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MY STRUGGLE
There is a way that seems right to a man and everyone is challenged. The struggle of man and religion is littered with conflict even when intense study and research are exercised. This is even more pronounced if you look at sources other than the Bible. The object of the game is to find undeniable truth and noncontestable goals, by which to lead your life.
Of all the characters who have ever lived, or that I have ever heard of, the one who stands foremost is unquestionably, indisputably, Jesus (YHVH, YHWH, Yahveh, Yahweh, Jehovah, Joshua, or Jehoshuah as some would insist). He rose from the dead into life eternal. No big deal, many people think, because they have been taught since toddlers that all people go to heaven when they die. Their great grandmothers, their great grand fathers, their grand mothers and grand fathers, their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, all except for perhaps one or two who where particularly bad. Jesus has become so well known throughout the continents that the name has lost its significance. The Bread of Life is as common as sliced bread, toast. People loose sight that He is by far the most popular person, in the western hemisphere, ever. There are more monuments in His honor (by His enemies, Jesus does not want us to make icons and idols) than for all other honored people who ever lived put together, I suspect.
So Jesus challenges every man who walks this earth to follow Him into eternal life in His Father^s Kingdom. What is the purpose of life? Who rules you? What are your goals, your ambitions, your hopes, your desires and to what end, for what ultimate purpose? Is it to be popular, to entertain your friends, to make yourself look knowledgeable, a man of the world? Is it to achieve great prestige and have the respect of wealthy and prominent men that you would be considered very much an asset to them? To find favor among men? God says that he is not respectful of status, He is not a respecter of men. Doctor, lawyer, politician, quack, dietician, nurse or post hole digger makes no difference to Him. What he is looking for is not even a believer but someone who does His will, someone who obeys his laws and lives by them for his own benefit, for the benefit of society as a whole and consequently for the benefit of his children. It is more important not to commit adultery than to believe that you shouldn^t. It is more important not to lie to your children than to teach them falsehoods.
So we have a Savior who leads us into eternal life and we set out to follow as best we can. Then we get confronted with a conflict between man and God, man and the Bible. First we are tested with transgressing parents. Then dating problems. You can only marry someone of the same beliefs according to the Scriptures. Of course you don^t have to marry everyone you date. You are to treat your boss as though he were Jesus, even when he taunts and challenges you to defend your actions daily? You are not to eat with pork eaters or others who eat abominable things that are not to be eaten by God^s people. We live in a society that loves caviar, crab, shrimp, lobster, sausage, and scallops; so do we eat alone? If you plan or hope to be a minister you might feel guilt stricken if you do not dress of one cloth. Even clothes made of one hundred percent cotton are often times sewn with polyester thread and have labels made of durable synthetic products. And in the winter how can anyone not mix there clothes and go outside? You are not to mix with unbelievers or to have anything to do with the wicked and evil minded. But what do you do when they are the members of your own family or members of the very Church of God?
In more important matters, Holy observances, religious ceremonies, doctrine, moral ethics, who do you listen to? Where do you go? To whom do you pay your tithe and how do you justify your choice? Would the money be better used elsewhere? How much time and effort do you devote to the study of the scriptures? Do you study to acquire knowledge or to confirm your preconceived ideas? Will this not render you a social reject, not having time to help and influence others in the way they deem proper?
Marriage, is it not the foundation of our society. If I dedicate my life to following Jesus, then it is better that I not marry according to Paul, an apostle of Jesus. He instructs me to remain as I was when I converted or came to the knowledge and belief of the truth. Does this not cause great concern or immediate disagreement? Does one need to chose between having children, descendents, and being one of God^s children? How can I inspire or influence others to follow my example if I act in a way that is totally foreign and ridiculous to them?
Why not suffer the injustices that come your way? Suffering unjustly, to what end? If I get stabbed and forgive the person, he turns around and stabs someone else, am I not responsible for the second stabbing? or rape, or theft, or molestation, or belittling, or abuse, or harassment. Vengeance is mine says the Lord and in the Book of Revelation it says to let the sinners sin and the righteous be righteous.
Then there^s Solomon who lead his people into idolatry, adultery, bigamy, paganism. David, his father, slew Goliath with a stone slung form a lariat, like using a modern day gun. People who tote guns can use David as a role model. If David was righteous then his ways must have been righteous. Jonah has given ministers a heyday of imposing guilt on everyone. He fled from God and attempted to dismiss His appointed duty. Moses broke the tablets containing God^s ten commandments.
Through all of that the message is still plain as you read, God wants you to be righteous. Or would you rather have your daughter get rapped by a goon you would not incarcerate. Or have your son marry an immoral woman who would replace you or could be replaced in an instant by a dog. Or live your life never knowing what your eating even when it^s store bought?
How does any of this help you earn your way in life? How does this keep you employed, properly nourished and clothed? What good does it do in landing a job or making money to pay your way? Just pondering over aspects of the scriptures is enough to put a person out of commission. Do you risk your livelihood for a little knowledge, a little obedience?
So I achieve great understanding and see the irony or vanity of it all. Do I think that I can out do Solomon^s wisdom? Or Jeremiah^s Lamentations? Or Jobs frustrations? And if I reach achievements like Elijah, John the Baptist, or Stephen will I simply die prematurely. If I should do God^s will in my selfrighteous best conscience and conjure up approval in his sight will I live a better life? Will I be approved? Will I enter God^s Kingdom? Would I not have entered anyway if other greater, better or lesser, more pious, more abasing, or simply more things were done?
Fear of opposition, fear of rejection, fear of misunderstanding, fear of inadequate response or communication, fear that your natural needs will impede your ability to self defend or to stand up for yourself weigh on you. Fear God the scriptures say.
The love of self, is it ever surpassed by the love of your brother or friend? If you help others is it not for your own self image, for your own good. Could you live with yourself if you didn t? Is it not for you that you do those things? What would people think of you? Would they think of you at all? Would they not feel better having accomplished those things on their own? Are you not robbing them of gratification and pride and hoarding it all to yourself in some instances? Is God impressed? Yet He says that there is no greater display of love than to give up your life to save someone else^s.
If you loaf, idle, linger, procrastinate ... could it be that you are making others feel good about themselves or are you just being a parasite, a pain in the neck?
One thing can be said for the lazy, and it is a great thing in my mind, they are not as apt to be belligerent and intolerant. Slave work under a tyrant can render a man miserable. Keeping yourself busy all day and working at your own pace sometimes accomplishes much more and brings joy too.
And if I question my God with carelessness and abandon do I not cast myself in among the wretched despicable perverted self righteous in their torment and destruction on judgment day? Is not honesty the best guide? In contrast, is not honesty at times the most damaging, hurtful?
So is there an alternative? Do I go along with the blatantly obvious diversion of being a Sunday keeper rather than a Sabbath observer such as Jesus was? Does a lie cover up confusion? Would I feel better pretending to be headed for heaven based on a pagan propriety?
Elijah, sent by God to expose pagan idolatry and to show in no uncertain terms what He thinks of it, slew 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Easter, in one day.
They were not preaching God^s ways nor observing them. If God has well respected, well paid religious leaders beheaded by an otherwise unemployed, idle person, why would I argue? Remember this, the false prophets were otherwise unemployed also.
In the Catholic religion anything goes as long as you do not contest the authority of the Pope and the concept that it is the only organization by which one can enter Heaven. Those are its two fundamental Laws. It is interesting to note that in the scriptures, aside from Jesus, only Satan the Devil has gone up to heaven and that was to try to overthrow God from His throne. The Bible talks of God^s Kingdom coming to earth, not of man going to heaven. Jesus promised that He would return as He was seen, possibly by hundreds of thousands, leaving in the clouds. No other man or woman is mentioned as having received eternal life in the Holy Scriptures. So where does this fraudulent infallible Pope get his Satanically divine knowledge? You can kill Jesus and try to scare people to death with disturbing crosses but you can^t extinguish the truth from the face of the earth. You can try to fool the world by covering an image of Jesus with a loin cloth but He lived and died a circumcised Jew.
The Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church as it is called is a cauldron of ideas, myths, mysticism, paganism, false religions, blasphemous and otherwise hideous perverted practises. The same can be said for any Sunday observing Christian professing organization. It is better not to believe than to believe, practice and teach a lie and to encourage others to do the same.
God is putting man to the test and He is not adverse to having His own begotten Son go through it either. Will you decipher and believe the truth, the word of God before any human teaching? Will you observe God^s ceremonies before any of man^s? Will you put the practices of the Bible to work even if it means death, such as Jesus and his apostles did? There is only one true way to fight against warfare, intimidation, dictatorial rule, aggression, violence and the like and that is to act peacefully and righteously and with forgiveness, lest you toil in vain. Leave vengeance to God and believe in His Day of Atonement.
The Vatican, prior to the time of the schisms in the Catholic Church, established the Inquisition. The papacy explicitly forbade mercy to its victims; heretics, witches and Jews. It was better for a hundred innocent people to die than for one heretic to go free. Well received in Spain, the Inquisition became a national pastime like bullfighting. Inquisitors consciences were sealed by the blessings of the Pope. It was labeled and popularized historically as The Spanish Inquisition, diverting blame away from the Holy Catholic Church and its Papal monarchy. Many are familiar with it because of its horrendous methods of torture. The Spanish Inquisition had killed an estimated 30,000 people by the mid 1700 s, more than the sum of Christians put to death by the Romans. In 1942 the British Broadcasting Corporation announced that an estimated 700,000 Jews had been massacred recently. They were only the Polish Jews. The Papacy, quick at condemning the slightest deviation of the faith, remained forever deadly silent. Hitler continued the work started by the Papacy centuries earlier and exterminated millions of Jews during the Second World War. A large portion of his processors were devout Holy Roman Catholics with consciences seared.
The Little House on the Corner, the Casa Santa, where Galileo was tried and his scientific predecessor sentenced to death, was the office of the Grand Inquisitor, a position never held by a Pope. It was also called the Palace of the Inquisition and the work The Holy Inquisition. Today it is called ^The Sacred Congregation of the Faith^, after several name changes. Its primary function, as the name suggests, is to preserve the faith. It is located in the Vatican beside the sacristy of St. Peter^s and behind Bernini^s quadruple colonnade. Though its activities on the surface are much subdued, as compared to times past, it is visibly very alive. It functions out of the same building, an ominous looking structure with few windows. Bavarian Cardinal Ratzinger the present head of the Congregation is Pope John Paul II^s right hand man; the most powerful position in the Catholic Church next to the Pope s; the second head of the two headed beast in the book of Revelations. This Casa Santa withholds the most elementary rights from both Catholics and nonCatholics, the right to prove all things and keep what is right. Who knows the extent of lists of names they have produced and for what purposes?
The infallibility of the Pope was established by Gregory VII (10731085), the Inquisition by Gregory the IX in 1231. They were sensible, in their minds, continuations of previous and ongoing works.
Galileo was not permitted any evidence nor any witnesses in his trial. This was typical inquisition style. Capernicus, a monk, whose work Galileo was continuing, was sentenced to immediate imprisonment, but he had already been dead for seventy years. When Galileo was nearing seventy years of age he was brought to trial again for having allegedly breached the promise they had required of him for his limited freedom in 1616 when he was about 52. An old friend Cardinal Barberini was now Pope Urban VIII. Galileo was sick and spent his last eight years under house arrest by these Holy Inquisitors. He died blind in 1642. Galileo had dared to observe that the earth revolved around the sun. I wonder if the Inquisition confiscated any documented works of his.
More recently, a Jesuit priest from Los Angeles, California, Terrence Sweeney, was ousted from his position as a teacher by Cardinal Ratzinger, the head of the ^Sacred Congregation of the Faith^. Sweeney had set up a survey asking priests and bishops for their views on celibacy and women priests. Ratzinger told him to burn his research papers or to leave the order. After twenty four years of service Sweeney decided that it would be best to leave. What priests and Bishops think is not for public scrutiny. The Pope alone speaks for the church. He is afraid of the clergy and the clergy is afraid of him. With an infallible Pope there is no room for dissent.
I was born a Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church constituent, destined to uphold its majestic stature or face condemnation in the form of excommunication ... if deemed rebellious. I dare to think that my fate is graver than that. I have expressed confusion in beliefs and in my understanding of the expectations of God. There is no confusion in my view of the Vatican and its affiliates. They are a prime Satanic establishment on this earth. (Call no man father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven, Jesus taught in Matthew chapter twenty three.) The work that is accomplished there is for evil purposes. The inquisitors are probably the greatest antiChristian examples in history, yet they professed doing the work of God. These historical figures and events clearly show the results of going against God^s will; the Papacy, the Inquisition, and the holocaust.
We must be patient with God. He will run the show. His overwhelmingly obvious and undeniable theme is righteousness; love God in truth and love your fellow man as yourself. Prove all things and keep what is right. These are fundamental Biblical principles.
1996, 2006
2007 Jacques Gauvin
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