By A Mortal Man
Our English word ‘pray’ comes to us from Latin ‘precari’ meaning “to ask earnestly, to beg, to entreat” which strongly implies the relationship between a high god and his or her supplicating subjects is one of high power versus low power.
Few practitioners of Abrahamic religions ever feel it is their ‘place’ to judge God (Yahweh Allah, etc.).
In such authoritarian religions God is considered so sacred that anything he, it, her, or other feels is righteous is not to be questioned, but rather assumed as upstanding and just; and his subjects are left to only obey his commands—even when those commands seem morally reprehensible. After all no mere mortal man can presume to know and understand the ways and means of an All-knowing and All-powerful supernatural entity. Talk about un-mitigating absolute power.
Talk about the authoritarian possibilities to wreak havoc on other entities or souls within the universe—given there was some motive to do so.
And there’s the rub.
Who is to decide when a voice, and an order, given is that of another mere mortal with dubious motives or a supernatural High God; especially since even the history of Judeo-Christianity is one long dispute as to who is the real creator God and who is not (as in who speaks for the real high power and versus disinformation is coming from the heretical or so-called Satanic orders)?
One fact that many readers will agree on is that the history of Judeo-Christianity is one long debate on what is real religion and what is bad religion. Any historian of religion, no matter how mediocre or biased, will likely agree to this one fact.
So, it is not just a matter of being a believer or not, but exactly to what one chooses to believe and focus, and this already implies we mortals are in the business of choosing which religious principles, doctrines and values we believe and have faith in.
So far so good. Yet it is hard to find a more controversial subject than religious belief precisely because it means so much to one’s moral convictions and personal welfare (including one’s soul welfare as in one’s spiritual life after one’s death). There is a lot on the line and therefore people get edgy and sometimes intolerant quite quickly in such discussions as debates on religion.
Moreover, it is our very attitudes and thinking about our motives and actions that often determines our innocence or guilt—be it legal or religious. Our souls are inevitably involved in making choices about not just about our behaviors and motives, but our reasons on moral dilemmas.
Even so-called Bible-thumpers have very different views on what is considered politically correct religion. And being religiously correct is so important it is directly tied to whether one is going to be saved and redeemed or not (or whether one’s very soul suffers eternal damnation). You really can’t get more serious of a subject with fields of landmines.
Probably no two people would agree on everything equally in regards to what they consider sacred doctrine and important. It is the nature of individuation for people to see religion (presumably the same religion and demonization) in different ways.
Some people do not focus on what seems to be the fear-based consequences of scripture, and also the so-called claims by so-called historical prophets claiming to speak for God when they announce that God’s demands this punishment or that one, or the murder of many tribes competing for territory and livelihood in ancient Caanan.
Many intelligent critics of the Old Testament have argued the God of the Old Testament is a savage beast who demands the merciless murder of thousands and tens of thousands of tribes and their children, women, and animals and that such a so-called deity is not a just God but a Devil.
We, critical thinkers, need to remember that every statement in the Bible is written and attested from mere mortals claiming to speak for God. We never have direct contact with a supernatural entity called God, and more than one classical church founders or commentators, such as an anonymous 14th century writing wrote The Cloud of Unknowing which is a translation of Dionysius the Areopagite’s Mystical Theology in which the human mind has only limited and indirect access to know God. See Spiritual Theology: The Theology of Yesterday for Spiritual Help Today by Diogenes Allen, page 144, Cowley Publications 1997.
Note: What is the saying about … “Where Angels Fear to Tread?” From the Internet: Foolish people are often reckless, attempting feats that the wise avoid. This saying from the Internet is from “An Essay on Criticism,” by Alexander Pope.
Another Note on the word ‘angel’ (a very powerful player in the drama of religion and faith): basically, Angel is from Late Latin angelus, from Greek angelos, literally “messenger, envoy, one that announces,” in the New Testament “divine messenger,”. See Etymonline.Com.
This role of message bringer could be almost anyone who has some message to another, so many of us mere mortals could, and do, act in this capacity daily. Frankly, any writer, speech writer, diplomat, intelligence and military officer, journalist, etc. can be ascribed in the role of a messenger, but frankly we readers want to pay attention to those messengers who have very important and pertinent messages that are composed of truth and validity (which is not always that easy to discern—much may seem like truth but on further investigation not so obvious)!
For example, there are literally hundreds of thousands of humans trying to get there messages out there on the Internet all competing against each other via social media and various websites, but it takes a facile and subtle mind to be able to determine what is important reality versus sidetracking red herrings and disinformation.
Note: ‘disinformation’ is deliberate deceit, and there is an enormous amount of disinformation activity affecting our minds on a daily basis.
The word ‘deceit’ according to Etymology Online Dictionary comes from the Middle Ages and older: [c. 1300, “trickery, treachery, lying,” from Old French deceite, fem. past participle of deceveir, decevoir, from Latin decipere “to ensnare, take in, beguile, cheat,” from de “from” or pejorative (see de-) + capere “to take,”] … Or take one down away from the truth similar to the old meanings of ‘frustrate’.
THIS, MY FRIENDS, THIS THING CALLED DECEIT, IS THEE NAME OF THE GAME.
CALL IT THE GREAT BRITTISH GAME OR NOT (IT’S MUCH OLDER). Deceit is a strategy in biological species for survival that existed before what we call human history. Various species use tricks to fool their prey.
Generally, we mere humans, on average, underestimate the capacity and the influential affluence of deceit. We have come to the habit of trusting too many we assume are authority figures, and we cannot imagine that, for example, mainstream media news people would be deliberately lying to us. BUT IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME AND HAS HAPPENED FOR DECADES AND DECADES.
So, we all have a problem. If it can be argued that deceit is readily used in real history as a tool of influence, then how can we know that those who claim to speak for a God, or Yahweh, etc., for example, are not really pretending to push their less than sacred positions onto the rest of the world (and have done so from time immemorial including what has likely been passed on as sacred scripture)?
Most of us assume Benjamin Netanyahu is not himself a sacred God, and yet he does not defer from using ancient Biblical arguments for his politics of the day which are extremist to say the least.
Another concept that is not frequently associated with the semantics of the word Angel is the word ‘intelligence’, and we readily need to note a difference between Intelligence as a national security occupation and intelligence as a biological reality implicit in all of nature’s survival—namely “dealing with information” viably and cogently.
Guaranteed there are one hundred books written on angel lore but few really focus on those attributes that are so central, namely the capacity to comprehend information, to rely it, and the capacity to effectively take appropriate actions to solve problems.
Unlike God or Yahweh mere humans, like all species, have to deal with problems to survive and they operate on information or intelligence.
You do not need to be the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations to function as a de facto Intelligence Angel spouting all manner of cliché and hyperbole trying to make a reasonable case for murder of civilians, children and women.
And this is why we mortals need to distinguish between the various nuances of what too many readily lump together as the same or similar meaning—namely the Devil, Satan Lucifer, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub, etc. We need a course on the various meanings and words that readily apply to religious dogma (doctrine) to appreciate the nuances of so-called ‘Satanic’ manifestations.
Starting with ‘Satan’ we learn, via Wikipedia (selected excerpts) the name “meant in Judaism, an agent ‘subservient’ to God, typically regarded as a metaphor for the yetzer hara, or “evil inclination”. … … first appears in the Hebrew Bible as a heavenly ‘prosecutor’, subordinate to Yahweh (God), who prosecutes the nation of Judah in the heavenly court and tests the loyalty of Yahweh’s followers. … … Christians often identify the serpent in the Garden of Eden as Satan. In the Synoptic Gospels, Satan tempts Jesus in the desert and is identified as the cause of illness and temptation. … … when it is used with the definite article (ha-satan), it usually refers specifically to the heavenly accuser, literally, the satan.”
Is Wikipedia politicized? Absolutely, especially in regards to modern day politics. We need to be skeptical with all controversial subjects. Yet older materials regarding scholarship on old texts like the Bible is less likely to be completely dominated by misinformation.
Satan in this sense of the meaning is a character (like a human character) who argues, accuses, and prosecutes. He is employed by an authority governance body (like in human drama of the courts determined to affix guilt and innocence). This prosecutor is notorious for being underhanded and willing to engage in devious maneuvers to get the outcome he wants regardless of the merit.
Whereas the evolution of the name ‘devil’ by way of Wikipedia gives us: A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. … … The Modern English word devil derives from the Middle English devel, from the Old English dēofol, that in turn represents an early Germanic borrowing of the Latin diabolus. This in turn was borrowed from the Greek διάβολος diábolos, “slanderer”, from διαβάλλειν diabállein, “to slander” from διά diá, “across, through” and βάλλειν bállein, “to hurl”. The name is closely related to daemon as well.
The hurler of slander and creator of scandal.
Again, we have a creature that engages in accusations that are considered to be untrue or deceitful. Moreover, this communicative position is considered a powerful role in the study of Angelology. Greek skandalon is “a stumbling block, offense; a trap or snare laid for an enemy.” Slander too is directly related in meaning: late 13c., sclaundre, “state of impaired reputation; disgrace or dishonor;”.
Think of January the 6th and all those Americans not just accused of crimes but prosecuted and imprisoned because of crimes. Think of the dozens of accusations and prosecutions against Donald Trump (whether you like him or not)?
It should be somewhat obvious to the astute readers that the angels of religious history are little more than a long projection of human politics onto a metaphysical and supernatural panoramic Hollywood screen.
We today do not know the entire history of the lore of Angels or Angelology. Four religions have angel lore, namely the three Abrahamic religions and Zoroastrianism (all monotheistic religions—how ironic). And all of them essentially from the Middle and Near East.
Nevertheless, it should be obvious those voices shouting with megaphones, and being heard, are sending us messages about what they want us to think is going on. They tell us who are the players in these contemporaneous-historical televised soap-dramas (including megachurch dramas directed by Supernatural entities). We are informed to their motives and how we should think of the various agents of influence. It hardly needs to be stated the media, especially the mainstream media and social media are heavily involved.
Moreover, professional intelligence services and all manner of people with money and influence are equally involved in creating what Plato called Allegory of the Cave (see videos if not familiar).
Plato lived 400 years B.C. and he was astutely aware of the manipulation of the masses by those who could control the channels of communication and social power (and money of course). Plato, the philosopher is not considered an angel although he clearly engaged in this profession (professing messages to others—fellow humans).
Angels, according to angel lore, are celestial and spiritual beings with divine messages, except when they don’t, which in such case they turn against God, or the high command, or those considered sacred, and then suddenly they are in the role of ‘rebellion’ and rejecting the order of the day.
This is often the notational semantics of the name ‘Lucifer’ as the one who rebelled against the biblical God of the Bible. The name literally means “light-bringing,” from lux (genitive lucis) “light” + ferre “to carry, bear,”. This form of the evil one connotes a certain brilliance or genius.
And this genius rebelled and got other angels to rebel as well and supposedly they had a great civil war in heaven even before mankind was supposedly created—imagine that!
Whereas, practically everything we have been conditioned to imagine about heaven is one of peace, tranquility, love and sunshine, and yet according to angel lore there was a period of office politics, plotting, conspiring, and all the same normal garbage you’d expect from mere human beings. How heavenly is that?
Do we not presume the afterlife, as in salvation, is just one big lovely paradise (with no anxieties, diseases, rumors, slander, politics, fighting etc.)? This is as bad as listening to all the mellifluent politicians telling us that if we elect them then everything will be hunky-dory!
WE ARE TALKING CIVIL WAR IN HEAVEN FOR GOD’S SAKE!!!! Say what? Think about it. Here we have all those angels that are supposedly far superior to us mere humans and they are engaging in the same underhanded politics and war that we mere humans have engaged throughout history!
So then, if angels are capable of breaking away from their non-AI employment while engaged in their dramatic roles then what can we expect from the idiosyncratic natures of millions of human beings?
Was not, or is not the role of spiritual intelligence supposed to have better consequences in governing bodies of human tribes and animals (if you want to call them that in the sense of cattle and sheep being led around)?
But apparently some Rabbis are not much better. Listen to this video and here what some influential Rabbis are calling for: “Rabbis Call for Genocide” (copy and paste link to trustworthy search engine):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Israel Shahak anyone? Very pertinent writer. How about his book: Jewish History, Jewish Religion—the Weight of Three Thousand Years.
Needless to say, there is all manner of intellectual chaos and disagreement in the Jewish community.
Jewish groups rally at White House urging Biden to push for Gaza ceasefire
Nevertheless, a cease fire is not the solution to such a massive crime as what is currently taking place in Palestine.
Netanyahu faces backlash for evoking biblical Amalek amid heavy civilian casualties in Gaza
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
What is noteworthy here is that there was all manner of war between various of tribes in the Middle East thousands of years ago and some of these tribes were all about the killing en masse entire populations (genocide thousands of years ago).
Jonathan Kirsch, a biblical scholar who lives in Israel, wrote: Moses: A Life (very interesting and well researched book). Anyone who thinks he or she knows everything there is to know about what people think of as the biblical Moses might want to read this book, because, as usual, true scholarship and truth digging (as alienating and disquieting as it may be) reveals that what people are often led to believe is very different than what may in fact be true—especially when it comes to both religious history and secular history (as if there were often a clear divide).
Jonathan Kirsch is not considered an angel in the general sense. Rather he is an academic scholar. And after all there are millions of those so what is the big deal of getting mere mortal messages?
There was a lot of violence back then throughout biblical history. How godly were those isolated places of paradisical lands of milk and honey. A Garden of Eden and even there we have accusations and conspiracies regarding restrictions on what fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil God’s created subject can partake (and the setup for temptation). Even Paradise had it’s politics and underhanded ploys. Can we really trust everything we read that claims to be part of the Bible? One wonders.
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil almost sounds like the book of how politics is really played out and what some inferiors are supposed to accept is being censored from knowing what God (human stand-ins) supposedly knows (why the big secret)?
Why the game of denial and then a third-party Satan figure, as some form of reptilian creature, whispering “you will be like god” in their ears? Only to be banished just like supposedly Lucifer as one of God’s previously most decorated angels, as being evicted out of the realm?
Equally the dragon is portrayed in the Christian West as a figure of evil. One automatically assumed that a dragon should be killed outright with no fair trial (after all he is obviously guilty of being evil). But what if the symbolic breath of a dragon breathing fire were really correlated with spreading truth against the massive buildup of lies? What if the dragon turns out to be more complex than what some childhood memories recollect? Because, after all the battles of the day, as usual, are battles of truth against lies, and lies have many conspirators on their side.
Whereas believers of the Bible, as if it were pure, unadulterated truth, through and through, are led to believe God or Yahweh commanded in Deuteronomy 20:17: Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you.
How can modern man presume that these supposed commands, given always by mere mortals claiming to speak for God, were any kind of justice and truly had anything to do with a truly just and supernatural god?
We must take it on faith. But can we continue through rational times of modern historical epochs of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, etc. just take such dubious claims on faith.
The world is being saturated with lies. Deceit dominates this conflict (it is not a war it is a mass killing) and deceit dominates so many wars just like what truly happened in Ukraine and the many underhanded realities and corruptions in that bloody mess having white, Christian, gentile Ukrainians at war with other mostly white, Christian, gentile Russians (despite the red herring of neo-Nazis everywhere when in truth the 10s of thousands of Ukrainians killed and maimed were not part of the neo-Nazi psychological operation (Jewish men were allowed to escape Ukraine whereas gentile, military age men were not).
Ukrainian Jews escape to Israel: ‘We were happy, and now, we will start again’ … “More than 3 million people have fled Ukraine since the war started.” Los Angelos Times
If the world today is saturated with lies then why should people blindly be expected to believe that history and religious history is not equally a serious of distortions and lies?
This is what it is to mean to be able to think freely (and feel freely) in a world that wants to destroy your right to form your own opinions and attitudes on various important subjects of the day. A just God would stand for free speech and the pursuant right to search for truth how ever precarious the topic may be.
And by the way, this is not an argument for atheism. A world of atheists is not necessarily, and not likely, any better than a world of people who believe in religious faiths.
Still, it is beyond believable that current generations of believers, historical epoch after historical epoch, so readily believe every word of any particular version of the Bible is nothing but truth and nothing but the truth as Sacrosanct. Consider the many, many authors over hundreds of years and cultures, consider the many languages, motives of mere minds translating, the censoring of heretical tracts, etc., etc. and we have nothing but unadulterated truth? You can’t be that naïve.
Why are not people allowed to say which religious precepts and principles they believe in and which they do not?
A news headline November the 15th on the Internet:
Mike Johnson said calls for Gaza ceasefire are “outrageous” during the ‘March for Israel’ rally at Washington DC on Tuesday, 14 November. In his speech, the US House Speaker showed his support for Israel alongside Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer while the crowd chanted “No ceasefire.”
Talk about insanity. Talk about brainwash.
Laurent Guyenot claims that Bibi Netanyahu is not a psychopath in his article: Israel’s Biblical Psychopathy at Unz.com. Whether one agrees or not he sure is criminal, as is what has been going on for a long time against the Palestinians.
But, of course you do not know, not if you have been led by the legions of lying news angels who work for the mainstream media, the government, and the many think tanks surrounded with corrupt money). And morally this domination of the Western worlds’ media can be argued to be overwhelmingly evil (another English word Old English, “what is bad; sin, wickedness; anything that causes injury, morally or physically.”). The West has fallen.
Say what you want but for Americans to cheer for no cease fire against the mass murder of innocent Palestinians is insane, and Mike Johnson in his religious fervor is equally insane, as are so many outspoken politicians like Joe Biden, Anthony Blinken, Nikki Haley, Lindsey Graham, Mike DeSantis and Donald Trump, etc., etc. These people are not American if they give Israel a free pass to engage in whatever criminal activity it chooses and even genocide (especially after all the unending preaching and cultural conditioning about genocide against Jews!!)! UNBELIEVABLE.
If you think these people put in charge by corrupt money or fake elections are angels of pure humane motives you are deserving of all the censorship and warring against your freedoms (in the name of Israel). You are too stupid to survive the strive of nasty, selfish and brutish.
We truly are all Palestinians now. They are not wanted. They are considered useless. They stand in the way of insane religious motives and capitalistic motives of Palestinian oil and gas drilling off the shores of Gaza.
This is hardly different from the war on the masses of humans that populate the planet. Kill off the excess and let the powerful and corrupt decide.
There are no religious principles driving these events.
The Bible, especially the Old Testament seems little more than the screen hiding the Man behind the Smoke Screen.
And what makes it more disheartening is that we can not expect the Legal and the Psychotherapeutic professions to get on the real side of justice—so many professions in modern history have become corrupted in one manner or another.
Even the profession of Religious Leadership is being dominated by a blind obedient brainwash and ecstatic insanity, because they collectively think the Book of Revelations in Gospel truth.
Why does John Hagee, and his ilk, get so much money and power in this controlled society? The guy should be in a straight jacket like so many crazy Bible maniacs. Look up “religious psychosis” and “spiritual delusions in schizophrenia”.
There has to be sanity and sensibility to religious faith. Or the idea of some high God demanding a person should be stoned to death for martial infidelity or improper sex is beyond the pale. Even if you do not like gays or transexuals (or do not think they should be idolized and given some mythic prominence) does that mean they should be stoned to death? Why is the modern world haunted with such primitive hatred and mass delusion (all in the name of religious mania)?
Yes, Laurent Guyenot, as great of an author as you are (and everyone should read his masterpiece: From Yahweh to Zion: Jealous God, Chosen People, Promised Land … Clash of Civilizations) you are wrong: we are dealing with insanity on a massive scale (even if many religious believers do find mental health and cultural stability) there are pockets of believers who are driven by the crazed insanity of the witch trials (in which there too people were driven by fear to burn actual human people just to escape of what they feared as demonic possession). Let them die, it’s all God. Our belief in whatever God motive (regardless for any accountability) will carry the day.
Mass Delusion: MASS PSYCHOSIS – How an Entire Population Becomes MENTALLY ILL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
The word ‘contemplate’ means to “reflect upon, ponder, study, view mentally, meditate,” from consider, originally meant” to mark out a space for observation” as “within the temple” ‘con’ with and Temple. Imagine for a moment that your mind and your soul are a Temple as well—something sacred, something to be appreciated and not just overrun by the madness of religious delusion.
Guaranteed, it does not matter what specific college degrees you can claim, or what levels of stature you can claim, truth seeking is about the real work of intelligence—finding the truth (against all the lies permeating and flooding society) and you do not have to have an achieved title to do such work. You do not have to have a specific degree or title or position of power.
Ryan Cristian, at his super great website: The Last American Vagabond.com is one on the best souls piecing together the truth about good and evil. Coming from a chef background he does not have any special training in investigative reporting but I will advocate this: He is one of the most important voices in regards to politics, and especially of late his podcasts on what is going on in Gaza and Palestine.
***** TheLastAmericanVagabond.com *****
Nobody accessible on the Internet does better Intelligence than Ryan Cristian and if you are not paying attention to all his research and detailed opinion then you are losing out.
He is an angel.
But so are a lot of people and websites, plenty this author may not be familiar. But good starters for real news and analysis would include these five starred *****2 (squared or 5 x 5) sites (by the way half of these you cannot get with search engine google as bad censoring actor):
StateOfTheNation.co
(aka SOTN)
VTForeignPolicy.com
(Was known as Veteran’s Today)
Unz.com
KnowMoreNews.org
(quite controversial religiously but some serious analysis included)
Best commentators on current wars and killing in Palestine:
- Scott Ritter podcasts
- Col. Douglas Macgregor
- Rense.Com
- WhatReallyHappened.Com
And of course there are ‘so’ many, many more real angels bringing truth to bear on our consciouses.
Via Latin conscius “knowing, aware,” from conscire “be (mutually) aware,” from assimilated form of com “with,” or “thoroughly” (see con-) + scire “to know” (see science).
Amen
Late Latin amen, from Ecclesiastical Greek amen, from Hebrew amen “truth,” used adverbially as an expression of agreement (as in Deuteronomy xxvii.26, I Kings i.36), from Semitic root a-m-n “to be trustworthy, confirm, support.”