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Note from Guru Kurt: Knowing that Mohammed was supported by His family, I sent this letter to my brother to see if this might also be true for me. The answer came back as the toning of a clear bell: No, no, no. Jeff gave me the SCR, Standard Christian Response – there are no embodied angels, we need to study our concordances, and was I aware the Bible was not originally written in English? (Embodied angels are real; see Fun With Vivekananda).

Yes, Jeff, I know the Bible was not originally written in English, but did you know the Father, acting through the Holy Spirit, has ensured that the correct meaning did come shining through, which although not perfect is perfectly suited for His purposes? Well, scuttle on back to your little black book and keep your nose deeply buried there. I would use the vast majority of the Bible, except for the words of Jesus, Isaiah, John of Patmos and the other Old Testament prophets (including Moses), for toilet paper. I spurn your “religion!” You have made a knavish mockery of the Lord’s teachings! A messenger sent from a king once went to a poor village, and in a fit of generosity declared, stretching forth his arms, “All these lands are yours.” On returning 20 years later, he found the peasants had occupied not only the lands he had intended for them to occupy, but also huge tracts of adjacent lands, reducing the former inhabitants of those lands to poverty as they did so. Inquiring about this and attempting to make his meaning plain, the king’s messenger was told over and over, “You said ‘All these lands are yours.’ Our understanding of your words is the correct one. If you meant something else, why did you speak so? You have brought this on yourself.” Knowing full well what he meant when he spoke in his former mood of generosity, and outraged at the peasants’ insolence at presuming to know what had been in his mind, the messenger reported back to the king, who sent a great army to deprive the peasants not only of the adjacent lands they had wrongfully occupied, but also all the lands that had been given before. Many were slaughtered, many reduced to utter poverty, and many learned to rue that day they supposed the person authorized to speak on the king’s behalf not to be capable of clarifying his original intent and meaning in giving them their fair share of the king’s resources, who was a generous king, but not a foolish one, wanting all of his subjects to be happy, not just a few at the dire expense of all the rest.

Jeff,

Thank-you again for the Keith Green CD. I listened to it most of the way home, and my eyes were wet with tears of joy because of his beautiful lyrics and ecstatic, melodious and vibrant singing style. I wonder if he was a kind of prophet; in "Song to my parents" he concludes by asking them, "Prophets don’t grow up from little boys, do they? From little boys?" Then, in "How can they live without Jesus?" he sings, "The world has gone crazy, but soon, maybe, a lot more are going to know" like he was heralding the second coming. I wish more of the Christian artists had his energy and feeling; as far as I know he was the best of them all.

I looked up those verses in the Bible. I’ll just put the one from Mark here, since it’s fairly representative:

Mark 13: 24-27

24. "But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,  25. and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.  26. And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory.  27. And then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

I suppose verse 27 is the one where the early Christians got the idea of a rapture, but this is not the only possible interpretation. It is highly likely (in fact, certain) that Jesus knew all about the modern, technological civilization which would arise and since He could not have spoken openly about such things without adversely affecting human history, spoke instead in colorful, poetic terms that would capture people’s imaginations. Here is an alternative interpretation: By "the sun and moon darkening," Jesus may have meant the effect of smog from pollution, and soot from forest fires started by man. For instance, in Indonesia there was a terrible fire not long ago that all but blotted out the sun for many months. There are many places in the world where the smog is so thick that the sun and moon are difficult to see. By "the  stars falling" He may have meant their being obscured in big cities by light pollution, the bane of astronomers (since it is unlikely that the entire galaxy will be dissolved at His second coming, assuming that the Father has caused all these suns to be created in order to harbor more planets of life besides just earth, and that they are not there merely for our amusement). To one who goes from the country to the city, which is the case with the majority of the world's population, it does indeed appear that the fainter stars have fallen from the sky. By "the powers of heaven being shaken" Jesus may have meant the destruction of the ozone layer by pollution, an occurrence which He could easily have predicted from His stature as Creator of the world(s). The ozone layer is a "power of heaven" since it was likely intentionally put in place by the Father, in some divine manner, for the protection of life on the planet. Seeing "the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory," I have always thought, even from high school days, could be interpreted as His appearing on world-wide television; how else could Jesus have spoken of the mass media in those primitive days? Now to verse 27; there are both embodied and disembodied angels. The early Christians assumed that the angels referred to here were disembodied, and that gathering the elect would entail removing them from the general population. However, Jesus would have known that the world’s population would be six billion, and even with the mass media He would require the services of the angels, His friends, in embodied form to help spread, perhaps, the final warning for mankind of the impending judgment. This message must be spread to all corners of the globe, to all places both high (heaven) and low (earth). The elect that He gathers will be those that believe in Him in His new embodied form (having a name other than "Jesus," obviously), whose own names are written in the book of life and who will not be cast into hell on the last day by the Father’s wrathful and righteous vengeance.

Well, this is my opinion on the subject; I am sure yours will be different. No one here agrees with anything that I say, at any time; I’ve grown used to it. I told you that Jesus will be in a bind when He returns; if He says the old things, He will be accused of being an imitator. If He says new things, many will refuse to believe He is the Christ. Knowing what He did the first time, however, I think it would be a safe guess that He will come with the most radical message mankind has ever beheld, and "let the chips fall where they may." A greater portion of truth may be due to man, than man is ready to receive. I do not think this would stop Him, or slow Him down, not even a little. Top

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