Posted on 06/02/2010 12:05:35 PM PDT by i88schwartz
Seriously, I don't get it. I see so many anti-Israel and anti-Semitic posts on the internet. Why not love our only real ally in the middle east?
They have weapons because if they don’t the Muslims will take it and kill every Jew they can get their hands on. If they lusted after other people’s land they would not exchanged half the Sinai for peace. They also left southern Lebanon which they were in to protect northern Israel. Many Christians were murdered by the Muslims when Israel left. Show me the lust for conquest of land. Show me mis-use of the weapons they have at their disposal. Why do you think the commandos that landed on the ship used paintball guns? Who in their right mind would use paintball guns against on a ship loaded with Al-Qaeda terrorists? Only Jews would because the world judges them so harshly for doing anything.
I don’t know exactly where to find it but it says if any nation turn its back on Israel, God will turn His back on that nation.
When WWII came around the Arab Muslims sided with Hitler. Nazism is a form of Leftism. When they went away they sided with the Soviet Union. Communism is also another form of Leftism. After multiple decades of being Socialized it has made Islam much more aggressive like it used to be.
But you are right about envy. They do hate what Israel has and has created. Jews took a sandlot and turned it into an oasis. All Muslims know how to do is destroy.
I am just saying that Gnosis from the Dead Sea Scrolls goes into the Cosmological Divine Realm of GOD and I actually read all of it, and don’t see where it contradicts the Holy Scriptures.....
You don’t think there is a worldwide Jihad? Go ahead and wish it away.
Actually, our foreign policy is being anything BUT driven by biblical prophecy. And it is indeed a sad day when America turns its back on God, who blessed her like no other nation in history. And here's a hint: It doesn't matter whether you believe it or not. Truth remains truth.
Not being glib, but it's really just this simple: God chose Israel to be His chosen people, the people through which He would bless the entire world. Satan hates all people, but he most especially hates God's chosen people. Satan rules this world. It really is just that simple. And the more this world turns away from God, the more robust the hatred will become.
With that said, even though I believe the above with every scintilla of my being, it's STILL maddening to watch the total illogic of Israel-hatred in action. A tiny little country, literally surrounded by people who'd love to wipe her off the face of the earth, and all she does is try to defend herself, and the world hates her with a fervor. Maddening.
A group that through thousands of years persists in being their selves. No matter where they are, no matter the outward conformity they still cling to their religion and culture. Quietly and stubbornly they remain Jews.
And they have changed the culture around them. Most of the things that we think of as "civilized behavior" can be traced to Judaism. Some people prefer to be barbarians. So they side with barbarians over the civilized.
The second reason is that Israel is successful. You can tell where the border is by looking for the grass. One side sand, the other side grass. One side death, the other side life. And they did it by working hard and working smart. Less woe is me and more where's my hoe.
This serves as a reproach to people who prefer to sit around and whine.
They aren't suffering victims. You poke them in the eye and they will poke back, hard. This is not a quality to be admired any more. We are suppose to be the "bigger person" and not hit back. Israel will play along to a point and then break out a can of whoop-ass.
This makes a bunch of wanna be bullies very nervous. The rest of the world might begin to follow their example.
There are other reasons but those are the main reason from my point of view.
When WWII came around the Arab Muslims sided with Hitler. Nazism is a form of Leftism. When they went away they sided with the Soviet Union. Communism is also another form of Leftism. After multiple decades of being Socialized it has made Islam much more aggressive like it used to be.
I really don't believe that's a good explanation for Islam. From what I see Islam has the hatred of the Jews and Israel, built into it from the beginning. You look at what Mohammed did to the Jews when he was still alive.
He had all the Jewish men killed and the women and children taken as slaves for the Muslims -- the ones who had entered into a peace agreement with Mohammed, in his territory. That was long before Nazism or Communism.
In fact, the Palestinians and Arafat (when he was alive) used the example of the false peace treaty that Mohammed had with the Jews (and broke) -- as an example of the "peace agreement" that they currently have with the Jews. Arafat basically said that this is the example of the peace agreement that they'll have with the Jews ... they'll make it for now, and when they can break it, they'll do so and kill all the Jews in the process (and save the women for themselves, of course ...).
This is "hard coded" into Islam. It's all through it. This is not something that is somehow being made more aggressive by leftism or socialism.
When you look back at the history of Islam, this (what is going on now with Islam and the world) is the "third push" that they've had in trying to take over the world.
This is something they are doing all on their own, purely from Islam -- and if anyone is "using" someone else, it's more like Islam is "using" leftism and liberalism" (in its attacks on Israel) rather than Islam being somehow made more aggressive by those political philosophies.
Islam is really a "Satanic religion" and I'm not saying that by way of hyperbole. No..., it's "actually" a religion that was founded by Satan, and done so, for the express purpose of persecuting Israel in these present times. It was purposefully set up that way. Once you understand that, then you know what is going on here.
Where does it say that?
Check out this FReeper thread for that answer. There's a lot of material in there which goes all through it ... :-)
I am just saying that Gnosis from the Dead Sea Scrolls goes into the Cosmological Divine Realm of GOD and I actually read all of it, and don’t see where it contradicts the Holy Scriptures.....
I think you have a misunderstanding here. These are not from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
These are from Egypt and they represent the Gnostism, which was eradicated from Christianity as heretical.
In other words, it's like you heard about some "cult group" from history and knew they had false and heretical teachings, but you didn't have any original materials from them. All you were able to do is read some history about them.
All of a sudden, someone finds the "cult group's writings" that had been hidden away somewhere for a long time. Now, you can actually "read the cult group's writings" yourself.
That's great for understanding what a "cult group" teaches. No problem there. The problem is that you don't want to "incorporate" the "teachings of a cult group" into Christianity -- just because you happen to have found the cult group's writings.
That's what these are -- the writings of a "cult group" that Christianity eradicated as heretical.
If you're studying cult groups -- that's fine for academic work. But, if you're trying to "understand the Bible" from a "cult group's writings" -- that's "way bad" ...
Here is the information about where this came from and how Christianity eradicated it from its books and teachings, because it was false and heretical.
What is Gnosticism?
“Gnosis” and “Gnosticism” are still rather arcane terms, though in the last two decades they have been increasingly encountered in the vocabulary of contemporary society. The word Gnosis derives from Greek and connotes "knowledge" or the "act of knowing". On first hearing, it is sometimes confused with another more common term of the same root but opposite sense: agnostic, literally "not knowing”. The Greek language differentiates between rational, propositional knowledge, and a distinct form of knowing obtained by experience or perception. It is this latter knowledge gained from interior comprehension and personal experience that constitutes gnosis.1
In the first century of the Christian era the term “Gnostic” came to denote a heterodox segment of the diverse new Christian community. Among early followers of Christ it appears there were groups who delineated themselves from the greater household of the Church by claiming not simply a belief in Christ and his message, but a "special witness" or revelatory experience of the divine. It was this experience or gnosis that set the true follower of Christ apart, so they asserted. Stephan Hoeller explains that these Christians held a "conviction that direct, personal and absolute knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human beings, and, moreover, that the attainment of such knowledge must always constitute the supreme achievement of human life."2
What the "authentic truths of existence" affirmed by the Gnostics were will be briefly reviewed below, but first a historical overview of the early Church might be useful. In the initial century and a half of Christianity -- the period when we find first mention of "Gnostic" Christians -- no single acceptable format of Christian thought had yet been defined. During this formative period Gnosticism was one of many currents moving within the deep waters of the new religion. The ultimate course Christianity, and Western culture with it, would take was undecided at this early moment. Gnosticism was one of the seminal influences shaping that destiny.
That Gnosticism was, at least briefly, in the mainstream of Christianity is witnessed by the fact that one of its most influential teachers, Valentinus, may have been in consideration during the mid-second century for election as the Bishop of Rome.3 Born in Alexandria around 100 C.E., Valentinus distinguished himself at an early age as an extraordinary teacher and leader in the highly educated and diverse Alexandrian Christian community. In mid-life he migrated from Alexandria to the Church's evolving capital, Rome, where he played an active role in the public affairs of the Church. A prime characteristic of Gnostics was their claim to be keepers of sacred traditions, gospels, rituals, and successions – esoteric matters for which many Christians were either not properly prepared or simply not inclined. Valentinus, true to this Gnostic predilection, apparently professed to have received a special apostolic sanction through Theudas, a disciple and initiate of the Apostle Paul, and to be a custodian of doctrines and rituals neglected by what would become Christian orthodoxy.4 Though an influential member of the Roman church in the mid-second century, by the end of his life Valentinus had been forced from the public eye and branded a heretic by the developing orthodoxy Church.
While the historical and theological details are far too complex for proper explication here, the tide of history can be said to have turned against Gnosticism in the middle of the second century. No Gnostic after Valentinus would ever come so near prominence in the greater Church. Gnosticism's emphasis on personal experience, its continuing revelations and production of new scripture, its asceticism and paradoxically contrasting libertine postures, were all met with increasing suspicion. By 180 C.E. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, was publishing his first attacks on Gnosticism as heresy, a labor that would be continued with increasing vehemence by the church Fathers throughout the next century.
Orthodoxy Christianity was deeply and profoundly influenced by its struggles with Gnosticism in the second and third centuries. Formulations of many central traditions in Christian theology came as reflections and shadows of this confrontation with the Gnosis.5 But by the end of the fourth century the struggle was essentially over: the evolving ecclesia had added the force of political correctness to dogmatic denunciation, and with this sword so-called "heresy" was painfully cut from the Christian body. Gnosticism as a Christian tradition was largely eradicated, its remaining teachers ostracized, and its sacred books destroyed. All that remained for students seeking to understand Gnosticism in later centuries were the denunciations and fragments preserved in the patristic heresiologies. Or at least so it seemed until the mid-twentieth century.
Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library
It was on a December day in the year of 1945, near the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, that the course of Gnostic studies was radically renewed and forever changed. An Arab peasant, digging around a boulder in search of fertilizer for his fields, happened upon an old, rather large red earthenware jar. Hoping to have found a buried treasure, and with due hesitation and apprehension about the jinn who might attend such a hoard, he smashed the jar open. Inside he discovered no treasure and no genie, but instead books: more than a dozen old codices bound in golden brown leather.6 Little did he realize that he had found an extraordinary collection of ancient texts, manuscripts hidden a millennium and a half before -- probably by monks from the nearby monastery of St. Pachomius seeking to preserve them from a destruction ordered by the church as part of its violent expunging of heterodoxy and heresy.
How the Nag Hammadi manuscripts eventually passed into scholarly hands is a fascinating story too lengthy to relate here. But today, now over fifty years since being unearthed and more than two decades after final translation and publication in English as The Nag Hammadi Library,7 their importance has become astoundingly clear: These thirteen papyrus codices containing fifty-two sacred texts are representatives of the long lost "Gnostic Gospels", a last extant testament of what orthodox Christianity perceived to be its most dangerous and insidious challenge, the feared opponent that the Church Fathers had reviled under many different names, but most commonly as Gnosticism. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts has fundamentally revised our understanding of both Gnosticism and the early Christian church.
The left has been told that any dominant entity obtained that postion by illicit, unfair means. So, no one should be in a dominant position because it's inherently unfair.
This thinking explains their preference for "social justice," redistribtion of wealth, disarmament, femininism, affirmative action, ... you name it. It also explains their hatred of big business, the military, the police, the USA, Israel, and so on.
BTW, this also explains why almost all losers are democrats.
What you're talking about are the actual cult materials here... the very writings of the cult group itself. That's important to understand that one is dealing with cult group materials here...
This is also the stuff of which Dan Brown and his Da Vinci Code, uses to weave into his "false history" that so many people seem to want to believe ... LOL ... LOL ...
Let us look at what Gnosticism Christianity is before we figure out what the Bible has to say about the topic. First of all, Gnosticism is NOT Christianity. Gnostics proclaim God is both man and woman; Mary Magdalene is elevated to the status of the first and greatest Apostle, and is Jesus' wife and divine companion.
Gnosticism goes back centuries before the Christian era, possibly as early as the fifth Century, B.C. A belief system developed in ancient Syria and Persia that held salvation of the soul could be achieved by attaining a deep, mystic, and divine knowledge. According to their beliefs, humans are divided into a three-tiered hierarchy. Those possessing this knowledge, or gnosis, were a superior form of human being whose present and future destiny were not intertwined with those humans, that, for whatever reason, did not "know." Those humans too influenced by matter were doomed, and somewhere in between were those who did not yet possess the gnosis, but could yet be saved.
Rather than believe in the good of creation, Gnostics regarded matter and, in fact, the whole universe, to be a defilement of the deity -- the god of light/spirit. They taught that the ultimate end would be to overcome matter and be reunited with the parent spirit and realm of light/energy. This would not be achieved by submission to God's laws or through grace (God's forgiveness of man's sins) by acceptance of the living Christ -- the Son of God and Redeemer. Redemption or salvation would occur by awakening the sleeping gnosis (knowledge/wisdom) or "God within" -- through deep thoughts, reflection, and meditation thereby freeing the good spirit imprisoned within the evil physical body.
Gnosticism spread to Egypt during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, A.D. They presented a major challenge to orthodox Christianity. Can we say Gnostic Christianity is claimed within the pages of the Bible? Most Gnostic sects professed Christianity, but their belief sharply diverged from those of the majority of Christians in the early church. Those who did not believe the virgin birth, Jesus was the Son of God, Jesus was resurrected to Heaven, Jesus was the Creator, or that Jesus made atonement for our sins. I would say no, we couldn't, because the Bible clearly lays claim to the above statements.
Gnostics also believed that mankind was wholly evil and some sects even renounced marriage and procreation. They also believed in two gods, one evil god and one good god. Their teachings are believed to have influenced Saint Augustine in the development of his theology of "total depravity" of mankind and concept of God. For nine years St. Augustine adhered to Manichaeism, a Persian philosophy proclaimed in southern Babylonia (Iraq) that taught a doctrine of "total depravity" and the claim that they were the "elect." He then turned to skepticism.
Next, Augustine was attracted to the philosophy of Neoplatonism. He blended these beliefs with his later Gnostic Christian teachings. His teachings were in turn passed on to John Calvin in his extensive study of Augustine's writings. It is very easy to follow the trail of John Calvin's theology from the pagan religion of Mani in Babylonia to his writings in France and Geneva.
In 1945 an Egyptian peasant found 12 codices containing more than 50 Coptic Gnostic writings near Naj'Hammadi, Egypt. It has been determined that these codices were copied in the 4th century in the monasteries of the region. It is not known whether the monks were Gnostics, or were attracted by the nature of the writings, or had assembled the writings as a study in heresy. The evidence is clear that the Gnostics had a major influence in writing the Alexandrian manuscripts of the Egyptian region.
By the 2nd century, Christian Gnostic teachers mixed their mythology with Platonic metaphysical speculation and certain heretical Christian traditions. The most prominent Christian Gnostics were Valentinus and his disciple Ptolemaeus, who, during the 2nd century were influential members in the Roman Church. By the end of the 3rd century Gnosticism as a distinct movement seems to have largely disappeared.
Really? Worldwide, huh? Seems to me they got all they can handle being the frontline against Israel jihad.
LOL ... you're a "laugh-a-minute" here ... :-)
"Israel jihad" ... eh?
Let's take a look at a map and see about that. You'll see Islamic countries and then Israel. Yep, it sure does look like Israel has the upper hand here ... LOL ...
The worldly justification for hatred of the Jews centers on Israel - the current wisdom of the world dictates that every non-European people is entitled to an ethnostate like 19th century Europe, but that nations peopled by Europeans are racist if they want an ethnostate.
Israelis and their state fit into neither category and are not ashamed of it - exciting the ire of the elites.
I agree with what you are saying. I’m just saying that Islam has been essentially revived by the Left starting in the early 20th century. It was on a serious decline from the 10th century onward and really bottomed out with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1922. With the advent of Nazism and Communism Islam has been revived back to what it used to be many centuries ago.
ST,
I don’t uderstand...You are saying we are not to learn any of the Cosmological aspects of the 1 GOD we worship and love
and honor?
I think that he with the most money wins and the Islamics have the most money and they buy the PR. I think with enough advertising and PR anything will be believed.
Ann Coulter
I don’t uderstand...You are saying we are not to learn any of the Cosmological aspects of the 1 GOD we worship and love and honor?
Well, if I can help you understand what I'm saying here, I'll do it by referring to other cult groups that you know about.
That's like saying, "Should we not learn about the different aspects of the one God we worship and love from the Jehovah's Witnesses?"
Or... another "non-Christian cult group" -- it's like also saying, "Should we not learn about the different aspects of the one God we worhsip and love from Mormonism?"
Mind you, they both will say that they use the Bible ... "too" ... along with a few other and additional materials -- to "fill in the gaps" here and there and to clear up some "misunderstandings" from the Bible ... LOL ...
Bottom line -- it's a "cult group" and we shouldn't use "cult group materials" for understanding God ... (or else we're "asking for trouble" ...).
And again, understand here, that we do read "cult group materials" for the purpose of understanding what the cult group teaches, so others can be "warned" about it. But, we're not reading cult group materials for the purpose of "filling in some blanks" for who God is ... :-)
Those materials are useful to people who study this group and their heresy for purposes of analyzing what they were teaching, in the same way you would analyze any other "current-day" cult group's teachings.
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