THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

This is absolutely fascinating. For one thing, no I've never come across it before. Things that I have been mulling over are these. St. Paul, we are told, was planning on going to Asia, but in a dream, a man from Macedonia appeared to him saying come over here and help us, so he went west. Acts something. I think there are reasons why history has gone the direction it has and it was Europe that became Christendom. And the Jews have always been trying to find a way there but stay apart.

Comment by Shari

ME:

Yes, I remember a short statement that the disciples were not to go to the East, but I read it when I did not know what "The East" meant to every literate person in that age and to no theologian today. You reminded me of it.

Paul was specifically forbidden to go where his own thinking came from!

And this, Alan B. should explain why I study THE GENERAL OUTLINES of religious thinking so closely. The theologians are lost in the forest, and the other people study tree bark and lichen. They discover a piece of lichen and build a church on it.

But if you step back and look at the general outline, you will see that St. Paul was considered a blessing by the Apostles, especially by Peter, when he first appeared, and for a reason that is straight out of AD 2007. Peter had heard the words of Christ, but here was a SCHOLAR, a Roman Citizen, who would attest to the truth.

And with Paul the intellectual came the disease that comes with scholars. Jesus had even cut the Ten Commandments down to two, but Paul imposed what whole intellectual Wordism of his day in the name of Christ. From absolutely NOWHERE he brought in the ideal of sterility from the dying and degenerate Zoroastrian faith. He took the infant Christ and turned him into a bitter old man.

Which, as I say, is news straight out of 2007 AD. Academia is carrying the poisons of Wordism to each new generation. If Christ had wanted book-fed, sophisticated Pauls to teach Intellectual Truth, he would not have said, "For thou art PETER, and upon THIS rock I will build my church." Jesus' Palestine was crowded with Scribes and Pharisees and every other version of Paul you could imagine.

Jesus hand-picked his disciples, carefully chosen men not one of whom was a scholar. He told them "I can make you fishers of men." He said over and over and over and over and over to them the same words Doctor Bob, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, said on his deathbed to Bill W: "Keep it SIMPLE."

Jesus said again and again and again, "Keep it SIMPLE." Be good. Love God. Be as good to your neighbor as you would be to yourself, which meant you should treat yourself well. As Pain points out, nobody can apply this today, least of all the churches.

A century after the death of Christ, men were out in the desert starving and thirsting and whipping themselves in his name. It never occurred to them that, if that was right and Jesus' teachings were right, then they should be out torturing others.

According to a combination of St. Paul and the Golden Rule, the greatest "Christians" in history were Ghenghis Khan and Mao-Tse Tung, with Pol Pot getting big honors for how much he did with less.

But who is going to COMBINE the self-torture that began with St. Paul's intellectual disease caught from degenerate Zoroastrianism with the Golden Rule? Where would you PUBLISH it?

OF COURSE you haven't heard it before, Shari. Do you think I find this stuff in books?

Now some crotcheting from a crotchety old man to the rest of you: Don't sit around grousing about whether or not you are a Christian. I don't CARE. I am not a priest of any religion, least of all Ayn Rand's militantly atheistic Objectivism.

That kind of stuff is a big deal with priests and followers of Ayn Rand, but I am not trying to give you a Wordism, I am trying to get your nose to the intellectual grindstone.

Don't bitch at me about bringing up old ideas you aren't interested in because you are enlightened. I don't mind those comments, but they mean your mind is in a RUT.

My kind of thinking will die with me unless you folks get to BASICS.

KEEP IT SIMPLE.