s website: https://www.theartofbeingkim.com
I’m not condemning anyone here, I’m just looking to be discerning. I don’t pretend to know God’s calling on anyone else’s life nor where their journey will lead, but there are places I personally can’t go.
He has a tattoo of the eye of Horus with a lightning bolt on his left shoulder.
Matt always teaches us not to rely on pattern recognition thinking, but I have a hard time with this one, especially after seeing the logo of his firm M CAM.
yeah don't base final judgements on them.... But don't ignore em either lol
That's very useful
Yep lots of alarm bells there. Thanks
You make a lot of sense. Thank you!
Great comments KJ! .....and whether it matters or not - I agree with your dissertation.
I was taught that there is an external source of powerful spiritual opposition to GOD. This powerful spiritual opposite of GOD seeks to destroy the agency of man. By “agency” I mean the ability and privilege GOD gives man to choose and to act for ourselves and which is essential for salvation in GOD’s kingdom.
We have been taught/ programmed to believe a lot of things since infancy. That does not make those teachings correct or incorrect, for that matter. As children we are given an education in lots of areas. As adults we have to challenge all of it when we see incongruencies in life. We actually appear to be programmed by evolution or God or both since in our teen years we become busy challenging everything and working to separate ourselves from our parental teachings. We test everything as teens but unfortunately our oligarchs as he calls them through our media takes those years and captures those vulnerable minds, leading them into all sorts of deeper, harmful programming. We don’t need a devil as we humans are our own worst evil. While we can start with a set of teachings a free mind has the responsibility to research those and challenge those teachings in order to ensure we remain free. That is paramount and sits right next to becoming as god-like; loving; and harmonious with our world and each other as we can in a free and right-minded manner. The walking with God or Spirit oe even the planet which is quite aware and intelligent and connected to God as anyone. But a lot of undoing has to occur these days in order to even learn to feel that loving presence.
I would agree that most religions at the organizational levels (the authorities) do not want you to achieve connection with God without being guided by them in interpretation or experiences or even whether you should even be allowed to achieve such connection based on some hierarchical growth. I think Jesus was a bit of a savant and broke the hierarchical steps to the inner Jewish mysteries and he pissed off a lot of people in the process. To me it seems he wanted to bring those mysteries to the masses and get folks to understand anyone can do “miracles” and we can all talk to God and hear responses on our own as well as introducing the very odd notions of unconditional love and forgiveness. The latter two notions which NO religion - Christian or otherwise - seems to have grasped to this day. Which leads me to believe that religions in general don’t want us to grasp and exercise those concepts.
I remember as an 8 yo listening to the priest in Catechism class one week extol Gods unconditional love of us. Made me feel warm and fuzzy. The very next week that same priest taught us about Hell and eternal damnation. I’m not stupid and I wasn’t then, either. You cannot have both. Either we have a Good, loving God or we don’t. I challenged the priest. Got beat for efforts both in class and at home (where I was abused and the Church did very little to stop that). Needless to say, the programming didn’t stick. A good thing and I now feel I have, after much study and reading and meditative practices I feel that the loving God we pray to does exist but that humans seem intent on blocking that out due to some inherent wrongness in our programming. I am in the stage of questioning that loving God about it’s perfection and its own intentions but we don’t need a devil. We need to clear that tendency to evil from ourselves and move on.
I didn’t learn about the exact term called “agency” until my young adulthood, specifically age 23. I suppose that there could be a rigorous and robust and systematic and comprehensive debate as to (1) the existence of GOD (2) the existence of opposition to GOD (3) the existence of “agency” (4) the existence of an invisible and supernatural realm. These types of debates never seem to resolve anything. Especially when it comes to the existence of an invisible realm — e.g. “Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; for the hearts of this people have grown dull” — people will believe what they STRONGLY DESIRE to believe and people will disbelieve what they STRONGLY DESIRE to disbelieve. If you desire to look into a philosophical approach to STRONG DESIRE, then see Plato’s analogy of the chariot and the winged black horse whose gaze is toward the earth, juxtaposed with the winged white horse (whose gaze is toward the heavens) and the charioteer (who is guided by reason and who holds the reins of both horses).
“We don’t need a devil as we humans are our own worst evil.” I think it’s a tie between the devil and the humans who are the most evil & devilish, i.e. the psychopaths. I’m unsure if you are aware of the term “pathocracy”. If not, see https://www.systemsthinker.com/interests/systemsthinking/humansystems/pathocracy.shtml You might like the author. He’s a nonbeliever in organized religion and in the supernatural.
I believe both of you are 'almost' hitting the bullseye: "“We don’t need a devil as we humans are our own worst evil.” I think it’s a tie between the devil and the humans who are the most evil & devilish...."
If you accept there is a spirituality in the world by referring to "good" vs "evil" you have recognized "the battle" is really about God vs Satan/Devil. I've read the last chapter - - God wins! (That is - in the end....and there will be an ending)
A desire to know truth whatever that happens to be is my current path. Knowing, also that that may be a carrot on a stick in life. Which itself tends to argue for a flawed creator at best. The entire universe is flawed so that whole concept of “made in God’s image” given the reflection we supposedly are, is fairly daunting. I’ve studied programing and cults and also helped folks who wanted to try to get out of a cult do that. Usually not successfully. Most people switch from one cult to another or to the therapist. If one is lucky the new cult is maybe more benign. And that is if the psyche getting help doesn’t suicide on the way which they often do or try. We ought to be reading the folks who designed our programing and then go stand in front of a mirror and work on un-tweezing our own threads. I’ve done that numerous times and it’s very, very messy.
I read philosophical things like this substack and your recommended book above for fun sometimes but the tendency to twist words around and play with them along with concepts seems to muck things up as much as anything else. To demonstrate one’s facility with language and inject one’s interpretation of it all. It’s good to read. Good to debate a bit.
With regard to human evil, we all have that in us. It seems the dualistic tendencies to do wrong things and to do good things both exist in us. We can justify keeping silent about one’s next door neighbor obviously abusing his child until the cows come home. I’ve heard my share of those justifications in my clinic for decades. But remaining silent and allowing that child to continue being hurt is evil. Conversely, turning the child over to a government based organization that is deeply involved in child trafficking is evil, too. In fact, no matter which way one turns, there are more wrong choices than right ones. And if you stretch out all the philosophical nonsense, you can also run smack dab into the freedom thing where the parent has free choice and can choose to abuse his or her child and neither God nor humans nor anyone else is going to interfere. Unless the karma/balance thing can be seen as interference somewhere down the line. But does that mean God is evil, too, for allowing the abuse and torture? A million dollar question I’ve seen batted around by all sorts of “knowledgable” folks and have yet to see an answer to. In fact, you can circle yourself around, eventually, to wanting a definition of evil vs good. As with the two-headed god, you wind up seeing they sort of flow into and out of each other. Happens in deep meditation, too.
With regard to a devil you have to see the Creator as having created it all. Or starting a spark to see what will happen. So far, either explanation, if you know anything about psychology, leads you into a psyche that isn’t right. And if we are reflections of that Creator, that’s pretty obvious. Psychopaths are just extreme presentations of things that exist in all of us. I would say saints and angels are, too. You get to choose but you also get to choose to learn which one you are at any given moment and what you do about that revelation.
I like these aphorisms when trying to understand the origin and nature of human evil and divine evil, respectively. It seems like absolutely ridiculousness to divorce evil from desire.
Aphorism #1 — “But whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth ‘good’; and the object of his hate and aversion, ‘evil’.”
Aphorism #2 — “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”
Amazing research!!
while being aware of our surroundings and act responsibly, seeking harmony rather than individual, temporal satisfaction (hence, perhaps, the Ten Commandments).
Well, there’s harmony with GOD and harmony with the world. I’ve taken this teaching to heart. “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” Too radical and extreme?
they're interrelated: assuming God created the world, He might really like us to be a friend of the world. however, first comes harmony with(in) oneself.
To me, “the world” = the social system, that is the governmental-political-financial complex, while “the world” isn’t the logical equivalent of the earth and of Nature.
As for self-harmony, this gets into the nature of the (so-called) “self” or the dissimilar and disparate elements of one’s personality.
You just posited what looks to me like a universal claim: “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” (Your quotes, by the way, probably from the Bible. Be specific: correct my guess if it’s wrong. People appreciate transparency.)
Then, you drastically limited that floating claim to an explicitly personal claim: “To me, “the world” = the social system, that is the governmental-political-financial complex.” I’m grateful for the clarification of what you meant, which was not evident initially.
A limited, personal claim might be shared by one other human being, or a million. It may or may not come from the Bible. But it is not universal, in any case.
Matt has a really well-though-out position, backed by evidence of his own claims and a constructed argument I can engage with, and that is why I respect him.
Moses was trained in Egypt? Jesus also trained there so both graduates of that wondrous locus of learning contributes much to humanity. Another train of thought today is The Grand Biocentric Design by Robert Lanza. You might enjoy taking a look at this idea. I think Lanza is a Christian in childhood training. I wish LaRouche had red Lanza’s books although LaRouche future tended to be more specifically political. I hope you and Connie are able to give some feedback on this biocentrism and it will withstand being misunderstood better than Hamiltonian system of directed credit.
A mate of mine listened to a recording of a chat that you had with a guy who was arguing against divine purpose from a mechanistic point of view. My internet was too slow last night to give it a listen myself, but he apparently said something like “define what you mean by ‘purpose’”. Although I am not religious, I do get annoyed by smug atheists. I’m not an atheist either. My response to such people is to say “define what you mean by ‘machine’ without invoking the idea of ‘purpose’.” Descartes tried. He failed.
I cannot remember which one of RTF talk it was but had a huge aha recently when someone said God does not ‘let’ bad stuff happen, it’s a Moral universe, that word Moral, we have free will but end up distorted and stunted by those who are not moral, merely long range players.
I'll pray for you.
eternal paradox: one can only exercise one's free will within certain (ethical) boundaries.
Thank you Matt, well said. I agree with all you state here.
I have been near-dead twice and the lesson I got both times were: Nothing is pre-determined and you have free will.
I have described these near-dead experiences here:
https://jytte460.substack.com/p/near-death
Ok, firstly taking philosophy of religion in college, gave me a human perspective into faith. I have been a born again since I was 8. I fell on and off, seeking truth in other religions, but being a faith based person, I do believe in your comment to a degree. The devil, cannot take away our free will, we have to give it. Consent to it. Why are you not presenting the issues we all share about the WEF, this agenda goes totally against God. A collection of people, with whatever their religious affiliation are, should be talked about and stood up to as the very free will God has given us to believe in ANY AND ALL RELIGIONS is being destroyed. Food for thought…religion does matter, but the relationship between God and man is a wonderful PERSONAL journey. Why are we destroying our own selves?
Well said! It's important to know our history and that there were great minds and souls who loved and served humankind and made a difference as much as they could at their time and place; their legacies live on but I agree that the battleground is now ours and today's issues must be met head-on and challenged by us alone; world-wide the masses have relinquished freedom and consent and even belief in free will; they are now characterized by a "collective stupidity" (Bonhoeffer) and acceptance of their victimhood; there are rare exceptions as there have always been in history but we all suffer from a lack of leadership and the loss of those leaders who would still believe in the sovereignty of both the individual and the state; I believe that same sovereignty has its roots in the knowledge that we have all been endowed with the gift of life by a Creator and must act responsibly to honor that gift. "I am now giving you the choice between life and death, between God's blessing and God's curse, and I call heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Choose life." Our choices have always been there, including guidance to make the right choice which leads to life but so many have chosen to follow the purveyors of death.
Wow! What an amazing comment. Thank you so much! Well said on your post, as well. Agreed, indeed! 🙂
Thank you, very much appreciated!
Is the evil from within or without? Are those two things mutually exclusive?
In any case, one has the free will to fight either or both.
Well said!
I'll never forget when I was enrolled in the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston, my instructor told us all to make lots of ugly art. At the time I thought she just wanted us to not judge ourselves or each other and just work at it but after I saw her raise up only the students who's art was dark and depressing it really turned me off. We see them pushing this ugly art all over and it gets all the headlines. Thanks for sharing your journey, enlightenment, struggles and indeed the trauma we've all had to push through to get to real they try to reconstruct with ugly, dark, death, disconnection instead.
What I believe all true religions have in common is some expression of the Golden Rule. Jesus asked us to love God and to love our neighbor. When asked who is our neighbor he related the parable of the Good Samaritan. He was very sparing with prophecies, and with these there is the problem of authenticity compounded with the question of translation. Some say the most authentic account of Jesus's teachings is found in the Gospel of John. I recommend "The Wisdom of St. John" by Bô Yin Râ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, 1876-1943). Regarding the Book of Revelation, there are some striking passages, but it's way over my head, and I've never met anyone who seems to know what it means. So I don't worry about it. Regarding "End Times" prophecies and all that, I have yet to hear anything convincing or rational. Many "prophecies" are self-fulfilling or wishful thinking.
Yes, John loved God, so much. Believe it or not, and it does say in the scripture, Jesus’ favorite was Judas. Judas was intelligent, well versed. But Jesus knew who he truly was. At the last supper not only did He claim to Peter, his denial, he also said one will betray Him. Betrayal and denial are 2 different ways of thinking. Knowing the apostles are man and Jesus is the son of God. Paul denied Jesus before converting and traveled with Peter and Luke, after Jesus ascended into Heaven. The gospel was spread by mainly those two, and both met great adversity. In fact, they were crucified upside down for their beliefs. Jesus and His apostles are amazing with all they endured, we should be so thankful and revere all of their accomplishments. Faith in the face of adversity! John, wrote Revelations while in prison on the island of Patmos. That is an amazing feat, in itself!
You are highly aware, sir. The so-called Christian Zionists are an undercover operation of useful idiots who are funded, bribed, and even blackmailed by those elitists who don't have our interests at heart, not those of any other freedom-loving peoples.
Agreed, indeed. Well said!
What Matt said. - S. Dostoevsky
Thankyou Matt Ehret for this excellent piece.
Institutionalised religion is problematic IMO as they use the same tactics as the oligarchists. In fact they have done a great disservice to Almighty.
With all the beauty that is apparent in the skies day and night seasons to seasons and on the earth and in the universe, it must have been created by a massively powerful entity whom we refer to as the Almighty or G-D. Mankind is incapable of this creation. We are all specs of dust in the greater scheme.
I agree with most of your 'general' comments as being very positive. However, it's interesting that you reference Jesus, Constantine, and Christianity.....but no reference to the Jewish/Christian Scriptures(?)
Been there done that.
Don't watch if you are afraid of truth.
If you do watch and believe it is untrue turn it off.