Christianity. Just another lie?

[TonyGosling]

Kingdom Bound 1988 video of the legendary Larry Norman, while he was in Upstate New York.

Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTlr-73DQq8

[TonyGosling]

Religion of hatred: Why we should no longer be cowed by the chattering classes ruling Britain who sneer at Christianity

By Andrew N Wilson - 11th April 2009


A week ago, there were Palm Sunday processions all over the world. Near my house in North London is a parish with two churches. About 70 or 80 of us gathered at one of these buildings to collect our palms.

We were told by the priest: 'Where we are standing in Kentish Town does not look much like a Judaean hillside, and the other church to which we are walking does not look much like Jerusalem. But as we go, holding our palms, let us try to imagine the first Palm Sunday.'

And so we set off, singing All Glory, Laud And Honour! and holding up our palm crosses, to the faint bemusement of passersby, who looked out of their windows at us, tooted their horns as we blocked the traffic or smiled from sunny pavements.

We were walking, as it were, in the footsteps of Jesus as he entered Jerusalem on a donkey while crowds threw palms before him. Except our journey was along the pavements strewn with the usual North London discarded syringes, chewing gum and Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes.

When we had reached our destination, a small choir and two priests sang the whole of St Mark's account of the last week of Jesus's life - that part of the Gospel that is called The Passion.

It is said the chant used for this recitation dates back to the music used in the Jewish Temple in Jesus's day.

We heard of his triumphal, palm-strewn procession into Jerusalem, his clash with the Temple authorities, his agonised prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, his arrest by the Roman guards, his torture, his trial before Pontius Pilate, his Crucifixion and his death.

So there we were, all believers, and a disparate group of people, of various ages, races and classes, re-enacting once more this extraordinary story.

A story of a Jewish prophet falling foul of the authorities in an eastern province of the Roman Empire, and being punished, as were thousands of Jews during the governorship of Pontius Pilate, by the gruesome torture of crucifixion.

This Easter weekend we revisit the extraordinary ending of that story - the discovery by some women friends of Jesus that his tomb was empty. And we read of the reactions of the disciples - fearful, incredulous, but eventually believing that, as millions of Christians will proclaim tomorrow morning: 'The Lord is risen indeed!'

But how many in Britain today actually believe the story? Most recent polls have shown that considerably less than half of us do - yet that won't, of course, stop us tucking into Easter eggs (symbolising new life) and simnel cake (decorated with 11 marzipan balls representing the 11 true disciples, with Judas missing).

For much of my life, I, too, have been one of those who did not believe. It was in my young manhood that I began to wonder how much of the Easter story I accepted, and in my 30s I lost any religious belief whatsoever.

Like many people who lost faith, I felt anger with myself for having been 'conned' by such a story. I began to rail against Christianity, and wrote a book, entitled Jesus, which endeavoured to establish that he had been no more than a messianic prophet who had well and truly failed, and died.

Why did I, along with so many others, become so dismissive of Christianity?

Like most educated people in Britain and Northern Europe (I was born in 1950), I have grown up in a culture that is overwhelmingly secular and anti-religious. The universities, broadcasters and media generally are not merely non-religious, they are positively anti.

To my shame, I believe it was this that made me lose faith and heart in my youth. It felt so uncool to be religious. With the mentality of a child in the playground, I felt at some visceral level that being religious was unsexy, like having spots or wearing specs.

This playground attitude accounts for much of the attitude towards Christianity that you pick up, say, from the alternative comedians, and the casual light blasphemy of jokes on TV or radio.

It also lends weight to the fervour of the anti-God fanatics, such as the writer Christopher Hitchens and the geneticist Richard Dawkins, who think all the evil in the world is actually caused by religion.

The vast majority of media pundits and intelligentsia in Britain are unbelievers, many of them quite fervent in their hatred of religion itself.

The Guardian's fanatical feminist-in-chief, Polly Toynbee, is one of the most dismissive of religion and Christianity in particular. She is president of the British Humanist Association, an associate of the National Secular Society and openly scornful of the millions of Britons who will quietly proclaim their faith in Church tomorrow.

'Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to?' she asked in a puerile article decrying the wickedness of C.S. Lewis's Narnia stories, which have bewitched children for more than 50 years. Or, to take another of her utterances: 'When absolute God-given righteousness beckons, blood flows and women are in chains.'

The sneering Ms Toynbee, like Richard Dawkins, believes in rational explanations for our existence and behaviour. She is deeply committed to the Rationalist Association, but her approach to religion is too fanatical to be described as rational.

Perhaps it goes back to her relationship with her nice old dad, Philip Toynbee, a Thirties public school Marxist who, before he died, made the hesitant journey from unbelief to a questing Christianity.

The Polly Toynbees of this world ignore all the benign aspects of religion and see it purely as a sinister agent of control, especially over women.

One suspects this is how it is viewed in most liberal circles, in university common rooms, at the BBC and, perhaps above all, sadly, by the bishops of the Church of England, who despite their episcopal regalia, nourish few discernible beliefs that could be distinguished from the liberalism of the age.

For ten or 15 of my middle years, I, too, was one of the mockers. But, as time passed, I found myself going back to church, although at first only as a fellow traveller with the believers, not as one who shared the faith that Jesus had truly risen from the grave. Some time over the past five or six years - I could not tell you exactly when - I found that I had changed.

When I took part in the procession last Sunday and heard the Gospel being chanted, I assented to it with complete simplicity.

My own return to faith has surprised no one more than myself. Why did I return to it? Partially, perhaps it is no more than the confidence I have gained with age.

Rather than being cowed by them, I relish the notion that, by asserting a belief in the risen Christ, I am defying all the liberal clever-clogs on the block: cutting-edge novelists such as Martin Amis; foul-mouthed, self-satisfied TV presenters such as Jonathan Ross and Jo Brand; and the smug, tieless architects of so much television output.

But there is more to it than that. My belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known - not the famous, not saints, but friends and relations who have lived, and faced death, in the light of the Resurrection story, or in the quiet acceptance that they have a future after they die.

The Easter story answers their questions about the spiritual aspects of humanity. It changes people's lives because it helps us understand that we, like Jesus, are born as spiritual beings.

Every inner prompting of conscience, every glimmering sense of beauty, every response we make to music, every experience we have of love - whether of physical love, sexual love, family love or the love of friends - and every experience of bereavement, reminds us of this fact about ourselves.

Ah, say the rationalists. But no one can possibly rise again after death, for that is beyond the realm of scientific possibility.

And it is true to say that no one can ever prove - nor, indeed, disprove - the existence of an after-life or God, or answer the conundrums of honest doubters (how does a loving God allow an earthquake in Italy?)

Easter does not answer such questions by clever-clever logic. Nor is it irrational. On the contrary, it meets our reason and our hearts together, for it addresses the whole person.

In the past, I have questioned its veracity and suggested that it should not be taken literally. But the more I read the Easter story, the better it seems to fit and apply to the human condition. That, too, is why I now believe in it.

Easter confronts us with a historical event set in time. We are faced with a story of an empty tomb, of a small group of men and women who were at one stage hiding for their lives and at the next were brave enough to face the full judicial persecution of the Roman Empire and proclaim their belief in a risen Christ.

Historians of Roman and Jewish law have argued at length about the details of Jesus's trial - and just how historical the Gospel accounts are.

Anyone who believes in the truth must heed the fine points that such scholars unearth. But at this distance of time, there is never going to be historical evidence one way or the other that could dissolve or sustain faith.

Of course, only hard evidence will satisfy the secularists, but over time and after repeated readings of the story, I've been convinced without it.

And in contrast to those ephemeral pundits of today, I have as my companions in belief such Christians as Dostoevsky, T. S. Eliot, Samuel Johnson and all the saints, known and unknown, throughout the ages.

When that great saint Thomas More, Chancellor of England, was on trial for his life for daring to defy Henry VIII, one of his prosecutors asked him if it did not worry him that he was standing out against all the bishops of England.

He replied: 'My lord, for one bishop of your opinion, I have a hundred saints of mine.'

Now, I think of that exchange and of his bravery in proclaiming his faith. Our bishops and theologians, frightened as they have been by the pounding of secularist guns, need that kind of bravery more than ever.

Sadly, they have all but accepted that only stupid people actually believe in Christianity, and that the few intelligent people left in the churches are there only for the music or believe it all in some symbolic or contorted way which, when examined, turns out not to be belief after all.

As a matter of fact, I am sure the opposite is the case and that materialist atheism is not merely an arid creed, but totally irrational.

Materialist atheism says we are just a collection of chemicals. It has no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love or heroism or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat.

The Resurrection, which proclaims that matter and spirit are mysteriously conjoined, is the ultimate key to who we are. It confronts us with an extraordinarily haunting story.

J. S. Bach believed the story, and set it to music. Most of the greatest writers and thinkers of the past 1,500 years have believed it.

But an even stronger argument is the way that Christian faith transforms individual lives - the lives of the men and women with whom you mingle on a daily basis, the man, woman or child next to you in church tomorrow morning.

[TonyGosling]

More blatant persecution - drip feeding it - utterly disgusting

Male nurse of 40 years is sacked after urging 'patient' to go to church (in a training session)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1187310/Male-nurse-40-years-sa cked-urging-patient-to-church-training-session.html

GP forced to apologise after pagan patient claims he 'oozed Christianity'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1187297/GP-forced-apologise-pa gan-patient-claims-oozed-Christianity.html

Hospital worker told she'll be sacked if she keeps wearing crucifix because 'it might spread infection'
....'My faith is important to me but I'm not a Bible-basher, I don't push it on colleagues or other people.
'Now I have to choose between my job and my faith and that's an awful situation to be in.'.......
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1187093/Hospital-worker-told-s hell-sacked-keeps-wearing-crucifix-spread-infection.html

[fish5133]

As for the Doctor losing his job over suggesting a stressed patient given only a short time too live could go to church to help relieve the stress. I would like to point out that most if not all NHS hospitals have a place of worship and quiet reflection set aside in their buildings and also employ Chaplains. So to suggest that its not one method of helping to sort out stress caused by another NHS doctors pronouncement of the ladies short time to live is a load of tosh.

The RC lady and her cross. Wonder if the cross was gold or silver. As you can now buy plasters for cuts that are impregnated with silver as its known for its sterile properties.

[TonyGosling]

Some Bible resources - to counter some of the millions of pounds of public money which has been hijacked this year promoting the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin.


Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2oyHOQda-Y

Resources:

So What's the Difference? -
http://www.amazon.com/So-Whats-Difference-Fritz-Ridenour/dp/0830718982  /

God Wrote a Book -
http://www.amazon.com/God-Wrote-Book-James-MacDonald/dp/1581346220/

How to Study the Bible -
http://www.harvestbible.org

Systematic Theology -
http://www.amazon.com/Systematic-Theology-Introduction-Biblical-Doctri ne/dp/0310286700/

Grasping God's Word
http://www.amazon.com/Grasping-Gods-Word-Hands-Interpreting/dp/0310259 665/

Jesus and the Rise of Early Christianity -
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Rise-Early-Christianity-Testament/dp/08308 26998/


Resources for Biblical Christianity
http://theendisforever.com/2009/01/15/resources-for-biblical-christian ity/

http://www.radio4all.net:8080/files/tony@tlio.org.uk/2149-1-dialect200 90613.mp3

[Truthseeker_34]

Religion is the biggest form of mindcontrol ever devised.


Peace

Truthseeker_34

[TonyGosling]

Man made pseudo religion is the biggest form of mind control ever devised.

[Pugwash]

Dictionary Definition.

[TonyGosling]

Scientology convicted of fraud in France
hypnotic pseudo-science mind control therapy
The church and its library were fined about $600,000
http://blogs.kansascity.com/crime_scene/2009/10/scientology-convicted- of-fraud-in-france.html

[TonyGosling]

History of the Cross: The Pagan Origin, and Idolatroous Adoption and Worship, of the Image (Paperback)
by Henry Dana Ward



As many have suspected, there is much more to the true, authentic history of the Christian religion than what we had originally been told. Some claims regarding the Church's history are accurate, some are not. The most extreme claims against the religion come from the atheist camp and often remain unproved. But this book is completely different. It comes from a devout Christian, Henry Dana Ward, a believer in Christ who backs himself up with scholarly research and facts.Why, then, was this book written if it goes against traditional beliefs and acceptance? It is because the traditional beliefs surrounding the cross and its worship are wrong! It took time for us to eventually accept the cross in its current form and to worship it and, according to Ward, this was a pagan symbol that should never have been adopted.Idols were not to be worshipped by the earliest of Christians, and the cross was no exception to this rule. Not worshipping the cross is consistent with early Christianity and is not heretical. Its lack of worship is part of Christianity's foundational beliefs and its exclusion should be part of the religion's current structure, according to Ward.

Revering the cross is based on lies, deception, and ignorance. Ward shows how the lies began, who spread them, and how and why they did it. This book has not been in print since 1871. At the time it was released, books of this sort, which challenged accepted belief, were often banned from libraries and people were known to be arrested for sending them in the mail.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Cross-Idolatroous-Adoption-Worship/dp/ 1585090565

[Life]

Constantine instituted the changed doctrines, he replaced the real spiritual truth of ascension and replaced it with the idea ascension can only be achieved at physical death, this is the Osiris Death Cult.

This has has the effect that for people to stand any chance of reaching heaven they must obey the priesthood while alive to service their ascension after death.

This is absolute garbage, yet to see the ascension story from the five sense reality bubble would be the natural understanding of the tale.

Jesus ascended the moment he took on the mission laid before him, had he not he could not have achieved all he did, of course the ruling occult bloodlines shifted this ascension point to the point of a fantasy death, for which there is no credible evidence. The Punjabi in particular would disagree with the crucifixion story as it is understood by the masses, however upon taking on the destiny he did indeed sacrifice his own genetic satisfying life, also symbolised in the grail stories, he entered each castle, the temptations, but continued on knowing full well they only satisfy the material genetic passions. He turned his water into wine the proper spiritual way, the Luciferians do it by vampirism, be it drinking the blood or indeed by sodomy.

Here is today's expression of the Osiris Cult :

Understanding New Labour, David Cameron, And UKIP :

http://www.lifeinthemixtalk.com/?p=7753

As is the case with all esoteric doctrines today, they have been twisted. The serpent cult has entwined itself around everything to form the scriptural doctrines to serve their rule accepted by man as the sanction of the loving God of the people, they of course worship everything material, everything sensual...everything power, they worship the Genetic frequency and all that goes with it.


Such a twist was formed through the stories authored by the group known as Shakespeare to validate the usurpation of the kingly lines by those purer types from the Viking-Norman conquest, how naughty.....

[xmasdale]

[satya]

Religion is one big lie, nothing more than a way of oppresing freedom of thought, individualism. The elite uses this as mass control. Extreme christianity in the states and anykind of extreme worship is a real danger to everyone.

In the states it is state funded and the revised editions of the bible are nothing more than hate propaganda. Spouting ideals such as death to all
other religions, they also endorse slavery and many other hatreds.
Extreme christianity also is being broadcast to hundreds of channels.
They prey on the weak and try to attach themselves through a common
ideal. Once they reel them in the brainwashing begins.

I believe we are descendents from the anunaki and i firmly believe in the next 3 years we will come closer to the truth of our origins.

[TonyGosling]

What does 'extreme worship' mean?
ANd how does it relate to religious extremism?

[satya]

[fish5133]

[Disco_Destroyer]

[satya]

[David WJ Sherlock]

I have decided to revoke my original feelings for composing this thread. I have done further research and now realise that promoting Christianity as a lie. And films such as "ZEITGEIST" (which I fell for) is a tool of the elite. They actually wish to bring down Christianity, to make way for their new age religions. It makes sense to me now. We all know there is corruption in religion. But that is the fault of man, not God. What I do know is... The NWO subscribe to many deities. All the same that are included in many new age religions. They only cite God when it suits them. But what they get up to out of the public eye. Is just plain occult.

We all know what Mr Blair is all about. See this:

http://www.rense.com/general18/tonylizards.htm

We have seen what goes on at the Grove. All this is what "ZEITGEIST" tries to promote. "ZEITGEIST" is NWO propaganda. And I now regret getting sucked in.

[Frank Freedom]

Strewth,it's been 35 years since I last saw or heard of any mention of Larry Norman

I've just seen last nights 'The Review Show' on BBC2, my usual habitual thing where (especially) any films they generally knock I put on my 'to see' list,and vice-versa
Last night's theme "Is atheism the new religion?"was yet another attack on religion which managed to include all three monotheistic one's starting with Philip Pullman's latest book entitled:
'The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ' ,where Mary gives birth to twin boys Jesus and Christ
The question was then asked "Is christian belief under attack by this book?" Peter Hitchens to his credit imo,called it propaganda for the young who normally are his readers,and said Pullman had stated once
that he intended to undermine christianity.
Next up the "race/religion" comedy 'The Infidel' written by David Baddiel (I confess I like what I see here) where a man grows up a muslim only to be told he really is jewish, amusing cultural changes inevitably follow:lol:
Of course there is the usual reference to atheism really kicking off after 9/11.Brian Eno was interesting at the end mentioning that Wikileaks 38 minute Iraq massacre video ,while in the background what looked like swastika art!

For those still tuning into the propaganda corporation,and with iPlayer it's here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00s0d5z/The_Review_Show_09_04_20 10/

[Disco_Destroyer]

[David WJ Sherlock]

[Frank Freedom]

Yes well said David.

Within the messages of many prominent speakers of truth,comes the themes of oneness, and global consciousness.This at first glance would appeal to the vast majority of folks,but the concept has a hidden agenda. "oneness" it seems implies the sacrifice of the self,aka the naughty ego,and individuality,they start wars apparently so I ask do we want to be unthinking drones?
The related method of conformity through "diveristy training" is happening now,aided by the PC brigade,this affects the way we naturally react to each other as individuals.

Zeitgeist:Expose false flag terrorism, the fraudulent banking system and aid the destruction of mono-theistic religion for a new world thingy,without your free thinking personality,and a few other things.

A cunning plan eh Baldrick!

[paul wright]

[acrobat74]

[Frank Freedom]

It's late now acrobat, and can barely grasp what you have stated atm, but I do have a overwhelming desire to ask you what you think of collectivism as a concept?

[acrobat74]

You have an eye for conundrums, don't you?

Tricky question so I'll caveat the answer: in a fiat money system like ours, where governments are owned by financiers, I deplore collectivism and I think it's dangerous.

[David WJ Sherlock]

"COLLECTIVISM". Sounds like Borg-ism to me.

An ideal that puts society over the individual. The subjugation of one to a group. whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism wants an individual tied to collective action and thinking for what is called "the common good". (Common Purpose you could argue). Religion could be in this number. But faith does not have to be. It sounds globalist to me. I would imagine the NWO would aspire to this.

[Frank Freedom]

[Frank Freedom]

I'm not sure whether God or Lucifer seems to have destroyed my TV tube tonight,as there are advantages and disadvantages to this either way