Posted on 10/11/2010 4:56:01 PM PDT by joeclarke
He has explained the faith of our American founding fathers like no other in the media. He has exhaustively investigated the current and historical problems with socialism in the U.S. and abroad. He has rallied hundreds of thousands for the 912 Project and the Restoring Honor mass meetings, all the while pointing people to their Creator through, specifically, Jesus Christ.
How amazed I was to watch a possibly ill or exhausted Glenn Beck say on his Monday TV program (after taking off from the radio) that, "I am not talking about a specific religion, just 'God'... whatever you define as God." All of a sudden, Jesus, it seems, has been superseded by Mahatma Gandhi, who Glenn, early in the show, pointed to as a guy who "I should talk to." After he admitted that he was very tired, Beck stared at a giant picture of Gandhi then remarked that "the answer is from this guy."
Glenn admitted that he was just starting to study Gandhi simultaneous to studying the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christian martyr who rebelled, unlike so many Protestants and Catholics in Nazi Germany, against Adolph Hitler - and paid dearly for it. Bonhoeffer was thought to be involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler, so was summarily hung for his defiance, if not for plotting against Hitler, then for his Christian based resistance to the Third Reich.
Beck went on to explain that Bonhoeffer sought inspiration from Gandhi, which is doubtful. Gandhi derived his philosophy from the Buddhist/Hindu tenants which deny the use of violent force - for any reason. IOW Gandhi would not even violently resist Hitler, I guess.
Gandhi believed in Ahism - a term meaning to do no harm (literally: the avoidance of violence - himsa). It is an important tenet of the Indian Religions(Hinduism Buddhism and especially Jainism). Ahimsa is a rule of conduct that bars the killing or injuring of living beings. Hard to fight wars or enforce laws with such an ulta pacifistic code. Even the New Testament tells us in Romans 13 that "Rulers do not carry the sword in vain." Fortunately, in America every citizen is Constitutionally allowed to carry the sword.
"Gandhi teaches me the principles of love," Beck said during the end of the show. I really hope that he does not miss the point that, "God so loved the world . . . that he gave. . . " not a mere man like Gandhi, but He gave a Son of Man. Quite a different benchmark for showing love.
Glenn may be making the mistake of attempting to unite all religions under a generic godhead - "One God is as good as Another." IOW confusion.
Glenn Beck, as the rest of us, is on a spiritual journey and is looking for answers. He has been a Catholic as I have, and is now a Mormon. I hope he finds out that Jesus is the Answer and that Jesus is the Way, and neither Gandhi nor anyone else can be.
Maybe he does, but if he does, he's not going to be viewing American history the same way 99% of Americans do. It's likely a completely alternative reality, sort of a fantasy history, really. :)
Sorry, that isn’t a video to watch on the net, that is the video for purchase by Beck, about Beck’s leaving Christianity, and becoming a practitioner of Mormonism. Beck sells a DVD promoting his conversion.
I don’t watch Glenn’s show. I posted on this thread to defend Glenn by putting him in context by comparing him with at least some of our key founding fathers. And when I say Founding Fathers I am talking about the key framers of the Constitution not the colonialists in general who were certainly devout Christians.
If my assertion is inaccurate i.e. that Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, and Adams, were NOT Deists and were devout Christians, then how about some supporting evidence, especially in the case of Jefferson who went so far as to redact the New Testament to remove the supernatural.
As a capitalist, I can appreciate that, but no matter what he might say for money, I just have a hard time believing that he really believes the Book of Mormon.
Of course, anything is possible, I guess. :)
I have read Jefferson’s writings though it has been a while, his belief in God is obvious, as is his belief that Jesus was the greatest of men, but he did not believe Jesus was Divine.
Is the Constitution signed “In the year of our Lord”, or “In the year of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It makes a difference because if it is the former it covers anyone who believes in God, and if it is the latter, it would only cover Christians.
It is signed "In the year of Our Lord", that can only mean the Lord Jesus Christ, there can be no other meaning derived from that particular phrase.
The whole world operates from that belief and dating system, the birth of Jesus Christ.
They didn't sign it, in the year of God, or our Creator, they specifically differentiated it (just like Natural Born Citizen), for that would not have meaning, no?
Whether a few Founders might have been Deist is really inconsequential, Deist simply believe that we're not guided by and the Lord Almighty has no influences on our lives, not that the Lord Almighty doesn't exist.
For me, I believe in the Lord Christ and that he is my Savior, I've accepted him into my heart and that makes it all...okay.
It's what I believe and I'm sticking to it, may he Bless us all, and America too.
>>Glenn senses that violent shinanigans are soon to erupt, caused by the frustrated progressive regime which doesn’t see the final destruction of this Republic arriving fast enough for them to enjoy the chaos.<<
I don’t believe the progressive regime is interested in, or capable of, the destruction of the Republic. They are not interested in it because they make too much money off its continued existence, and they are not capable of it because they are neither armed, nor command the unswerving loyalty of a large number of armed people.
Were any progressive regime attempt any serious violence towards the nation, who would obey the order? The Military? Fat chance, the Police? No way in hell, and the armed population, clinging so desperately to their weapons, are largely opposed to progressive ideals.
No, the progressives have no interest in bringing down the republic, the goal is to allow it to continue to lurch and stagger forwards, that they may suckle at its slowly drying teat.
Lighten up, Francis.
1) Beck is emphasizing non-violence in a political environment that the Left is constantly trying to provoke into violence; and
2) If someone's belief in God doesn't involve them slaughtering or enslaving people who don't agree with them, then it's none of your business; and
3) By definition, there isn't much need for Beck to talk about God to Christians. What you're watching him do is called outreach. You know, talking to people who don't want to talk about God and politics together? For that kind of work, the hammer you have in your hand is not helpful.
My support for Beck has dwindled and dwindled and dwindled
when I myself heard this today I knew he just doesn’t get it
those here who love him should be careful
he could go David Brock on us...trust me
he is not a true believer in culture war
some sort of johnny come lately (very lately) libertarian who believes in Tom Paine and an ecumenical Lord
I can’t decide if you’re naive or have a n00b agenda. The unions are gearing up for thuggish ‘brownshirt’ style intimidation, to reduce turnout at the polls. The thuggery running the government has put us so far into debt that we cannot get out! And you think these same one world government bastards want the US to slog along holding up the progressive’s dream of one world under UN control, with welfare and indenture for US? I would imagine you look back at the formation of the federal reserve as a great day for America, right? Well, friend, the debacle of the fed formation is about to occur on a global scale as soon as the US is crashed beyond recovery without a world currency.
My feeling as well. The duplicity must be tearing him apart though.
“I believe Jesus was the first creation of God” I beg to differ Sir.The Father and Son are on in the same.We cannot know the complexities of God we can take Him at His word,and that WORD is The Father,Son,and Holy Ghost.Read John a couple more times and I feel it will become clearer to you.
I understand where you are coming from, the word was with God and the word was in the beginning, there rae many Bible verses which portray the oneness of God and Christ and that in fact he Is God..I understand that and believe it..However, to be the same person one would say that the same person would know at all times what the Father was doing, there are many times when Christ asked His Father things and ultimately as being perfect surrenderred to His will..I do not say these things to take away from the deity of Christ..I also know that it was Jesus who created the earth and Heavens as he does what he sees the Father do..so to thos world and Heaven he is the creator, I think that in Christ journey towards God as an all knowing Father, he was given the power by God to be God, could there be any way tp better understand the Father than to walk in His shoes, Jesus did not begin as the King of Heaven, he was given that because of His devotion and love, worthy is the lamb!!
because he is worthy he was allowed to open the seals etc...
Anyway, it is not my intention to derail anyones thoughts concerning this, Christ said, why should I tell you Heavenly things when we do not understand the earthly things he says..
I believe in the trinity, but I believe in 1 God who is the trinity, the concept of becoming one is a Christian concept, one which I accept..as Christ said, Father make them one in me as I am one in you..
And no doubt Beck is aware his programs are appealing to a tapestry of people, and he wants them all to look at the Government and it's infrastructure and see how we are ALL being manipulated and our freedoms lost.
The US is NOT a Theocracy. It is grounded in Christianity, but we have welcomed all to come and worship here.
Starting with something simple, if you were a two spatial dimension being, having only length and width, any third direction of spatial expression would be unknowable to you via your senses. Now, if higher dimensional being wanted to explain what a pencil is or anything with 3D spatial characterisitcs, the only way you could sense the 3D object is where that 3D object intersects your 2D world.
As a pencil--for instance--passes through your 2D plane, you look at the intersection intensely and perhaps imagine how adding up all the sensed intersections would sum up to a 3D object. But you could only sense where the 3D object intersects your 2D world.
Jesus focused Philip's attention upon this same problem in John Chapter fourteen, where Jesus told Philip (paraphrasing), 'If you've seen me you've seen the Father, because all you can see of the Father is what you see in me, for I am in the Father and the Father in me.' Literally, what Jesus was teaching Philip was that human limits in dimensional sensing allow Philip to see only the amount of The Father that is in Jesus.
Now let's apply that to the expressions of God in Three persons, the Trinity, and see how the work that God is doing helps to focus us upon which of His personage is the essence. God's name is I AM. I take that to mean He is timeless, and thereforethe Creator of dimension time and dimension space. It is a human trait to which we must analogize, but it helps to imagine that God imagined Whom Jesus would be as an expression of God, then God created space and time and all that there is in the known and unknown universe. That Creation process is by God greater than the creation.
The balance of forces is so delicate for the universe which has brought forth Jesus that God as Holy Spirit sustains it all in this extremely delicate balance.
So we have God The Creator bringing into existence time, space, and all that there is in the universe, holding it all in an extremely delicate balance by His Holy Spirit, so that God as Jesus can eventually come forth within the Created universe. Three expressions of One God, indentified by the work He is doing, the reality He is expressing.
The Bible tells us that God in Jesus made Himself a little lower than the angels (in expression and sensing). As God became flesh and dwelt among us, He had to limit the expression of Himself in order to 'fit' within the limits of our space and time.
HOWEVER, as God He retained the knowledge of what the forces are that His Holy Spirit sustains to keep the dynamic universe operating. Knowing the physical laws in total allows Him to do things like feed 5000 with but a few loaves and fishes.
Literally, everything that is happening is happening because God is sustaining the delicate balance which allows the universe to continue in existence without collapsing or quickly dissipating.
If you knew the complete physical laws of the universe, including the way God is sustaining the whole in delicate balance, you would be 'seeing what God The Father is doing.' Because the universe is in delicate balance yet is dynamic in nature, events can occur and so long as the physical laws of His universe are not violated, choices by living things can be made.
Here is another analogy which might help this explanation. Suppose you were privy to a pair of time binoculars, by which when you look through them you can see an object as it is expressed in spacetime for the next three hours, displayed before your eyes in total as you look through the lenses. Perhaps the lenses run a rapid movie of what is actually coming over the next three hours when you look through the lenses at an object located in the dynamic universe. You could literally say that you are seeing what God is doing, since it is His Holy Spirit that sustains the entire dynamic process of spacetime! Now, how much more power would you have if you comprehended the entire set of laws by which the entire universe is sutained?
If there are other unsensed expressions of dimension time, that as a 'knowing being' you were privy to as you dwelt upon the earth, perhaps you could moved between locations in time, perhaps leaving a stone tomb without rolling away the stone, because in a dynamic universe, if you could step 'sideways' in spatio-temporal expression because of your undersatnding of the volume of time in which the plane of present exists moving linearly from past to future, the planar location of the insides of the tomb in spacetime move on, leaving you outside of the tombs insides, able to step back into spacetime or remain in the where/when to which you stepped 'sideways'!
Now, perhaps the question bubbling up in your mind is 'so you're saying there is no free agency, we are stuck on a track doing that which God has already determined will be?' And my immediate answer is, no, because God chose as one of the characteristics of this universe that He would sustain the processes and the physical aspects, while leaving open the choices living things can make which effect the universe He is sustaining ... God's Holy Spirit sustains the spacetime bubble we sense, but He allows us to alter/affect the dynamic expression within that bubble of spacetime since we in our limits cannot change the forces He is sustaining across the entire universe.
We have free choice, to a point that is limited by our temporal and spatial limits as 4D beings, physically. BUT, we are greater than 4D because we are alive, and the expression of life and spirit choice of right and wrong are dimensionally greater than 4D, yet occur within the universe which God Created(Creates) and which His Holy Spirit sustains in the delicate balance we sense and even the portions we cannot sense.
And there are realms of reality which we cannot sense, which are referred to in the Bible, old and new testament. Daniel Chapter five will reveal one such realm, which is accessible to Jesus before and after the resurrection but is not accessible to us because we do not see what the Father is doing in sustaining that other realm, because we are merely 4D spatio-temporal beings where our physical senses are concerned.
I didn’t know Beck had been baptized Catholic. In addition to his other religious studies, he needs to do some serious reading of the works of Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI for some good, REASONED, Christian ideas.
Awesome! You blow my mind, MHG. Thanks
Forgive me, I didn’t mean to make it inaccessible. I don’t wish to obfuscate. Just the opposite!
LOL...You must not be a child of the 60’s-70’s. To blow someone’s mind is to open it - to expand it.
Thanks for expanding my mind. ;)
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