{"id":2129,"date":"2022-04-23T12:13:38","date_gmt":"2022-04-23T12:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/?p=2129"},"modified":"2023-02-18T21:00:32","modified_gmt":"2023-02-18T21:00:32","slug":"apologetics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/apologetics\/","title":{"rendered":"Apologetics"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"2129\" class=\"elementor elementor-2129\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-7d293df elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"7d293df\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-ede8647\" data-id=\"ede8647\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-d5259c1 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"d5259c1\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<style>\/*! elementor - v3.10.1 - 17-01-2023 *\/\n.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-stacked .elementor-drop-cap{background-color:#818a91;color:#fff}.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-framed .elementor-drop-cap{color:#818a91;border:3px solid;background-color:transparent}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap{margin-top:8px}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap-letter{width:1em;height:1em}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap{float:left;text-align:center;line-height:1;font-size:50px}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap-letter{display:inline-block}<\/style>\t\t\t\t<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Oh Lord, my God, When I, in awesome wonder<br \/>Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made.<br \/>I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder.<br \/>Thy power throughout the universe displayed.<\/strong><\/p><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,<br \/>How great Thou art! How great Thou art!<br \/>Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,<br \/>How great Thou art! How great Thou art!<br \/><\/strong>\u2013 Carl Boberg (1859-1940) &amp; Stuart K. Hine (1899-1989), from \u201cHow Great Thou Art\u201d (1885)<br \/><br \/><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2132\" src=\"http:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/vecteezy_a-butterfly-is-a-mainly-day-flying-insect-of-the-order-lepidoptera-which-includes-the-butterflies-and-moths_1329267-300x200-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Christian_apologetics\">Christian apologetics<\/a>\u00a0 is a branch of theology that defends Christianity against objections to Christian thought.\u00a0<\/strong>And the concept is well-named! If there is any area of thought that ought to be apologizing profusely at this point, and to everyone involved, it is Christian theology. I say this, having lived for most of my life as a devout traditional Christian. I learned Protestant Christian dogmas as a child, and then began to read the Bible over and over again at the age of twelve, and continued that practice until the age of\u00a0 fifty. I also studied Christian history in college before I fell in love with a Catholic in my twenties, and then I proceeded to try my best to convert myself into enough of a Catholic to pass sufficient muster, with the help of a confused but patient priest, to just barely squeeze through the Cathedral doors and manage a straight-faced Catholic conversion. So I have been around the apologetical barn a time or two! My husband is a cradle Catholic, parochial schools from kindergarten through Providence College, and so rigorous in his religion that if I had not converted, he would not have married me. And I was in love. We do crazy things when we are in love. In the end, the priest told me that I would have to accept a lot of Catholicism as \u201ca sacred mystery.\u201d Or, you know, I could marry someone else.<br \/><br \/><\/p><p><strong>Well, okay. I converted.<\/strong>\u00a0And for twenty-five years I tried my best to be a Catholic because I love my husband. So I didn\u2019t just go through the Catholic motions. I was a Lector, and I sent my children to parochial schools because that was what the man I love wanted. And also, because I reasoned that any faith was better than no faith. The priest who converted me didn\u2019t give our marriage much of a chance, but the joke is on him.\u00a0<strong><em>We will be married for fifty years in August. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<br \/><br \/><\/em><\/strong><\/p><p><strong>There comes a time, though, when enough is enough.\u00a0<\/strong>For me, that time came when I was turning fifty, and I finally got it through my thick head that Jesus had told the woman at the well that He could give her\u00a0<em>living<\/em>\u00a0<em>water<\/em>\u00a0(JN 4:11).<br \/><br \/><\/p><p><strong>I had read the Gospel story of the woman at the well dozens of times before that day.<\/strong>\u00a0I used to read the Bible repeatedly, from Genesis through Revelation, and then I would go back to Matthew and read just the New Testament over again before I started back in with Genesis. In later life I confess that I cheated a lot, and after Revelation I would re-read maybe the Psalms, and then the New Testament sometimes two or three times before I started over again with Genesis. Anything, to delay having to read the Begats even one more time! So I had read that story of the woman at the well repeatedly without seeing how it related to the afterlife evidence until one very significant day that literally rocked my world.<br \/><br \/><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2133\" src=\"http:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/vecteezy_common-tiger-butterfly-looking-for-nectar-from-flowers_1373252-300x199-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><strong>I have talked about this problem before.\u00a0<\/strong>When you are a devout traditional Christian, and you also are pursuing as a hobby the obsessive sifting through of a couple of centuries of afterlife evidence, not yet having met your spirit guide so you still don\u2019t realize that you have a purpose in this particular lifetime that requires that you be doing both of these things simultaneously, you fully expect that you will start to find that your beloved religion matches up with what the afterlife evidence tells you actually happens after death.\u00a0<strong><em>But by the time I was turning fifty, I was forced to admit that Christianity was actually wrong about pretty much everything<\/em><\/strong><em>.<\/em>\u00a0In all that afterlife evidence, no matter how hard I looked for it, I could find no evidence at all for a throne room, or a judgmental God, or a fiery hell. And worst of all, I could find no evidence that the crucifixion of Jesus had ever made an afterlife difference for a single human being.\u00a0<strong><em>And I had seen plenty of good communications from the dead by then. If it ever had happened, I would have found it.<br \/><br \/><\/em><\/strong><\/p><p><strong>When I was fifty, I stopped my daily Bible reading in what felt like a bought of existential despair.\u00a0<\/strong>It was two years before I dared to pick up a Bible again. Then one rainy day I swallowed hard, and I trusted Jesus enough to read just the Gospels. I discovered then that while the big Christian dogmas like substitutionary atonement are altogether without foundation in the words of Jesus, His teachings on things like love and forgiveness and so much else agree so precisely with what I had been learning about the afterlife from communications with the dead that it took my breath away. I kept waiting to catch Him in some mistake. Perhaps He talked about a fiery hell? Or He might have mentioned a judgmental God? But no, don\u2019t forget that He said,\u00a0<strong>\u201cFor not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0(JN 5:22). Except for a few anachronistic spots at the back of each Book that I had learned in college had been added by the Council of Nicaea in 325, the Gospels could have been taken right from my dusty old books of early-twentieth-century afterlife communications. On that glorious day, I was already sold on the certainty that Jesus knew whereof He spoke!\u00a0<strong><em>Then I came to Chapter Four of John, where Jesus tells the woman at the well that if only she had asked Him, He could have given her living water. And my jaw hit the floor.<br \/><br \/><\/em><\/strong><\/p><p><strong>My dear friends, what got me on that greatest day of my life was that passage in John where Jesus offers the woman at the well \u201cliving water.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0Christians think He was talking about baptism. Silly them! I knew from the afterlife literature that the water in the afterlife has peculiar qualities. It is oddly dry and life-giving. And when I visited Jesus two weeks ago, and we had our bare feet in the river while we fed the fish, I didn\u2019t think to mention to you the fact that the water was the odd, dry \u201cliving water\u201d that He talked about to the woman at the well. The water in the astral plane is in fact dry, it feels like silk, it doesn\u2019t wet your clothes.\u00a0<strong><em>And it is alive.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0I wasn\u2019t focused on the water at the time because I was so overwhelmed by the nearness of Jesus and His luscious personal energy, but my mind keeps bringing back these details!<br \/><br \/><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2134\" src=\"http:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/vecteezy_flower-butterfly_865856-300x200-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><strong>As I suspected might happen, those moments that Thomas and I spent with Jesus have remained vivid in my mind.\u00a0<\/strong>I think they always will feel like an event that occurred just last night. And the problem has become that at this stage, I am beginning to feel an inappropriate rage. The fact that the Romans co-opted the name of Jesus and distorted His spiritual movement into one of power and control has done such tremendous harm to the world! So I have just this morning turned to Thomas, and I have early on the Saturday morning before this post is due to go to you had the last answer that I would have expected from him. When I told him how angry I was at Christianity, he simply and calmly said,\u00a0<strong>\u201cWelcome to my world.\u201d<br \/><br \/><\/strong><\/p><p>I blurted,\u00a0<strong>\u201cWhat? That\u2019s all you have to say?\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>There is an army of discarnates supporting Jesus, including even the Apostle John, who have incarnated repeatedly for two thousand years while they protect the Master\u2019s teachings, and meanwhile Christianity continues to teach a bunch of bogus nonsense? And that is all just fine with you, Thomas? He is smiling at me now. And actually, he shows me that Jesus is smiling, too. What I find incomprehensible is that the whole blinking lot of them are smiling at me, as if I am somehow just na\u00efve and cute to be discovering this only now? My dear Thomas is telling me that I am actually meant to discover this now, and please stop being so dramatic about it? Jesus is weary after two thousand years of having to make the sign of death on millions of Catholics\u2019 foreheads when they come home to Him. Thomas is reminding me of that now. So it is time to go out and spread the Lord\u2019s Way on earth, and I know that, so just go out and do it now, for heaven\u2019s sake?\u00a0<strong><em>Omigod, he is showing me a whole crowd of people smiling at me!\u00a0<\/em>Oh. I get it. I do.\u00a0<br \/><br \/><\/strong><\/p><p><strong><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u2013<strong>We are nearing the end of a very long process.<\/strong>\u00a0In this case, one that has lasted for two thousand years. Each of us has a role to play, and Thomas has promised me that once the SRO website is finished, and the one that I have promised to do for Jesus, I can go home if I want to go home. We have worked out a compromise age. It\u2019s okay. I am realizing\u00a0 that finding out so late in life that I have a tiny role to play in something that is apparently very large is comfortable. And in not telling me what was ahead until that was necessary, Thomas has given me the carefree gift of a full and happy earthly life.<br \/><br \/><\/p><p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2135\" src=\"http:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/vecteezy_yellow-swallowtail-butterfly-perched-on-purple-flower-of-butterfly-bush_2600393-300x200-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/>Any honest person who knows much about Christian history must take it as a given that none of the forty-two thousand versions of the religion that modern Christians follow has much of anything to do with Jesus.<\/strong>\u00a0The Lord has been seen to be just a pure sacrifice with a virgin mother, with no role in the religion\u00a0 that\u00a0 carried His name except\u00a0 to die. Which was an idea that came from old Roman and Hebrew religious customs. And everyone of every religion and of no religion goes to the selfsame afterlife anyway, so the death of Jesus on the cross really doesn\u2019t seem to make any afterlife difference. His death on the cross has been irrelevant to Christian believers since at least the early 1800s, and probably for a great deal longer than that, which I guess is just something we are not supposed to be noticing? And I am still turning over in my mind the revelation that Jesus gave to Thomas and me that He had decided to be born from out of the Celestial Collective two thousand years ago as Jesus, having discovered how Consciousness physics works, so He could learn how best to raise people\u2019s consciousness vibrations, and then teach that process to all of humankind. All of this is brand-new and amazing to me! So the religion is nothing anymore, if ever it even was anything. It is only His\u00a0<em>teachings<\/em>\u00a0that matter.\u00a0<strong><em>His teachings are<\/em><em>\u00a0the miraculous wealth that the Gospels contain! Those teachings will give rise to the kingdom of God within each of us, which now is about to overspread the earth!<br \/><br \/><\/em><\/strong><\/p><p><strong>What angers me \u2013 and it enrages me! \u2013 is that fear-based Christianity, with its wars and hatreds, its Inquisitions and its baseless horrors, has delayed this beautiful moment for two thousand years.<\/strong>\u00a0But where the Lord is, there is no time. A thousand years is not even the momentary flutter of a butterfly\u2019s wings. Thomas is telling me again that we each have our part to play. My having been briefly so angry concerns him, since my part is a beautiful one, and since those who have imposed Christianity on the world also have their own part to play. And he tells me now that they have played it well. Incarnations are not linear, so Christianity has laid down for humankind twenty difficult and stressful centuries in which people can now plan lives of spiritual growth into the far future.\u00a0<strong><em>Okay. I will try to let it go.<br \/><br \/><\/em><\/strong><\/p><p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2136\" src=\"http:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Golden-butterfly-300x254-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"254\" \/>And now, the chrysalis that has been Roman Christianity is crumbling before our eyes.<\/strong>\u00a0And Thomas tells me that soon on earth it will fall away altogether. He tells me, too, that the butterflies that are the perfect teachings of Jesus\u00a0 then will overspread the earth. But I do feel a little bit sad for those who are still\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/robertagrimes.com\/jesus\/creating-a-monstrous-god\">trying<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/townhall.com\/columnists\/michaelbrown\/2022\/04\/17\/substitutionary-atonement-jesus-died-for-us-n2605934?utm_source=thdailyvip&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=nl&amp;bcid=7b1668a03bf310a5ea6043b32bbc5ef8c12ec9839c1b2d11d2330cca1df12810&amp;recip=672303\">apologize<\/a>\u00a0for two thousand years of the<a href=\"https:\/\/robertagrimes.com\/jesus\/losing-the-franchise\">\u00a0fear-based<\/a>\u00a0Roman Christian ideas that have done so much harm to so many lives.\u00a0<strong><em>I don\u2019t see how they can still find much to say.<br \/><br \/><br \/><\/em><\/strong><\/p><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation<\/strong>,<br \/><strong>And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.<br \/>Then I shall bow, in humble adoration<br \/>And then proclaim, my God, how great Thou art.<\/strong><\/p><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,<br \/>How great Thou art, how great Thou art.<br \/>Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,<br \/>How great Thou art, how great Thou art!<br \/>\u2013\u00a0<\/strong>Carl Boberg (1859-1940) &amp; Stuart K. Hine (1899-1989), from \u201cHow Great Thou Art\u201d (1885)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oh Lord, my God, When I, in awesome wonderConsider all the worlds Thy hands have made.I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder.Thy power throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,How great Thou art! How great Thou art!Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee,How great Thou&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/apologetics\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Apologetics<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2129"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2139,"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129\/revisions\/2139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}