#so the devil can make autocracy work | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thevisionsofgod · 4 years

Text

What Is God’s Kingdom?

God’s Kingdom is an idea that God has created to bring man back to himself. “This people have I formed for myself: they shall shew forth my praise.” (Isaiah 43:21). It is a universal empire, covering heaven and earth (Daniel 2:44), owned by God and headed by his beloved son Jesus Christ, whom he as put in office to defeat Satan the Devil and establish his Kingdom for an eternity (Psalms 110:2, Daniel 7:13-14, Revelation 19:11-21, 12:7-12, Isaiah 9:6-7, 32:1, etc). And, after the saints have taught the message, they will be rewarded with the opportunity to live eternally and the assignment of assisting Jesus Christ in judging the earth (Revelation 1:6, Luke 12:32, 22:28-30, etc).

Even though the Kingdom of God is in heaven and earth, the heavenly portion of it is a lot more important. The parable of the lost sheep tells us that (Matthew 18:10-14), with ninety-nine sheep to one. Jesus Christ called God’s Kingdom the kingdom of heaven, but that doesn’t mean that we are going there to inherit it there. It just means that it’s where power comes from.

It is very easy to understand the Kingdom of God once we understand the kingdom of the Devil, and how spirits work generally. The Bible tells us that the Devil owned seven empires (Revelation 17:10-11). Satan the Devil would sell an idea to people he’d chosen to do his work. Many times it would be the kings, as the spirits can control the hearts of kings (Proverbs 21:1). Satan the Devil influences the hearts of people and uses them to advance his will. And the Kingdom of God works the same way. God has planted his ideas in the hearts of some people, and they live their lives out accordingly. Some of them teach the message (the saints - Matthew 24:31, 14, Joel 2:28-29).

In Revelation 12:1-12, there is an illustration of the Kingdom of God. The woman is God’s organization, or Zion. They gave birth to God’s Kingdom. However, it came with many birth pangs, another way of saying labour pains. A woman has lots of trouble and pain when giving birth, and the same goes with God’s Kingdom. The first and second world wars were very painful and troubling, but that gave birth to God’s Kingdom. Many people died, more injured, and the idea of autocracy collapsed. And freedom was given to all of mankind. However, Satan the Devil wasn’t done just yet. He is trying to go against what Jesus Christ and God have set up, but God has sentenced him, and he’s going to be defeated for all time (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9). His kingdom will take over. “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.” (Isaiah 2:2).

This idea is going to take a process. “The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.” (Matthew 13:31-32). And it’s not something that we can point to, “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, the kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! Or lo there! For behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20-21).

The Kingdom of God is going to bring peace to this world. “And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts. The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts.” (Haggai 2:7, 9). However, it will be only the meek, the people who believe and use their lives to support that idea, that will be able to inherit the rewards that it will bring. “For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shall diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.” (Psalms 37:9-11). “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5).

As a result of all this, it is important that we make this our biggest interest and priority, and do whatever possible to help advance the process. "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." (Matthew 6:33).

#christianity #christ #word of god #god's word #God #Jesus #God's Kingdom #Kingdom of God #bible #religion #spirituality #truth #faith #belief

0 notes

theunofficialchurchofsatan · 7 years

Text

The History Of The Sigil Of Baphomet

There have been many rumors and claims regarding this symbol, and here we recount the Church of Satan’s discovery and use of this powerful image.

Prior to the worldwide press given the Church of Satan—and later the publication of The Satanic Bible — the now familiar goat / pentagram / “Leviathan” graphic had not been used as the prime symbol for Satanism. Our younger readers may find this hard to believe, but it is a fact.

Examine the literature and imagery predating the founding of the Church of Satan in 1966: Satanism is usually denoted by inverted crosses or crucifixes and blasphemous parodies of Christian art. There are also images of goats and devils, and demons—along with their sigils from grimoires—all used to represent the “satanic.” However, the complete graphic which we now call the “Sigil of Baphomet” only became associated as the foremost symbol of Satanism in the public and media consciousness after the founding of the Church of Satan and Dr. LaVey’s use of it. From its inception, the Church of Satan has been constantly spotlighted in print, film, and television media all over the globe, so this was to be expected. The word “Baphomet” dates back to records of Templar trials, and there are ongoing discussions concerning its derivation and meaning. However, there is no clear evidence that the symbol which we in the Church of Satan call “Baphomet” is similarly derived; the evidence, if any, has not yet been released in any public forum.

…the “Sigil of Baphomet” became associated as the foremost symbol of Satanism [after] the Church of Satan and Dr. LaVey’s use of it.”

THE UNHOLY GENESIS OF THE SIGIL OF BAPHOMET

A discussion concerning the symbolism of pentagrams is contained in Eliphas Lévi’s Dogme et Rituel de la haute magie (1855-56 & 61, translated into English by A. E. Waite under the title Transcendental Magic). There are no accompanying illustrations. Here is the English translation of the quote:

The Pentagram, which in Gnostic schools is called the Blazing Star, is the sign of intellectual omnipotence and autocracy. It is the Star of the Magi; it is the sign of the Word made flesh; and, according to the direction of its points, this absolute magical symbol represents order or confusion, the Divine Lamb of Ormuz and St. John, or the accursed goat of Mendes. It is initiation or profanation; it is Lucifer or Vesper, the star of morning or evening. It is Mary or Lilith, victory or death, day or night. The Pentagram with two points in the ascendant represents Satan as the goat of the Sabbath; when one point is in the ascendant, it is the sign of the Saviour. By placing it in such a manner that two of its points are in the ascendant and one is below, we may see the horns, ears and beard of the hierarchic Goat of Mendes, when it becomes the sign of infernal evocations.

The pentagram or pentalpha is a symbol which has long been affiliated with demonic activity. From at least the early Middle Ages an entire genre of ritual magic handbooks and manuals has claimed to originate from King Solomon based, no doubt, on his legendary reputation for conjuring and employing demons in the construction of his temple. Among the oldest of these grimoires is the Testament of Solomon dating from perhaps as early as the First Century BC. This text includes a diagram of the pentalpha and relates that Solomon had a ring inscribed with that symbol which gave to him the ability to call forth demons and to have them work his will. The image in the manuscript shows the star point up. Inscribed on a ring however, the direction of the point might be immaterial as it could be perceived either way.

What was the source for this symbolism presented by Lévi in this work? Scholars researching the sources for his writings might be able to trace this.

As far as we now know, the first printed artwork for an image of a goat face in a five-pointed star appeared in an engraving on page 387 of the 1897 book La Clef de la Magie Noire, by French nobleman and occultist Stanislas de Guaita. The book was part of his multi-volume Essais de Sciences Maudites which not only put forth some of his own occult ideas underlying his establishment of a group of Rosicrucians but also served as a platform for his share of the accusations of Satanism that he and his enemies—such as Là-Bas author J.K. Huysmans and friends—were publicly throwing at each other at the time. De Guaita wrote that he considered Eliphas Lévi to be one of the greatest geniuses of the 19th century so it is not surprising that he would take one of Lévi’s concepts and embellish it further. Lévi mentions the demon Lilith in the above passage and the de Guaita image incorporates her name into the graphic along with that of Samael. In different places Lévi calls Samael both a white-light genie of Mars as well as the Hebrew name for a demonic force. Lévi makes no mention of Leviathan but the de Guaita image is encirlced by this name in Hebrew script.In describing the graphic, de Guaita only slightly expands on Lévi and says nothing about Samael, Lilith, or Leviathan. After describing the point-up pentagram as a white-light symbol of man “voluntarily rejoined in the providential plan,” de Guaita notes:“But oriented in the opposite direction, the pentagrammatic Star is nothing more than a symbol of iniquity, perdition, blasphemy: its two points in the air become the horns of the foul Goat threatening Heaven, and whose head is framed with the stellar pentacle, with its low ears in the side branches, and its beard in disorder in the single lower point. [Page 386]”This engraving may have been taken from elsewhere or it may have been created by de Guaita’s secretary and assistant Oswald Wirth as noted below.Lévi’s description can also be seen as a clear influence in Paul Jagot’s Science Occulte et Magie Pratique (Paris: Editions Drouin, 1924, page #172). As can be seen below, it is figure number 24 and is labeled “the pentagram espressive of subversion.” How the author came by this image is unknown to us. Note as well that the star itself is “open,” rather than composed of five “alphas.” Next we find on page 47 of the Handbook of Magic & Witchcraft by Charles W. Olliver (Rider & Co., London, 1928) an appropriation from La Clef de la Magie Noire, shown below left. Olliver’s book is highly derivative of prior works and it is clear that he simply lifted the images from de Guaita, subtracting the surrounding circles and Hebrew characters. It is referred to in the text as the “Inverted Pentagram of Black Magic,” and is coupled with the “Pentagram of Appolonius,” shown above right.The continued evolution of this goat-graphic can be found in a 1931 book concerning Freemasonry by Oswald Wirth (Oswald Wirth, La Franc-Maçonnerie Rendue Intelligible à ces Adeptes, Deuxième Partie: “Le Compagnon,” Paris: Derry-Livres, 1931, page #60). In addition to creating illustrations for de Guaita, Wirth also wrote and illustrated a number of his own books on occult topics including the tarot and Freemasonry. His tarot deck is still sold commercially today. In La Franc-Maçonnerie Rendue Intelligible à ces Adeptes, Deuxième Partie: “Le Compagnon,” Wirth presented his own original rendering of the goat head and pentagram image and identified it as his own by discretely including his “OW” initials just above the goat’s head.The unadulterated de Guaita images re-appeared in a book by Maurice Bessy: A Pictorial History of Magic and the Supernatural (English first edition 1964, French first edition: Histoire en 1000 Images de la Magie, Editions du Pont Royal, 1961).The graphic image in the Bessy book (English edition, page 198 under the heading “Satanic Sciences”) has a caption which reads:“624-625. Pentagrams are the result of obscure numerological speculations. The five-pointed star, for example, seems to be characteristic of the Christian era, while the cross is the symbol (amongst others) of the figure five: four arms and the centre. By a strange coincidence, the Holy Spirit, the United States, and the U.S.S.R. and Islam use the fivepointed star as their emblem. (The opposition of good and evil is indicated through the inverted triangles).”The above illustration is to the right of this caption. As in all prior appearances of this and similar renderings, nowhere in this book is #625 referred to as “The Sigil of Baphomet.”For the actual cover of this hard-bound book, an artist rendered symbol #625, minus the words “Lilith” and “Samael,” and it was printed in white on the black cloth cover. It is very striking.

During his years of research into the “Black Arts,” Anton LaVey had come across this book and added it to his collection. So when he chose to metamorphose his magic circle, “The Order of the Trapezoid,” into the Church of Satan, he decided that this particular symbol was the one which most fully embodied the principles which were the bedrock of the first aboveground Satanic church.The pentagram (pentalpha) comes from the Pythagorean tradition. The goat’s or ram’s head within it refers to the Goat of Mendes, a symbol of the Egyptian Neter Amon, who was called “the hidden one, he who abides in all things, the soul of all phenomena” and is thus the closest Neter to the Dark Force which is seen to permeate and motivate all nature. The two concentric circles which contain the word “Leviathan” written in Hebrew (starting at the lowermost point and moving counterclockwise) stem from the traditions of the Ophite (serpent) Jews, and this is the essence of the Dragon of the Abyss, descended from Tiamat, sometimes symbolized as an ouroboros (serpent biting its own tail forming a circle). Thus, in one sigil, we find a confluence of several cultures’ approach to embodying what we call Satan.It is this cover art which was enlarged and placed above the altar in the main ritual chamber (as well as above a lower-level altar) in the infamous Black House.That the original source for this symbol was the Maurice Bessy book was well-known among the members who attended rituals at the Black House during our formative years. The book was constantly being perused by them, and was often used as a prop in photo shoots (minus the dust jacket which did not include this symbol). Anton LaVey never claimed to have designed the Bessy version of this symbol (as falsely stated by some of our detractors).In its early days, the Church of Satan used the version seen on the cover of the Bessy book on its membership cards and stationery as well as on the medallions which were created both by hand and by professional manufacturers. Indeed, there were many variations, based on the skill of the renderers as well as on the resolution for detail of the means used to create the final product.While The Satanic Bible was being written, it was decided that a unique version of this symbol must be rendered to be identified exclusively with the Church of Satan. The pentagram was made geometrically precise, the two circles perfect, the Hebrew characters were distorted to make them look more sharply serpentine and “corrupted with time,” while the goat face was redrawn with particular attention paid toward the eyes. The original highly-detailed artwork was first used to create altar plaques which were available only to local Church of Satan members (later, in February of 1970, they were made available to the general membership). This new version was then used on the cover of the groundbreaking LP, The Satanic Mass (©1968), produced by the Church of Satan. In addition to a recorded Satanic Mass, this LP included the “Prologue” and “Books of Satan: Verses I through V” from the then-unreleased book, The Satanic Bible. The album’s cover design was credited to “Hugo Zorilla,” a pseudonym used by Anton LaVey for some of his artwork. The liner notes, attributed to Franklin Kincaid, say that “the Satanic symbol, Baphomet,” was adopted from the Knights Templar. This symbol was finally widely-released to the general public in December of 1969 with the publication of The Satanic Bible, where it adorned the cover and appeared on the interior page introducing the section detailing the Satanic Ritual. And, significantly, here in this book was the very first time that this sigil was referred to as the “symbol of Baphomet” in any publication available to a mass audience. It was this version which the Church of Satan then had made into cloisonné medallions (which were only available to members) and it became the standard logo for all Church of Satan materials. We began calling it more precisely the “Sigil of Baphomet” and so it was named in print in The Satanic Rituals (released in December of 1972). It should be noted that this version is a copyrighted graphic which belongs to the Church of Satan alone. We have the legal right to place the © symbol next to this rendering, should we care to do so.The Church of Satan did file for (1981) and then received (1983) a trademark which protects the use of the Sigil of Baphomet with the words “Church of Satan.” The Church of Satan therefore has the legal right to place the ® symbol meaning “registered trademark” next to this combination of symbol and words. This trademark also prohibits anyone from using something similar in combination of name and symbol, which could constitute an illegal dilution or blurring of the trademark.Current trademark laws are now in flux regarding this issue of trademark blurring—the use of marks similar to existing trademarks—but they are moving in the direction of favoring the forbidding of marks that could be considered misleading in any way, shape, or form.Anton LaVey authorized Hell’s Kitchen Productions, Inc. to produce a Sigil of Baphomet medallion, and so a minor variation of the Church’s official Sigil of Baphomet was created in which the Hebrew characters between the circles were no longer outlines, but filled-in (a minor change). This rendering is also protected by copyright laws.The copyright for the artwork that appears on the cover of the Bessy book belonged to the publisher of that book. Since that book is out of print, the copyright has lapsed, and thus the rights for the text reverted to the author, and the rights for the graphics contained therein would need to be determined—usually they revert to the artist or other source of origin. After passage of enough time, if the estates of the authors/creators do not renew the copyrights, the items in question then enter public domain. Thus, the Bessy cover rendition is most probably now in the public domain.If anyone wants to legally use our version of the “Sigil of Baphomet,” they may ask for permission, and we have generally been quite liberal in licensing people to use this for various projects and goods—though we usually only allow its use on websites when (and where) they are mentioning the Church of Satan. Otherwise, those wishing to use a public domain version of a goat / pentagram / “Leviathan” symbol must go back to the historically published sources, or they may take the challenge to draw a fresh one.It is interesting to note that, prior to its slight enhancement and adoption by the Church of Satan, this sinister symbol appears never to have been used by any who would actually honor and revere it. Rather it was conceived, nutured and even continually passed along by Levi, de Guaita, Wirth and others—men who professed to oppose that which they imagined it to represent. These were ceremonial magicians, condemned by the Christian church yet still largely captive to the common mass morality of their day. In their quest to counter their critics, they dreamed up an imaginary cabal of selfish, unconstrained, unconventional black magicians in comparison to whom they hoped to seem quite acceptable to polite society. Was this a simple fiction to deflect public persecution or a more fully formed thoughtform fueled and fed by the nightmares and perhaps even secret, supressed desires in the unconscious minds of these magicians? There is no way to know for certain. The history is clear, however, that the image of the inverse pentagram invoking the head of the sabbatic goat was conjured up from their imaginations, imbued with geat resonance by the forbidden things it was believed to represent, and then passed from one seeker to the next for more than a century until Anton LaVey embraced it, and made what it had always symbolized manifestly real.So marking the original appearance of this potent concept to Lévi’s description of 1855 C.E., we Satanists now celebrate the 150th anniversary of the coming forth of what we call the Sigil of Baphomet. We know that it shall continue its dark reign in minds and hearts for years to come as the preeminent visual distillation of the iconoclastic philosophy of Satanism.

#satanism #satanic #satanist #satan #lucifer #anton lavey #the church of satan

9 notes · View notes

swedna · 5 years

Link

What Donald Trump would give to have rallies like Narendra Modi’s: the adulation, the machismo, the beautiful bigness of it all. Indian democracy makes American democracy seem quaint, puny and rather un-great.

The Indian prime minister’s event in Bhadohi, one of three on a recent May day in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, has started late and the heat is sweltering. But there are still more than 50,000 people in a field, most of them men. The event surges with testosterone: part open-air concert, part cup final (everyone is wearing saffron, like a stadium of Dutch soccer fans), and part religious ceremony.

“God has sent clouds to protect us,” announces one warm-up act. “Do not eat or drink on polling day until you have pressed the lotus button,” the faithful are told, referring to the symbol of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party that will appear on ballots. Another speaker shifts straight to the point: “We will destroy Pakistan.” The crowd shouts back: “Long live Mother India.”

And everywhere there is Narendra Modi. Modi masks, Modi flags, Modi songs, mostly focusing on him as India’s chowkidar or watchman. Eventually he arrives, like a rock star, by helicopter. The crowd roars at the first glimpse of him. Then he is on the stage, telling them that he has made India great again. “Don’t you feel proud that countries respect India again?” he asks. “Don’t you feel proud that we carried out surgical strikes on Pakistan? Did you like it when we struck down a satellite in space? Did you feel like you did it? That is the power of India.” He pauses. “And what is the reason for this?” he asks.

“Modi,” the crowd yells back. “No. It is because of you and your support,” he responds.

There is a brief moment of (relative) personal impotence when the Watchman, like Mick Jagger at Altamont, pleads with his devotees, for their own safety, not to push toward the stage. But that is the only sign of vulnerability. The real weakness resides with those who stand in Modi’s way, many of whom are dismissed with Trumpian nicknames, starting with “the Dynast,” which is what Modi calls Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition Congress Party.

Yet amid all this machismo, the subject about which you would expect the Watchman to be both most boastful and most watchful is largely absent: the economy. India is now the world’s fastest growing big economy. But Modi makes only a few references to Bhadohi’s carpet industry, one of the largest in South Asia. This may be because he knows the economy is still not growing quite fast enough to create the 1 million jobs a month India’s growing population needs; or it may be because he wants to concentrate his energies elsewhere in his next term.

Either of those explanations should scare the businesspeople and foreign investors who trust Modi. This year, overseas investors have bought about $10 billion of Indian equities, the most across emerging Asia after China, on optimism that the Watchman will retain power, without bothering to find out much about what he might do.

In fact, India’s long, rolling election, whose result will finally be announced on May 23, deserves far more attention than the West is giving it. Consider this: Even if Modi loses, he will still probably win 50 million more votes (the BJP got about 171 million votes in 2014) than US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton garnered together in 2016. He will also, paradoxically, represent one of the world’s three largest Muslim populations (even if almost none of them vote for him). That this election is something of a battle for India’s soul — the inclusive, chaotic tradition that Congress and Gandhi represent versus Modi’s tougher Hindu nationalism — only adds to its importance.

And India matters — not just as the world’s other great engine of economic growth but also as the other rising power in Asia, with thousands of soldiers along its contested borders with China and Pakistan. Amid all the words printed and earnest cogitation in the West about the nationalist ambitions of Xi Jinping’s China, the Watchman has been given a pass. And his influence will only grow. According to the United Nations, India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country by 2024 — the year that could also mark the end of Modi’s second term.

It is worth acknowledging both the good things Modi has done and the bad things he has not done since he came to power in 2014. Back then, he swept aside a stale, corrupt Congress-led government on the promise of economic reform and a record as an efficient, business-friendly chief minister in the state of Gujarat. Indian voters, perhaps correctly, ignored critics, including this writer, who worried about Modi’s divisiveness, symbolized by a 2002 riot in Gujarat that left 1,000 Muslims dead.

Since then, Modi has run a much cleaner government than Congress did. He has ushered in a series of economic reforms, notably a simplification of its tax system. India’s infrastructure has improved: There are new roads and, crucially, many more toilets in villages. He has also been less divisive than many feared. True, 36 Muslims have been lynched (mainly for allegedly consuming beef or transporting cattle); the press has been bullied, with anti-Modi editors removed; and Pakistan remains vilified. But in the gruesome arithmetic of Indian sectarianism, none of these things seem especially exceptional.

However, elections are about the future not the past — and here Modi’s shift away from the economy seems part of a trend. Six of his nine main economic reforms were launched in the first half of his five-year reign; they have slowed in recent years. The BJP manifesto is short on new economic ideas while Congress’s is unusually dynamic, with some spotting the hand of Raghuram Rajan, the reformist former head of the central bank. The BJP campaign, like Modi’s speech, has focused on nationalism. The party is even running a candidate who is under indictment on terrorism charges relating to a 2008 bomb blast in a Muslim area that killed six people.

Modi’s supporters have their answers ready. Yes, he is stirring up Islamophobia, again — but what politician doesn’t? He doesn’t want to make a lot of promises about economic reform, because this time he will probably govern in a coalition with another party. Eventually, he will further simplify the national sales tax and push ahead with land acquisition reform. Despite what he says, the Watchman’s focus is really China, not Pakistan. All this leaves two questions. The first is: Will it work at the polls? Congress is certainly a more potent force than last time. Tactically, it has formed local alliances that should hurt Modi. (For instance, in 2014 the BJP swept the board in Uttar Pradesh, winning almost all 80 seats because the anti-Modi vote was split; this time around Congress is informally supporting local parties.) Rahul Gandhi has been joined on the campaign trail by his sister, Priyanka, who looks like their all-conquering grandmother Indira (any aspiring politician should watch a video where Priyanka calmly picks up a cobra). Congress’s manifesto shrewdly includes a basic income for the poor of 72,000 rupees (about $1,000) a year.

What’s more, Congress’s main pitch is that a second Modi term would be too extreme for a country that wants to remain secular and united. “India is like an ocean,” Gandhi argues. “It doesn't like big waves.” And there is some truth to this. The previous BJP government served only one full term, and Gandhi’s own father, Rajiv, was ejected in 1989 when he turned authoritarian. Plus, some businesspeople who backed Modi last time around privately think that a Congress alliance, with Rajan as finance minister or even prime minister, would be best.

The fact that these views are private reflects not just their fear of Modi, but also their assumption that he will win. The BJP has the superior organization, and it is outspending Congress by a large margin. It also has the more energized base. The best guess is that Modi will be back, but possibly forced to share power in a coalition with other nationalists.

At least this seems to be what markets and investors are hoping for: better the devil you know, goes the argument. But do the traders in New York and London really know Narendra Modi?

This leads to the second question: What would a second Modi term look like? It is likely to be more divisive. Across India, minorities are frightened — not just Muslims but Christians. Other liberties are at risk, too. If you want a gauge of India’s press freedom you need only open a newspaper: The BJP has banned maps that show where the actual border is; you can only show where India thinks it should be. That is fake geography of a sort that even autocracies like China spurn.

And there remains the economy. Under Modi, India has begun to catch up to China, but it is still years behind, in terms of jobs, education, health and, increasingly, the condition of the environment. Beijing is moving away from coal much quicker than Delhi. And there is the desperate demand of those millions flooding into the workforce. One study put the unemployment rate at a 45-year high. That is a little unfair because it does not include the millions of poor Indians who have livelihoods but not formal employment. Yet the pressure to create jobs is there, and so is the pressure to improve basic education — absenteeism is still rampant in state schools.

As the saffron-clad young men stream out of the dusty field in Bhadohi, some of them still chanting the Watchman’s name and yelling for Pakistan’s humiliation, the thought remains that they need something to do in between rallies. That means much more dynamic economic reform, not less. At the very least, foreigners should be praying that Modi picks up where he started in 2014, not where he left off in 2019.

#Trump

0 notes

serenagaywaterford · 5 years

Note

#5 - love your long posts, never apologize for it. The longer, the better in fact. And yeah, you were right, enough about Nick, until he becomes more interesting, if it happens at all. Back to Serena, I don’t post on tumblr, or discuss the show much in real life, so I don’t get any backlash. It’s probably easier for me, but I am an unabashed Serena apologist, and I don’t really feel bad about it, at all... anyway, love your posts, your fanfics, and your appreciation of Serena fucking Joy!

AHHH! I feel so bad cos on mobile read more cuts don’t work!!! :D But I am very relieved that at least you don’t hate lonnnnnnnnggggg rants lol.

Yeah, Nick. Nick, nick, nick… I wish I could find better things to say about him but I can’t. Not until the character actually gets interesting and does something good. Like, truly good for women in Gilead. Not just his baby mama. I just have such a strong lack of interest in anything he says or does, lmao.

FIVE, CAN YOU LEND ME SOME OF THAT NO FUCKS GIVEN ATTITUDE?! I really want to be as confident. “I am an unabashed Serena apologist, and I don’t really feel bad about it, at all”. I WANT THIS TOO. I think it probably does help not dealing with fandom at large cos it’s just an angry pit of cultish vipers out there if you even mention “Well, Serena is interesting for many reasons.” AHHHH! DEVIL WORSHIPPER!!!!!! RAPIST NAZI LOVER!!!!!” with a side of, “If you don’t ship N**k/June, you’re disgusting and don’t understand THT at all because it’s the One True Hope and Nick is just the best!”

-_-

Like.........???

No.

sorry....

But it’s simply to exhausting to even try to respond to the vitriol anymore. I tried a while ago but no one (except our little group of Serena fans) wants to hear it. (THAT IS WHY I AM SO HAPPY I HAVE THE FELLOW SERENA ANONS/FANS HERE.)

They hate her, she’s 1000% evil--the MOST evil on THT, she is responsible for Gilead and everything bad that has ever happened, she deserves to be beaten by fred and lose a finger that’s not even good enough!!, the end. thus i’m straight up blocked immediately for questioning that. No discussion allowed. If you like her, for any reason, or try to understand her at all, you also must be a right-wing, religious, anti-feminist nut job who hates June. You don’t deserve to even be in a THT discussion if you attempt to understand Serena at all, and god forbid you attempt to explain or reason through her behaviour or psychology. I can’t imagine how it would be if I flat out woobiefied her or was a Serena apologist in those circles. I mean, it’s totes cool if you’re a Nick or Lawrence apologist, or apparently even a Fred apologist (yeah. I saw that once and died a little inside.). Even Aunt Lydia apologists aren’t completely beaten down but Serena? Well, excuse me, your soul must be rotten just like hers sorry bye.

and i’m like...

because yeah, it really makes your viewpoint so much stronger by just blocking people who question you and insulting them personally instead... it’s not like THT is criticising hiveminds or autocracies or cultish behaviour or anything lol.

it’s not like that sort of behaviour in a freakin TV show fandom about fascism and women’s complexities is a huge hypocritical stance to take.

so i give up lol and stick to this little blog here

i just wish i had more energy to blatantly go out into the wilds of fandom and be like I LOVE SERENA GIVE HER A REDEMPTION ARC I DON’T FEEL BAD IN ANY WAY FIGHT ME ALL DAY LONG.

ALSO LIKE

why does nick-loving necessitate rabid serena-hate? like i have personal issues with nick, but afaik there are plenty of serena people who don’t hate nick? and there are other fans who don’t like either. but it seems like if you ship n**/june there is some rule that you must be so excessively anti-serena that you look plain ole crazy. i am sure there must be people who ship it and also think serena is an interesting character???? maybe? or maybe the sorts of people who delve into serena’s character are just too different and nick is just not interesting enough when you recognise what a 100000% more complex character she is. she spoils us, lol. i dunno what the answer is. i can’t say i’ve “met” any serious n/j shippers that are also big serena fans. i would assume they exist. tho maybe the two things aren’t compatible lmao. different strokes, i suppose. lol i just wish they’d allow people to have differing opinions without having a stroke every time serena is mentioned as something other than pure evil, or be able to take criticism of precious nick without throwing a tantrum and refusing to acknowledge the problematic nature of him and other characters. (god help you if you say you don’t like n/j hahaha.)

anyway i don’t like the combative nature of this fandom. like if you aren’t part of the hivemind, you’re not welcome. i honestly don’t understand why it has to be that way??

(it’s also not great that all the big, popular fansites/fanblogs are all n/j and basically refuse to put/reblog anything on them that is any other ship, or basically anything not anti-serena. like imo if you’re running a blog for THE SHOW IN GENERAL, you should welcome all submissions and reblogs no matter if you personally like the ship/character or not. but nope. not in THT fandom lol. i don’t even think skins fandom was this bad and that’s saying something, cos it was pretty polarized but it seemed like the big blogs were fair enough in representation.)

ok i’m obvs taking this fandom thing too seriously and i need to just ignore it. i’m too old for this lol.

just stick to my little corner here with you guys and stop hoping the rest of the fandom leaves me alone hahahah unless they want to be nice ;)

#Anonymous #i am still an angerball today lol #i blame my hormones but also i am very tired haha

0 notes

smartypants196 · 5 years

Text

Eve was Framed

I am nearly finished with my novel 'The Garden Gate Stands Ajar: Eve was Framed by Diane DeVillers or aka SmartyPants196. I googled Eve was framed and was brought to this essay written in 2011by Adair Sanders. It talked about how all through history women has been made the bad gal in the many decades since Adam and Eve were cast out of Garden of Eden.

'The Garden Gate stands ajar: Eve was Framed' is about the imaginary conversations with the original Eve of Biblical times and the modern day Eve, from the previously published book "The Eve Chronicles. It's been my observation that women were seen as the bearer of original sin and that they continue to be seen as man's servant.

Eve Was Framed

Posted on November 29, 2011, by Adair.Sanders

This may be the best bumper sticker I have ever seen. My youngest sports one on her car, a fact which does worry me somewhat since she lives in the deep South where good Christian women are taught to be seen and not heard, to submit themselves to their husbands and to never question male authority. While not all Southern men adhere to this sort of medieval autocracy, there are plenty of them still around. I was raised by one, have a sibling who fervently embraces this philosophy, and have, sadly, actually worked with a few of them. And in all fairness, this sort of belief and mindset is not exclusive to Southern men.

I think Eve really was framed. Organized religion has demonized that poor woman, blaming her for all of mankind’s woes, from the fall from grace in the Garden of Eden to every imaginable bad event thereafter. But I have to ask the question: Where was Adam in all of this? Did Eve force feed him the apple? Get real. Adam was simply the first in the long line of humanity to refuse responsibility for his own actions. I can hear him now. “God, it wasn’t my fault. She made me do it!”

Yes, Biblical scholars, I know Eve blamed it all on the snake, so it is also true that Eve didn’t want to accept responsibility for her actions either. But I find it so interesting that the churches, synagogues, and mosques – all run by men for hundreds of years – have conveniently ignored or forgotten Adam’s equal role in that ancient story.

Religious texts are full of stories of human failings and frailties, with men in most of the starring roles. But in so many of them, it is the evil woman who is responsible for the man’s weakness – Delilah and Bathsheba just to name a few – and only the man who ultimately finds redemption. What is that supposed to mean?

I have issues with organized religion for many reasons, but certainly, the way women have been treated in the name of God ranks pretty high up there. Even today there are many churches where women are excluded from the ministry or the Deaconate and are prohibited from teaching adult Sunday School classes. In those religious communities, women are basically seen as the man’s servant. It’s no wonder so many men are conflicted by the Madonna-Whore complex. What other option has religion offered them?

My daughter is a stickler for the First Amendment, and the heart of a feminist beats strong within her, so naturally, she loves her Eve Was Framed bumper sticker and thinks it makes a great statement. While I agree with her, I also worry a bit about her safety because the first Eve Was Framed bumper sticker that graced her bumper was defaced. When one’s religion teaches that sin originated with a woman and places mankind’s problems at her feet, when one’s religion teaches that women are less than men, and when one’s religion calls a woman a whore and a man engaging in the same behavior just a guy sowing wild oats, is it any wonder that women are abused? And it’s not much of a stretch from defacing my daughter’s bumper sticker to harming her for daring to place it on her car.

Before you dismiss my thoughts as histrionic, think about what is going on in the world. The Taliban kills women for any number of reasons including daring to be educated or showing their faces. In many Arab countries it is illegal for women to drive, and having multiple wives is par for the course. In certain countries, female children are left on the hillside to die or are aborted simply because of gender. And this country is not immune. Go to any fundamentalist or conservative church and see how women are perceived. They are not afforded equal status with their male congregants, either in church or in the home.

Yes, Eve Was Framed is an amusing bumper sticker. But it’s a frightening one as well.

#original eve #women's literature #Garden of Eden #Adair Sanders

0 notes

newstfionline · 6 years

Text

Who’s Afraid of a Balance of Power?

By Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, December 8, 2017

If you took an introduction to international relations course in college and the instructor never mentioned the “balance of power,” please contact your alma mater for a refund. You can find this idea in Thucydides’s Peloponnesian War, Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, and the ancient Indian writer Kautilya’s Arthashastra (“Science of Politics”), and it is central to the work of modern realists like E.H. Carr, Hans J. Morgenthau, Robert Gilpin, and Kenneth Waltz.

Yet despite its long and distinguished history, this simple idea is often forgotten by America’s foreign-policy elites. Instead of asking why Russia and China are collaborating, or pondering what has brought Iran together with its various Middle East partners, they assume it is the result of shared authoritarianism, reflexive anti-Americanism, or some other form of ideological solidarity. This act of collective amnesia encourages U.S. leaders to act in ways that unwittingly push foes closer together, and to miss promising opportunities to drive them apart.

The basic logic behind balance of power theory (or, if you prefer, balance of threat theory) is straightforward. Because there is no “world government” to protect states from each other, each has to rely on its own resources and strategies to avoid being conquered, coerced, or otherwise endangered. When facing a powerful or threatening state, a worried country can mobilize more of its own resources or seek an alliance with other states that face the same danger, in order to shift the balance more in its favor.

In extreme cases, forming a balancing coalition might require a state to fight alongside another country it previously regarded as an enemy or even one it understood would be a rival in the future. Thus, the United States and Great Britain allied with the Soviet Union during World War II, because defeating Nazi Germany took precedence over their long-term concerns about communism. Winston Churchill captured this logic perfectly when he quipped “if Hitler invaded hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt expressed a similar sentiment when he said he “would hold hands with the devil” if it would help beat the Third Reich. When you really need allies, you can’t be too choosy.

Needless to say, “balance of power” logic played an important role in U.S. foreign policy, and especially when security concerns were unmistakable. America’s Cold War alliances (i.e., NATO and the hub-and-spoke system of bilateral alliances in Asia) were formed to balance and contain the Soviet Union, and the same motive led the United States to back an array of authoritarian regimes in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and elsewhere. Similarly, Richard Nixon’s opening to China in 1972 was inspired by fears of rising Soviet power and the recognition that closer ties with Beijing would put Moscow at a disadvantage.

Yet despite its long pedigree and enduring relevance, policymakers and pundits often fail to recognize how balance of power logic drives the behavior of both allies and adversaries. Part of the problem stems from the common U.S. tendency to assume that a state’s foreign policy is mostly shaped by its internal characteristics (i.e., its leaders’ personalities, its political and economic system, or its ruling ideology, etc.) rather than by its external circumstances (i.e., the array of threats it faces).

From this perspective, America’s “natural” allies are states that share our values. When people speak of the United States as “leader of the free world,” or when they describe NATO as a “transatlantic community” of liberal democracies, they are suggesting that these countries are supporting each other because they share a common vision for how the world should be ordered.

Shared political values are not irrelevant, of course, and some empirical studies suggesting democratic alliances are somewhat more stable than alliances between autocracies or between democracies and nondemocracies. Nonetheless, assuming that a state’s internal composition determines its identification of friends and enemies can lead us astray in several ways.

First, if we believe shared values are a powerful unifying force, we are likely to overstate the cohesion and durability of some of our existing alliances. NATO is an obvious case in point: The breakup of the Soviet Union removed its principal rationale, and herculean efforts to give the alliance a new set of missions have not prevented repeated and growing signs of strain. Matters might be different if NATO’s campaigns in Afghanistan or Libya had gone well--but they didn’t.

To be sure, the Ukraine crisis arrested NATO’s slow decline temporarily, but this modest reversal merely underscores the central role external threats (i.e., fear of Russia) play in holding NATO together. “Shared values” are simply insufficient to sustain a meaningful coalition of nearly 30 nations located on both sides of the Atlantic, and all the more so as Turkey, Hungary, and Poland abandon the liberal values on which NATO supposedly rests.

Second, if you forget about balance of power politics, you’re likely to be surprised when other states (or in some cases, nonstate actors) join forces against you. The George W. Bush administration was taken aback when France, Germany, and Russia joined forces to block its efforts to get Security Council approval for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a step these states took because they understood that toppling Saddam Hussein might backfire in ways that would threaten them (as it eventually did). Yet U.S. leaders couldn’t grasp why these states weren’t leaping at the opportunity to remove Saddam and transform the region along democratic lines. As Bush’s national security advisor Condoleezza Rice later admitted, “I’ll just put it very bluntly. We simply didn’t understand it.”

U.S. officials were equally surprised when Iran and Syria joined forces to help the Iraqi insurgency following the U.S. invasion, even though it made perfect sense for them to make sure the Bush administration’s effort at “regional transformation” failed. Iran and Syria would have been next on Bush’s hit list if the occupation had succeeded, and they were just acting as any threatened state would (and as balance of power theory predicts). Americans have no reason to welcome such behavior, of course, but they should not have been surprised by it.

Third, focusing on political or ideological affinities and ignoring the role of shared threats encourages us to see adversaries as more unified than they really are. Instead of recognizing that opponents are cooperating with each other largely for instrumental or tactical reasons, U.S. officials and commentators are quick to assume that enemies are bound together by a deep commitment to a set of common goals. In an earlier era, Americans saw the communist world as a tightly unified monolith and mistakenly believed all communists everywhere were reliable agents of the Kremlin. Not only did this error lead them to miss (or deny) the rancorous Sino-Soviet split, but U.S. leaders also mistakenly assumed that non-communist leftists were likely to be sympathetic to Moscow as well. Soviet leaders made the same error in reverse, by the way, only to be disappointed when their efforts to court non-communist Third World socialists frequently backfired.

This misguided instinct lives on today, alas, in phrases like the “axis of evil” (which implied Iran, Iraq, and North Korea were part of the same unified movement), or in misleading terms like “Islamofascism.” Instead of seeing extremist movements as competing organizations with a variety of worldviews and objectives, U.S. officials and pundits routinely speak and act as if our foes were all operating from an identical playbook. Far from being powerfully united by a common doctrine, these groups often suffer from deep ideological schisms and personal rivalries, and they join forces more from necessity than conviction. They can still cause trouble, of course, but assuming all terrorists are loyal foot soldiers in a single global movement makes them look scarier than they really are.

Even worse, instead of looking for ways to encourage splits and schisms among extremists, the United States often acts and speaks in ways that drive them closer together. To take an obvious example, although there may be some modest ideological common ground between Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, and the Sadr movement in Iraq, each of these groups has its own interests and agendas, and their collaboration is best understood as a strategic alliance rather than as a cohesive or unified ideological front. Launching a full-court press against them--as Saudi Arabia and Israel would like us to do--will merely give all of our adversaries even more reason to help each other.

Lastly, ignoring balance of power dynamics squanders one of America’s chief geopolitical advantages. As the only great power in the Western hemisphere, the United States has enormous latitude when choosing allies and thus enormous potential leverage over them. Given the “free security” that America’s geographic isolation provides, it can play hard-to-get, take advantage of regional rivalries when they occur, encourage states and nonstate actors in distant regions to compete for our regard and support, and remain watchful for opportunities to drive wedges between our current adversaries. This approach requires flexibility, a sophisticated understanding of regional affairs, an aversion to “special relationships” with other states, and a refusal to demonize countries with which we have differences.

Unfortunately, the United States has done the exact opposite for the past few decades, especially in the Middle East. Instead of exhibiting flexibility, we’ve rigidly stuck to the same partners and worried more about reassuring them than about getting them to act as we think best. We’ve deepened our “special relationships” with Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia even as the justification for such intimate support has grown weaker. And with occasional exceptions, we’ve treated adversaries like Iran or North Korea as pariahs to threaten and sanction but not to talk with. The results, alas, speak for themselves.

#balance of power #international relations

0 notes

hellojulie1971 · 6 years

Text

LUCIFER’S REBELLION

In the beginning God. That’s all there was before He created anything. Therefore anything He created was of Him, owned by Him, and existed solely to serve and please Him. The Creator became a King when He created things, and the created became part of His kingdom. And when the Creator had children (the angels) He became their Father. His children, such as Lucifer, Michael, and Gabriel, are like all children in that they played no part in convincing God to give birth to them because they weren’t even alive until He brought them forth. He brought them forth because He chose to do so. Choosing is part of love. God brought forth His children out of love because that was His choice. God expected the life He gave His children to be used to glorify Him as King because they were subjects in His kingdom – He was their King, their Father, their God. Thus, along with their birth a hierarchy simultaneously came into existence and God became The Authority over and above everything and everyone, and His children became His servants who did His will. God was the one Head and His children were the multiple members of His body. All was good in the Kingdom of God. But that would not last. God’s choosing to create/give birth to His subjects/children revealed His love for them. In order that they might demonstrate their love for Him, God also created evil (Is 45:7). Evil was an option that would reveal His children’s choice by their fruit/works. If they submitted to His hierarchy with humble obedience, they would be lovingly accepting Him as their Head. This orderly, hierarchical life God provided them was full of happiness and riches, and would continue as long as His servants accepted the foundational truth that He was the Authority over all Who owned all. Because God is God and nobody else is, His single-headed hierarchy had to be; there was no alternative: the monarchical existence of God as The One Authority automatically made His will the one and only imperative throughout His realm. Contrast God with His servants and it becomes obvious that the function, purpose, and duty of His servants is submissive obedience to His will. A proper servant, therefore, will always 1) find out the will of his Master, and 2) carry out the will of his Master. Those two things are the essence of submissive obedience. That’s where the evil that God created and warned His angels to avoid came into play: The evil He created was equality because without it none of God’s subjects could or would rise up and choose to make either of His prerogatives theirs. His first prerogative comes from His being the one Head – His will is over all and must be consulted and obeyed. And as Creator His second prerogative is ownership of all – including us. He is the King, the Head, the Father, the Authority, the God, the Creator, and the Owner over all. To challenge or to usurp any of those attributes – which are all part of will and ownership – would be to take away from Who and What God is and would make “God” as defined above cease to exist. That would be robbery and murder (and according to Ph 2:6 only Jesus Christ can be equal with God because He is God). THE KINGDOM DIVIDED Most of the angels, like Michael and Gabriel, were content with the everlasting life God had given them and with their jobs as servants of His will and caretakers of His kingdom. But not Lucifer. Because he coveted the material riches all around him (Ezek 28:4,5), he partook of the evil (1 Ti 6:10) notion of equality God created as a test. Presto! Something happened to Lucifer’s makeup. He used to be, like his brothers Michael and Gabriel, content to do God’s will and be a caretaker of His things. Lucifer used to want only what God wanted, he used to want only to fit into God’s carefully planned, orderly kingdom. Before he partook of equality he would never have thought, wanted, decided, or done anything without humbly, respectfully, lovingly, and submissively considering the will of God. Those two sentences define what Biblical discernment is. Discernment is an absolute and irrevocable requirement in God’s kingdom. But now Lucifer wanted something on his own with no consideration for the will of God. Whenever we think, want, decide, or do anything on our own without first humbly, respectfully, lovingly, and submissively considering the will of God we are guilty of what the Bible calls carnality. Equality gave Lucifer the ability to abandon discernment in favor of his new carnal mind. By coveting, by wanting to have anything, Lucifer usurped God’s prerogative of ownership. And by wanting on his own, without considering and submitting to what God wanted, Lucifer usurped God’s prerogative of will. In other words, Lucifer suddenly became another head. Before, there had been but one Head and one will – God’s. But now the order, the hierarchy, and the authority established by God were being challenged because the very existence of a carnal mind is an ipso facto declaration of equality with God. Because Lucifer’s actions were so egregious and had such a horrible effect on history, and because it is so important for Christians to understand the event, I’ll briefly put it into perspective. God’s kingdom was designed and intended to be “of the Head, by the Head, and for the Head” because of Who and What God is. The word carnal, on the other hand, means “originating with the body” and is “of the body, by the body, and for the body.” The intended function of the body and its members is to serve the head by carrying out its will. When a member/servant thinks and/or acts on its own it is doing so independently of the head – which is carnality. By definition, therefore, the member – in practice – becomes another head, another authority, another ruler. And because of something in hierarchies known as the “chain of command” nothing that is thought or done by the carnal servant can possibly glorify God. Therefore, no matter what Lucifer did, thought, or said, it would be effrontery and an abominable, taunting challenge to God. That is true even if the independent action happened to correspond to the will of God, because it still wasn’t God doing the thinking or being what He is – the authority. When viewed from a perspective tainted by equality, Lucifer’s carnality doesn’t seem to be all that bad, but it obviously is so bad to God that He went to war because of it. As Christians who want to please and be in agreement with God, it behooves us to understand the issue of authority. It must be understood that when God went to war He wasn’t starting the war. The Bible says the carnal mind is enmity against God (Ro 8:7), and because enmity is not merely “hatred” but is “violent hatred”, we realize Lucifer started the war against God the second he allowed himself to be carnal by thinking independently of God. Equality has a dangerous appeal to all of us that must be deliberately suppressed. Many angels did not suppress it and they, too, became leavened, became carnal, and supported Lucifer in his war for independence from the dictatorial tyranny of the single-headed form of arbitrary government (also called monarchy, patriarchy, paternalism, male hegemony, and autocracy) ordained by God. Why did they join him? Because they agreed with Lucifer. All carnal minds are in basic agreement with each other because they all share the foundational evil that God created – the belief in equality. For example, even when carnal minds disagree they generally agree to disagree because their equality gives them a “right” to their opinions. Because of what authority means, God never permits disagreement; the only way to walk with Him is to learn His will and accept it completely and unequivocally. That’s not just the way He is – it’s Who He is. At any rate, God dealt with His rebellious children by casting them out. Never again would all angels be His – the carnal ones became devils. The devils wanted God to accept democracy – a government that was the antithesis of Godly order because it would free God’s subjects and give them autonomy. And if God’s subjects achieved equality they’d cease being subjects and become citizens. And if everybody were equal the laws would be determined by majority opinion, by majority consent. If the majority ruled, the Almighty God would become just one of the gods. The King’s power and authority would pass to the people. That’s why any person in a democracy charged with administering a realm ceases being a true head of state and becomes merely a public servant. God was so enraged by all of this He designated everlasting fire for the devil and his angels (Mt 25:41; 2 Pe 2:4). Michael and Gabriel, on the other hand, were content to live their lives serving under God’s rule, which tells us something about salvation. Michael, Lucifer, and Gabriel were all possessors (not merely professors) of everlasting life because it was a gift to them from God. It was a “free” gift – they did nothing to earn it. However, they were expected to demonstrate their love for God by choosing to serve Him rather than self. Their love and their choice would not be determined by their words but by their works because all of them had access to the corrupting evil of equality. Whether or not they partook of that evil would be evident by their works. Gabriel and Michael, like all proper Christians, had BELIEF, FAITH, WORKS, LOVE, HOPE, FEAR, OBEDIENCE, FRUIT, REPENTANCE, MERCY, ENDURANCE because they were HEARERS and DOERS. Lucifer lacked those qualities and therefore earned God’s displeasure. It is doctrinally important to note that God treats all of those words as synonyms by using them interchangeably in the Bible: SYNONYMS: Ro 4:9,13; 4:3; 4:5,11; 10:17; Ja 1:22/Mt 7:20-26/Lk 11:28; Ro 9:31,32; 10:2,3,4; Jn 12:42,43/Ja 2:19; 2:14,17; 1 Co 13:2; Ja 2:15,16; Ga 5:6; 1 Th 1:3; He 11:1; 11:7,8; Mt 7:16; 3:8; Jn 14:15/1 Jn 2:5; 5:2,3/2 Jn 6; Ro 1:5/1 Pe 1:2; Ps 106:3,30,31/Ro 4:3,9; Pv 21:3/1 Sa 15:22/Ho 6:6; Mt 9:13/Mt 12:7. Hence, properly and Biblically speaking, none of those qualities can exist in a person in the absence of all the others. Works, for example, are not Scriptural works unless love, obedience, faith, belief, etc. are also present. God is fighting the war for purely ideological reasons because of how completely and inseparably the concept of authority – and its attendant prerogatives of will and ownership – has to do with Who He is. God couldn’t care less about material goods or real estate because He can create whatever He wants in whatever amount He wants. Lucifer, however, grew quite fond of the material things God created when He made the heaven and the earth as the living environment of His subjects. His covetousness made him want what belonged to God. It can be assumed, therefore, that no matter how much rhetoric he and the other carnal angels may have spouted about “liberty”, “freedom from tyranny”, the “right” to “private” property, their “right” to their opinions, etc., greed was definitely involved. We learn two things: First, in spite of the fact that we live in a physical world, we must learn to elevate Biblical ideologies, principles, and concepts over and above anything physical. Second, we must be very careful not to allow our natural attraction for things physical to blind us to the governing ideologies, principles, and concepts of the Bible. When Lucifer and his freedom fighters warred against Michael and his army, God allowed Lucifer to win this opening battle. Knowing His kingdom divided against itself could not stand, He wanted Lucifer to have his own kingdom in the war. That meant the war wouldn’t be an internal and destructive civil war; it would be a war between two different kingdoms – with King Satan’s kingdom absorbing all the damage. By letting Lucifer win that which he coveted – the physical realm, God was then able (or obligated) to recreate the destroyed earth and make it part of King Satan’s new realm. That meant any “contamination” would be contained in Satan’s kingdom – not God’s; Satan’s kingdom would provide a perfect location for the rest of the war. During the seven-day creation week when God put together the Devil’s new kingdom, He and Satan may have sat down to discuss the rules of engagement. After all, Satan wasn’t stupid; he knew there was no way he could defeat God in an all-out war. There had to be rules to which both sides adhered. God would create mortal humans to do His fighting for Him. They would be created of the earth with earthy, weak bodies plagued with a variety of lusts and fears that Satan could use to ensnare them. Satan liked that idea. Satan would have seven thousand years in which to prevail over the church. The issue in the war would be authority. God would win if His human saints did as Michael and Gabriel did – humble self by being submissively obedient to authority and resist the temptation to exalt self by doing that which was right in their own eyes. For Satan to win the war he had to get the church to be just like him in two stages. First he would have to lure mankind into partaking of the evil leaven of equality, as manifested by eating the forbidden fruit on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Once mankind was infected, Satan would then have to get people to live in accordance with their carnal natures and become independent thinkers, to use their opinions as the basis for what was good and evil. Because Lucifer cannot prevail over something that doesn’t exist, he has never tried to prevent God from giving birth, and everlasting life, to His saints, whether angels in heaven or humans on earth. In the beginning he needed the bad angels to help him start the war against God, now he needs the church to help him win the war. In order to prevail/win over the church he must get us to be carnal/Satanic like he is so we, too, will live according to what we think is right and good, rather than by every word of God. Lucifer’s goal is not the disappearance of the church; it’s the disobedience of the church. MORTALITY: DEATH ENTERS BY ADAM God created Adam as a type of Himself: At first there was Adam. And that’s all there was until out of Adam came his servant, his bride, his body, his “church.” If God didn’t think Adam needed a servant He never would have made Eve. That’s why the Bible says twice that God wanted “an help meet for him” (Ge 2:18,20). (Many Christians, who spend their time scrounging around in Hebrew and Greek dictionaries, do not know the definition of meet. They ignorantly think it means mate, as in shipmate and teammate. Therefore they run around mindlessly saying things like, “Hi! You must be Jim’s help meet!” and “Hi! You must be Jim’s help mate!” as if they think the two words are synonyms. They aren’t. The definition of meet is suitable. God was looking for “an help [who was] suitable” for man. Therefore, rather than looking ignorant by saying, “Hi! You must be Jim’s help meet!” they should just say, “Hi! You must be Jim’s help/helper/servant!” Again, using the common but ignorant, “Hi! You must be Jim’s help meet!” is the same as saying, “Hi! You must be Jim’s help suitable!” – which makes no sense.) Because Adam was the first human member of the church, and because God needed more members to fight the war, He issued the Old Commission by telling Adam to be fruitful and multiply and repopulate the now empty earth (Ge 1:28). Adam and Eve’s children would be God’s people. Satan didn’t object to the Old Commission, and therefore did not try to prevent Adam from populating the globe. But Satan’s ears pricked up when he heard God issue His next instructions to Adam. God’s instructions to Adam were simple and unambiguous: Do not, under penalty of death, partake of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Period. The Authority had spoken. Nothing else was bad and nothing else was prohibited. Just don’t eat the forbidden fruit. Satan got Eve (type of God’s body of saints) to convince Adam (type of God) to go along with her. Her decision to eat the fruit was an independent action, it was carnal, and it was rebellion against both Adam’s authority and God’s. When she asked Adam to submit to her leadership, even though he knew God chose war rather than accept the democratic will of His angels, he yielded to his subject/servant by hearkening to the voice of his wife (Ge 3:17). This was the second democratic rebellion against Godly authority in history – and Satan was just getting started. Note: Biblically speaking, the term “democratic rebellion” is redundant because the two words are the same in God’s eyes. Scriptural order is head rules body. Democracy is rebellion against that order – body rules head. Therefore any rebellion (subject resists authority) is a democratic act because the principles of carnality/independence are present. Because Satan’s ideology/religion promotes rebellion/democracy it is not surprising to find that the Bible defines rebellion as witchcraft (1 Sa 15:23). Satan’s ideology must permeate the church if he is to win. He doesn’t mind if the saints think they are worshipping Jesus – as long as they are ideological witches. After Adam ate the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God asked him why he was hiding from Him. Adam replied that it is good to hide yourself when you are naked because it is bad to be seen naked. God asked, “What authority told you what is good and what is bad? Have you become your own authority on what’s good and evil by eating what I ordered you to avoid? Get out here where I can see you! What’s that you’ve got on?” “Lord, I made this apron out of fig leaves so I wouldn’t be naked.” “Adam, I’m going to teach you an important lesson about Christian doctrine: Whenever contradictions exist there is something doctrinally wrong somewhere because I never mess things up. Take your doctrines for example: You think it is bad to be seen naked. And you think that apron makes you no longer naked. Yet you still hide from Me! The carnal mind will always screw up the Bible because the carnal mind is the antithesis of submission to My authority. Therefore, the only way you can possibly please Me is by humbly accepting and doing every word I give you.” Thank God for recording Adam and Eve’s carnal invention of “fig leaf morality” at the very beginning of His Holy Bible so we could know they angered Him by declaring nudity to be “bad.” Because of this incident one of the earliest lessons in the Bible for God’s people for thousands of years has been that we should beware of the sinfulness of morality. Morality is a human-based standard of right and wrong, which angers God because it directly competes against Him as the sole authority in all matters of faith and practice. Adam and Eve did not offend God by wearing clothes; they offended Him by thinking clothes were necessary in order to cover “sinful” nudity. Morality is one of the things we’ll observe in this historical section: how it was introduced to the educated parts of Christian society during the early Middle Ages, its slow and gradual acceptance by Christians, and the zenith of its influence during the Victorian era (circa 1900). If you were ever taught that nudity is a sinful condition that should be covered with fig leaves or other more modern types of clothing, you are seeing your first example of how tradition makes the word of God of none effect (Mk 7:13). The Pharisees hated Christ because He openly attacked their traditions and embarrassed them by quoting plainly-worded verses in the Bible. They reacted not with humble submission to the words of God, but with pride-based defensive anger. They knew He was wrong – just as Adam and Eve knew it was wrong to be naked. You must realize the Pharisees were not an anomaly in Christianity; we all have a Natural tendency to be just like them because we have all inherited the same self-based knowledge of good and evil from Adam and Eve – the very knowledge God warned us to avoid in the second chapter of His Book! Most people don’t realize these early events in the Bible involved democratic principles. So let’s look at the second curse God put on Adam and the reason behind it. The first curse, and the one most Christians focus on, is, “thou shalt surely die if you disobey me and eat the forbidden fruit.” And yet Adam’s democratic act in Ge 3:17 so angered God that He hurled another curse, hard labor (Ge 3:17-19), at him: Adam (the head, the ruler) hearkened (yielded) to the voice of his wife (the subject). By surrendering his authority to his servant, Adam made a mockery of Godly order by turning it on its head. That is exactly what Satan wants. We’ll see later that Adam wasn’t the only Christian who angered God by democratically surrendering to the will of the people. God is very serious about maintaining authority, hierarchy, order, and obedience. NOAH: MANKIND’S SECOND CHANCE People gradually ignored the lesson (the wages of sin is death) in the fact that everybody from Adam to Noah died from the curse of mortality; and eventually only Noah was righteous in his generations. The other Christians were carnal so God decided to kill ‘em all and start over by making Noah the second patriarch of His people. In order to ensure that His church grew and produced more soldiers for the war, God gave Noah and his sons the Old Commission to be fruitful and multiply and repopulate the now empty earth (Ge 9:1). And just as with Adam’s descendants, God made every one of their children also a child of His. Earlier, Adam had yielded his sovereignty by allowing his body (Eve) to get him into trouble, which resulted in his being cursed by God. Noah also surrendered control over his body by getting drunk (Ge 9:21). The head should never democratically surrender control to its body because the head is supposed to be a monarch. Noah’s drunkenness was bad because his head became incapacitated and surrendered control to his body. These episodes would later result in laws against fornication (but not against intercourse) and laws against drunkenness (but not against intoxicating beverages). Interestingly enough, when fornication and drunkenness became sins, gluttony also became a sin (but not eating)…because fornication, drunkenness, and gluttony share the same foundational evil: The sinful principle behind all three is yielding control to the body, which is the same principle behind democracy (!), which is the antithesis of Godly order and is an abomination to God. from Blogger http://ift.tt/2BGA2K1 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

hellojulie1971 · 6 years

Quote

http://allchristiansarewelcome.blogspot.com/2017/12/lucifers-rebellion.html

#LUCIFER’S REBELLION In the beginning God. That’s all there was before He created anything. Therefore

0 notes

hellojulie1971 · 6 years

Quote

http://allchristiansarewelcome.blogspot.com/2017/12/lucifers-rebellion.html

#SEO #Local SEO training

0 notes

hellojulie1971 · 6 years

Quote

http://ifttt.com/images/no_image_card.png

#LUCIFER’S REBELLION http://ifttt.com/images/no_image_card.png In the beginning God. That’s all there

0 notes