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Exclusive Cults of Jesus vs True Brotherhood[10]
A noteworthy insight on my "Harvest Day".
Date: 7/9/2015 11:54:46 PM ( 9 y ) ... viewed 1315 times February 12, 2020 - Crosses -
"... Sozomen, the ecclesiastical historian, says that, on the destruction of the Serapium in Egypt, 'there were found sculptured on the stones certain characters regarded as sacred, resembling the sign of the cross. This representation, interpreted by those who knew the meaning, signified "The Life to come." This was the occasion of a great number of pagans embracing Christianity, the more so because other characters announced that the temple would be destroyed when this character came to light(i).'
Socrates gives further particulars: 'Whilst they were demolishing and despoiling the temple of Serapis, they found characters, engraved on the stone, of the kind called hieroglyphics, the which characters had the figure of the cross. When the Christians and the Greeks [i.e. heathen] saw this, they referred the signs to their own religions. The Christians, who regarded the cross as the symbol of the salutary passion of Christ, thought that this character was their own. But the Greeks said it was common to Christ and Serapis; though this cruciform character is, in fact, one thing to the Christians, and another to the Greeks. A controversy having arisen, some of the Greeks [heathen] converted to Christianity, who understood the hieroglyphics, interpreted this cross-like figure to signify "The Life to come." The Christians, seizing on this as in favour of their religion, gathered boldness and assurance; and as it was shown by other sacred characters that the temple of Serapis was to have an end when was brought to light this cruciform character, signifying "The Life to come," a great number were converted and were baptized, confessing their sins'(ii).”[13]
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(i) Sozomen, Hist. Eccles. vii., c. 14.
(ii) Socrat. Hist. Eccles. v., c. 17.
Comment:
The above quotes appear to suggest another perspective on the Gospels to the Greeks! "St John the apostle and Evangelist, and St Luke wrote Gospels to the Greeks in Greek in order that they might fully understand them."[14]
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October 19, 2019 -
"... One can be a Christian only in opposition.(i) When opposition is suppressed, there is no more sense in saying 'Christian.' Christendom has astutely abolished Christianity by making us all Christians. … In Christendom there is not the slightest idea of what Christianity is. People cannot see or understand that Christianity has been abolished by its propagation. Again, history probably does not offer any other example of a religion being abolished by reason of its success. ..."[11]
"The biblical view is not just apolitical but antipolitical in the sense that it refuses to confer any value on political power, or in the sense that it regards political power as idolatrous."[12]
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Comment: (i) This "opposition" pertains to one's relation to the world system, both in the outer appearance/form and in the spirit of it.
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During my pre-dinner contemplation I was inspired in a flash of insight about the necessity for members to have a subordinated imagination in cult life. I made note of "christian cults" with the intention of researching this.
Now I have 66 search results from "christian cultism". The following comes from the first result:
"John the Beloved always wrote or spoke as an intimate devotee of a Spiritual Master. That is, he was communicating about the Way of true worship, or ecstatic bodily Communion with the Living God, but he always acknowledged his own Spiritual Master (who initiated him into the practice of esoteric Communion with the Living Spirit) as if his Master were identical to the Spirit and thus to God. This is a habit of acknowledgment that is typical of all oriental esoteric societies. It represents a profound acknowledgment and appreciation of the mechanism of initiation, guidance, and ecstatic participation enjoyed in the unique spiritual and esoteric relationship of the devotee and his or her Spiritual Master.
No heresy or delusion is contained in this manner of acknowledgment, unless, as has been the case with the exoteric Christian Church that survived the time of Jesus and John the Beloved, the language becomes exoteric and exclusive.[1] That is, if the language of the ecstatic acknowledgment of a Spiritual Master by his true devotees is inherited by a nominal or exoteric cult, that individual tends to become exclusively identified with the Divine Reality. The result of this is that the Living God ceases to be the principle of experience and practice, but abstracted ideas or beliefs and symbolic personalities become, again, the idolatrous basis of the religion. And the religion, or cult, then ceases to understand itself as one of many possible traditional communities involved in esoteric worship. Instead, the cult tends to see and communicate itself as the only community that possesses the Truth.[2]
This has precisely been the case with the Christian churches, most of which have become exclusive cults of Jesus[3], and most of which have lost both their esoteric foundation and their ability to see the Divine Truth in the Spirit-Worship of all esoteric traditions.[3] And the Christian religion, as well as all other exclusive exoteric and even esoteric traditions, must again be re-awakened and transformed by the esoteric Teaching of Truth."[4]:
http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/ScientificProof/secret_identity_of_the_hol.html
Today is my "Harvest Day". What I've noted here could be a goldmine of value were I to fully harvest it.
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July 20, 2015 -
"Jesus Christ is a good example of a title being used as a name."[5]
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August 8, 2015 -
"... Steiner describes Christ's being and mission on earth as having a central place in human evolution:
'The being of Christ is central to all religions, though called by different names by each. Every religion is valid and true for the time and cultural context in which it was born. Historical forms of Christianity need to be transformed considerably in our times in order to meet the on-going evolution of humanity.'"[6]
I live in a total and complete commitment to "the on-going evolution of humanity" - superseding my consecration to "Christ and The Church" of forty-four years ago.
Cont. Re: Steiner - "Steiner saw this being that unifies all religions – and not a particular religious faith – as the central force in human evolution. He believed that Jesus' incarnation occurred, and that it was a pivotal point in human history. For Steiner, the 'Christ Being' not only redeemed the Fall from Paradise, but that Jesus was also the unique pivot and meaning of earth's evolutionary processes and human history. In Steiner's esoteric cosmology, the spiritual development of humanity is interwoven in and inseparable from the cosmological development of the universe. Continuing the evolution that led to humanity being born out of the natural world, the Christ being brings an impulse enabling human consciousness of the forces that act creatively, but unconsciously, in nature.
To be 'Christian' is, for Steiner, a search for balance between polarizing extremes:102–3 and the ability to manifest love in freedom."
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August 11th -
"Steiner described the physical incarnation of Christ as a unique event, but predicted that Christ would reappear in the etheric, or lowest spiritual, plane beginning in the 1930s. This would manifest in various ways: as a new spiritual approach to community life and between individuals; in more and more individuals discovering fully conscious access to the etheric plane (clairvoyance); and in Christ's appearance to groups of seekers gathered together.[7]
In reviewing my search results for: "steiner+'second coming of christ'community" my emphasis is in regards to the actual community. This book:
CHRIST AND THE DISCIPLES -
The Destiny of an Inner Community by Peter Selg
captured my attention!
"Rudolf Steiner has said that we must learn to live with the etheric Christ in the Earth's aura in the same way that the disciples once lived with Christ Jesus on the physical plane. To do this, it is essential to understand what took place between Christ and his disciples. In numerous lecture cycles, Rudolf Steiner spoke about the inner community of the disciples, opening up perspectives that help us see how the disciples accompanied Christ Jesus during the three years of his earthly life and after the Resurrection. Especially in his lectures on the Fifth Gospel, Steiner shed light on the community of the disciples from the viewpoint of the processes of human consciousness that were intimately involved in the events at the beginning of the new era and were inscribed in the chronicle of evolution, the akashic record."[8]
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August 13th -
Today is the last day in my Month of Harvest and I find it most interesting that I happen to be reading: The Fifth Gospel by Rudolf Steiner.:
"... the clairvoyant gaze, inspired by the true Christ-Impulse in an anthroposophical sense, is directed to the Pentecost event, the sending out of the Holy Spirit.
What occurred at that moment in the evolution of the world on earth, which is presented as the Holy Spirit descending upon the apostles, which at first seems quite unintelligible to us? When one views this clairvoyantly, investigates [it], one arrives at a spiritual scientific answer as to what is meant with: Simple people, which the apostles were, suddenly began to speak in various tongues about what they had to say from the depths of spiritual life, and which was not expected of them. Yes, then Christianity, the Christian impulses, began to spread independently of the people's understanding of them.
The stream which has been described flowed out from the Pentecost event."[9]
I find more meaning and mystery bound together in the above 138 words here than I ever knew in the seven years that I was in "The Church" when I was a member between 1971 and 1978.
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November 6th -
Directly inspired early this morning (yesterday) with: "True Brotherhood is the awareness and recognition of the universal oneness of Sonship".
Today I am especially grateful for the Brotherhood!
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Footnotes:
[1] Something that I became very familiar with in my submersion in previous church experience.
[2] The truth of this statement has been strongly confirmed in my personal experience!
[3] Amen!
[4] I'm going to let that last statement sink into me a time.
[5] In "Where Were You Before The Tree of Life?":
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/where-were-you-before-tree-life1.pdf
[6] http://www.geneticmatrix.com/steiner-rudolf-human-design-chart.html
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_and_claims_for_the_Second_Coming_of_Christ
[8] http://www.rudolfsteinerpress.com/pages/religion.php
[9] - See more at: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA148/English/SCR2006/19131001p01.html#sthash.eEBFD5aJ.dpuf
[10] November 6th, 2015 I've re-titled this blog post as: "Exclusive Cults of Jesus vs True Brotherhood" and adding "vs True Brotherhood" without intending to indicate any adversarial contention/s between these two. The point is to contrast what is of a universal nature and what is non-universal.
[11] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jacques_Ellul#The_Subversion_of_Christianity_(1984)
[12] Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity (1982), G. Bromiley, trans. (1986), p. 113:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Apoliticism
The two wikiquotes (immediately above) resulted from searching: "non-political" as that phrase described the status of the "free inhabitant" as a "non-political status."
[13] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Curious_Myths_of_the_Middle_Ages/The_Legend_of_the_Cross#cite_note-4
[14] "To The British & Foreign Bible Society - This MS. is humbly presented by its devoted Servant E. Henderson."
https://www.bibelselskabet.dk/sites/default/files/files/henderson_manuscript.pdf
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Keywords:
imagination, christian cults, christian cultism, John the Beloved, Communion, Living God, Living Spirit, Master, esoteric societies, Church, Divine Reality, Truth, Jesus, transformed, tree of life, evolution of humanity, christianity, second coming of christ, brotherhood, sonship, non-political, free inhabitant
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