re: A prayer to SATAN.

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But seriously most people don’t realize Paul and Jesus are said by the canonical authors to have vastly different and contradictory ideas about salvation. That includes how to enter the kingdom of God aka to have eternal life.

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I had an experience about 20 years ago that is described in John 14 is where I get my understanding.

However I wasn't a Christian at the time, I was agnostic - I didn't know and I didn't believe what. My experience mentioned no names like Jesus or any such labels. I was directly told not to focus on labels, the understanding they express is what is important. Basically, don't idol worship.

I understand the father son relationship and what souls are and all that immediately. And I was shown that in order to live in a society without evil, I had to myself not be evil. You can't be a thief and live in a society without it. And when you break those down, you pretty much end up with the basis of the commandments.

I had grown up "Christian" but I was only ever told this free gift crap, which even then didn't make sense. "Saved" and all that stuff. So I really didn't even think of looking at the bible.

But I would describe things and some Christians recognized it. And the showed me where Jesus said "That which is flesh is flesh and that which is spirit is spirit". Now the way I would try to explain that is that consciousness and the universe are separate. So this immediately caught my eye because I knew where that understanding came from.

Those things were never taught to me at all when I was a kid. And they aren't taught to Christians in general either. So none of them have any understanding of it. And the more I looked into what Jesus said and did, the more I saw the father.

I don't know if Jesus was real, it doesn't even matter. If it's not real, whoever wrote it knows the father, because that's the source of the understanding. Jesus is an archetype. It is to show what someone who acts from spirit(God) does rather than someone who acts from the flesh. And it's basically what I was taught. What he says and the understanding he gives is real and it comes from God, that I know for sure. That understanding is available to all, regardless of culture.

And then comes Paul. A smack in the face. An example of what I was made to understand you do not do. The father isn't in him. He talks up Jesus and says how great he is only in an attempt to gain authority before dumping off a completely different message. He's a pharisee. Just like the pharisees hijacked the understanding of God, sat in the seat of Moses and created these systems, Saul the pharisee extends it over into Christianity and does the same damn thing.

And the story in Acts is completely bogus. He doesn't understand the kingdom of God is within. It's all just him trying to justify and grab authority off the name of Jesus and to be seen as equal to Peter.

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I don’t believe any of the canonical gospels or Paul though teaches anything about “getting into heaven”. One theology I think Paul, at least from his 7 more or less genuine letters, shares with “Jesus” (a character in a theological literary creation who most likely did not exist as a historical person) is that believer will be resurrected in the last days and the resurrected will live on a renewed earth under a renewed heaven. Not in heaven.

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The path Jesus talks about is a real thing. But it means keeping the commandments, not worship an idol. And then you need the understanding and such to keep them properly, etc.

Where people go depends. It's normally framed as heaven and hell, but that's not entirely accurate. Keeping the commandments will get you into something you describe. A version of the Garden where rather than innocence being the reason it's in harmony, understanding and coming to full spiritual maturity does it. That is the society I work to bring to existence, and that is what I desire.

The question that I had answered by God was - I asked why I lived in a world full of evil rather than a society like that.

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Y’all are overreacting, what’s the big deal here?

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VooDude

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name checks out