The parables that Jesus uses in these verses are his attempt to describe the Kingdom of God.  He uses four parables in this attempt to explain the Kingdom.  When read with the “god bias” these verses sound so good.  How it is our fault to not believe, how YHWH tries to grow a garden from our souls.  But there is an underlying message that you can only see if you suspend the “god bias”.

It is starts in verse 3 and continues to verse 8.  It is a little long so check it out here.  This is the greatly honored “Parable of the Sower”.  Jesus uses it to describe four types of people: those who do not accept, those who burn out, those that are overwhelmed by the world, and those that are saved.  But there is one verse that needs to be look at much closer than Jesus did:

Mark 4:4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.

What farmer would scatter their seed randomly?  Only a fool would take the risk of losing seed to the birds, to rocky soil, and to a thorn patch.  But this is exactly how YHWH spreads his “Kingdom”.  He allows some to be taken by Satan.  He allows some to burn out.  He allows some to be overtaken by the world.  And it is worse than that…he foolishly spreads the seed in a way that we do not have a choice.  We do not choose to be the seed on the path…that is where he places us.  So this parable is one more example of predestination.

Another verse in this parable that requires more examination is:

Mark 4:11-12 He told them, “This secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you.  But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, “’they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding: otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’”

Even Jesus butchers the bible.  The actual translation is:

Isaiah 6:9-10 He said, “go and tell this people: ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes.  Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

The prophet Isaiah was told to turn the people’s eyes, ears, and hearts so they would be callous and not be saved.  YHWH commanded this prophet to insure that the Israelites would not be healed!  And Jesus twists this verse to make it seem like we have a chose.  When you combine these two verses, correctly translated to English, you see three possibilities.  One, is that YHWH does make people’s hearts calloused.  Or, another, is that Jesus did not even know the verses of the Torah correctly.  The final possibility is that Jesus purposely twisting the verse he knew to some purpose.  These last two possibilities leave you wondering about Jesus’ divinity.  The first possibility leaves you wondering about a “loving” YHWH.

The parable of “the lamp on a stand” has some interesting ideas as well.  It truly applies to “the Truth”. 

Mark 4:22 For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.

Isn’t this just the way it should be.  In a social species we can’t keep lies, the higher the lie the more likely it will destroy our society.  Religion and governmental lies are the worst.  And just as Jesus says we must uncover all the hidden and concealed information.

He also gives good advice here:

Mark 4:24-25 “Consider carefully what you hear,” he continued, “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you – and even more. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.”

This clearly translates into two ideas: “Don’t trust everything you hear, no matter who tells you it” and “Use it or lose it”!  Both of these ideas need to be used by us every day.  But the TrueChristians™ needs to think about this even more.  They trust what they hear without using logic and trust without using discriminating what is true and what is fantasy.

The other two parables are similar in vain.  Part of it is the random scattering of the saved in with the rest of us.  Another is how once he has chosen a person they will grow to be a tall tree.  John Mark finishes by telling how Jesus would not tell the people the meaning of the parables, but would let the disciples in on the hidden secret.  This just happens to be direct violation of Mark 4:22 (see above).

So what we see here is how the kingdom of God is filled with people that YHWH chooses. That Jesus knows some profound concepts of living in society.  And finally, that Jesus himself does not follow his own teachings!  Jesus kept secrets from the masses, right after telling the masses that the hidden was meant to be disclosed and the concealed brought out in the open!
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In this post I want to explore the aspect of Hope.  Most TrueChristians™ do not believe that an Atheist can have much hope.  They could not be further from the truth.  We have many hopes: in the future, in individual selves, in humanity, in science, and in numbers (I explain that in a little bit).  We do not all have the same hopes, but ask an Atheist what type of hope they have and you will find that it is part of their personal outlook on life.

We have hope in the future, even if is only for equality.  To a Christian this may seem silly, only because being the majority (in the US) gives them the right to believe that everyone is being treated fairly.  Trina Hoaks at Friendly Atheist gives a good example of the hope that Atheist have of having equality.  To verify this, ask a gay or lesbian if they have equality!  You can even ask an African-American, many Mexican-Americans, or even anyone with Asian descent, the concept of equality is only felt by the majority.  Here in the US that would be the Caucasian Christian (male). 

Our hope for the future has multiple facets to it.  We hope for better education for our future generations.  One post from a number of years ago ends with a fierce example of this hope.  The court room battles over education are a sign of our hopes: PA, TX, and Kansas.  Equal access to education for the masses is extremely important, but we must recognize that people have different skills.  There is a difference between education and training.  I personally hope that one day we will personalize education for each individual.  Mass education leaves something to be desired.  The weaker “book” students get “left behind” while the stronger “book” students get bored.

Another form of hope that we have is in peace here on Earth.  Since Atheist know that we only have one life (all of us), almost all of us believe that human life is worth saving.  I will not use the word sacred, because that is too weak a word for what most Atheists believe about the value of all human life.  We hope that everyone will live a fruitful, happy, contented life with many joys and few sorrows.  To achieve this goal, Atheists understand that reason must be the driving force for society.  The religious divisiveness must end and the wars that religion has started must end.  But for this to happen we must have better education (see above).

Many of us Atheist do place our hope in science, and for good reason.  Yes, atrocities have been carried out due to science (sometimes in the name of science).  But look around you, even the plants that you see have been affected by science…fertilizers (hopefully you are not surrounded by nuclear waste or fall-out).  The cars, the phones, the window in front of you…all science.  The medicine you and your family took for any number of illnesses…all science.  Using the past as a predictor of the future, science will only make our lives more enjoyable, more full-filling, and more worthwhile.  Yes, we run the risk of annihilation with science.  To eliminate this risk we must have removed the risk of religious wars and better education for the masses. 
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Isn’t this the funniest thing you have ever seen.  I take it someone did not like my blog site.  I wonder who the coward was!  The few people who have commented have been very cordial.  And I have both enjoyed responding and have been as cordial as well.I am not surprised that a coward would use such an attempt to stop something that is so antithetic to their own point of view.  But I certainly expected to get flaming comments before this happened!  But there is no doubt that the search for the PA scopes trial is what activated this “problem”. 

As all of you know, I source my data from web searches.  I use Google substansially while preparing a post.I find this very humourous and will look forward to see if anyone will take responsibility.  Since that is lacking in the Christian religion, I doubt that anyone will admit to it.  And I am sure that someone feels that their religion gives them the right to do this!
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This section of the gospel has a wealth of information, but I think I can boil it down rather quickly.  The first section of this section is “Who is Lord of the Sabbath”.  Jesus talks a little about what are appropriate actions of the Sabbath.  The next section is about how popular Jesus has become.  It’s a good thing he didn’t need Secret Service Agents back then, I guess YHWH really did have a reason to protect him.  The third section is one that I will focus on the most.  It is about a “house divided”.  Jesus applied it to Satan, but it can be aptly applied to Christianity today.  The final section covers how Jesus treats his own mother (the Virgin Mary) as an equal to everyone listening that day.

In my last post I mentioned that the phrase “Son of Man” in Aramaic means us…humanity.  So with that in mind, Jesus is saying that not only he, but all of us, is “Lord of the Sabbath”.  He even says as much:

Luke 2:27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

Reading the “Son of Man” as Jesus meant it has profound meaning to most of what is written in the four Gospels.  When Jesus throws out demons and when he calls himself the “Son of Man”, he is not referring to his divinity.  He is claiming that all humanity can do the same things he did.

In the next section in Chapter 3 the crowds follow Jesus from the village of Capernaum to the “lake” (Sea of Galilee?).  Remember the size of Capernaum…basically Jesus walks about 3 city blocks to the “lake”. He is still overwhelmed by the crowd and must retreat to a boat near the shore.  The main reason he has to do this is the pressure to heal the sick and throw out demons.  I guess at some point even the Most Holy gets tired of helping people.  The odd thing about this “throwing out of demons” is this:

Mark 3:11-12 Whenever the evil spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” But he gave them strict orders not to tell who he was.

If crying out “You are the Son of God” is not telling everyone in the crowd at the “lake” who was Jesus, what is?  It also shows that Jesus did not have control over demons…they told everyone who Jesus was…“the Son of God”.  I am having some trouble, as well, with the switch from Sea of Galilee to the “lake”.  It seems odd to me, and makes me wonder if some things have not been garbled over the millennia.  Luke does call it the Lake of Gennesaret (Luke 5:1).  So is this a problem of the people at the time of Jesus (mostly Israelites) not having a standard naming of places they have possessed for thousands of years, or is this confusion over where the event took place, or is it just that only certain audiences called the Sea of Galilee by this name.  This last case would imply that each of the Gospels was truly meant for different people.

My favorite part of this section is where Jesus describes a “house divided”. 

Luke 3:24-25 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.  If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.

Here he is referring to the power of Satan, because the Pharisees think that he is possessed by Beelzebub.  So here we have an ancient religion that is “God inspired” that believes not just in YHWH, Jesus, Satan, but also in the Prince of demons (a separate entity from Satan).  But Jesus counters them with the concept that if he were “of Satan” how and why would he throw out other members of his team.  Unfortunately, that is exactly what many Christian sects do this very day!  The Kingdom of God on earth is divided against itself, and Jesus declares that in this condition the Kingdom of God will not stand!  It is estimated that there are over 28,700 denominations as of right now and by 2025 it will have grown to 55,000.  This is a house/kingdom divided.  Your own “Lord and Savor” has warned you about this condition, yet nothing is being done to bring the Kingdom of God back to Jesus’ original plan.  Christianity will fail directly because of the fact that you ignore what your source of Salvation tells you!

I almost forgot the interesting part of this section:

Luke 3:28-29 I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them.  But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin.”

So go ahead and cure YHWH and Jesus, that’s just fine with the creator.  But don’t you dare say a single bad thing about the Holy Spirit.  I guess the Trinity is not quite what we expect.  Since the Holy Spirit is supposed to guide us here on earth, and we know how well that’s working out, Jesus wants to protect the weakest link from our verbal abuse.  Is it not odd how we can blasphemy the great creator and our salvation, but not the guiding force of the Trinity?  So don’t forget to take the Blasphemy Challenge!

The final section is about how Jesus treats his own mother, the Virgin Mary.  We also get to a glimpse into his family life before the ministry.  He had brothers and a mother that:

Luke 3:21 When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

This was not just his “brothers” this included his Virgin Mother:

Luke 3:32 A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

The Catholic venerated “Virgin Mother” who was certainly not a virgin after Jesus, believed he was “out of his mind”.  Yet somehow she has become second to Jesus in their faith!  A funny thought just occurred to me: where is Joseph, Jesus’ adopted father after YHWH deserts him.  But Jesus’ response is even more telling about Mary’s part in the story:

Luke 3:33-35 Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asks.  Then he looked at those seated in the circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

He basically lays it on the line…Mary and his biological brothers are NOT his spiritual family.  It would even seem from these verses that the Biblical family was not even doing the will of YHWH!  Do you not believe that Jesus would invite his own family in and introduce them to his new friends?  Instead he completely ignores his “virgin mother” and the rest of his family.  Now this is Biblical Family Values!
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Three stories occur in this section of the Gospel of John Mark.  One is about healing a paralytic.  The second is about Jesus calling Levi.  This also includes Jesus eating with the “sinners”.  The third story in this section is about Jesus and his disciples doing things differently.  One thing that should be noted is the relationship between Capernaum, Simon, and the Sea of Galilee.  Capernaum was a fishing village on the coast of the fresh water Sea of Galilee where Simon lived. Entering and exiting the village to go to the Sea of Galilee was like walking to the pier at the US city of Evanston, IL.  Notice that the village is tiny and that entering, leaving, and going to be “Sea” is like walking across a couple of city blocks. 

The first story is about Jesus healing a paralytic.  The actual disease this man had is unknown.  The more important thing to notice is the determination of the 4 men carrying the paralytic.  They destroy Simon’s house to get the man to Jesus.  To say the least, Jesus is impressed.  But in healing the paralytic man, Jesus starts a debate with the righteous and religious people of his time (kinda like our own TrueChristianTM).  Oddly this debates ends up being over if forgiving sin is easier than healing a man.  Well we now know which is easier…forgiving a man.  Only under very special cases can a paralytic person be healed, and it costs a lot of money.  Notice in that link the price tag…$300,000 US.  So, it is definitely easier to forgive a “sinner”.  I know a lot of people in the world today that wish Jesus could heal a paralytic (or even an amputee). 

Another part of the story about how Jesus heals the paralytic man is the announcement that he makes during the debate:

Mark 2:10-11 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…” He said to the paralytic, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.”

In the process of healing this man, Jesus tells everyone in Capernaum that he is the Son of Man.  But when we look at the Jewish (Hebrew) meaning of this phrase, it means that Jesus has just told us that all mankind has the power to forgive and hence to heal.  Jesus was actually NOT proclaiming his deityship!

The second story is about Levi the tax collector and how Jesus deals with “the most despised people of the Israelites”.  In Jesus’ time these people were worse than the Romans, the adulterer, the prostitute, or the homosexual.  But since they were protected by the Romans the Israelites could not hurt them.  Guess what Jesus does within the first days of his ministry?  First, he calls one of these traitors to be his disciple (later an Apostle).  Second, he (and all his disciples) go and have lunch with Levi’s “sinful” friends.  What has happened to Jesus’ disciples today?  Why do they do the exact opposite from Jesus?  Why do they act like the Pharisees?  From a de-converted gay Atheist, this is one of the biggest set of questions I want answers to!  The best interpretation of this change in the “Christian” attitude towards sinners is that there are no christians on the planet.  Or at least their god does not exist, and they are just “playing” the righteous card.

The third story is about why Jesus’ disciples are different than the other religious sects of the day.  This is actually one of the most disappointing answers that Jesus gives to his audience.  He tells them that it is because they are in celebration with Jesus still being alive.  Jesus certainly does not have freewill, he knows that he must die…to save mankind.  But he is so egotistical, that he claims that his disciples are being blessed by his divine presence.  Even though he has just declared that he is not divine in the verse I quoted earlier.  It would have been much more appropriate for the “Son of God” to tell the Pharisees that his disciples did not follow the old traditions!  I would have loved for Jesus to tell the Pharisees that a distinctly new and radical perspective on religion was being showcased.  But no, Jesus just continues with the arrogance stance of YHWH.
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Dear Christians: A Gay Athiest Personal Experiment

This part of the chapter is mostly about the healing powers of Jesus.  I wonder if it was the same 2000 years ago as it is today, with respect to the number of fake “faith healers”.  The US had to create the FDA to minimize fraudulent medical cures (and of course poorly manufactured foods).  So I would have to assume that “miraculous cures” were a dime a dozen in Jesus’ time.  But people were so desperate they would try anything, so when this Jesus entered their town they went to him.  Since he quickly moved from town to town even if he did not heal the people “by faith” many would still come to him in each new town.  Even if Jesus was a true healer, most people were exposed to the fake healer, and as a result, were skeptical of Jesus’ power.  Miraculous cures today are not sufficient to proof the “supernatural” powers; I suspect that it was the same in Jesus’ time, or maybe even worse.

Jesus’ first act of healing that is when he removes a “fever” from Simon’s mother-in-law.  How many women do you know that would get out of bed to serve a “special” guest, all the time claiming that they are perfectly fine?  I would not be surprised if Simon’s mother-in-law did not do the exact same thing.  In fact, the “honor” of having Jesus in her home might have been enough to overcome her symptoms. 

Shortly after this Sabbath healing many more people come to Jesus to be healed.  The next morning Jesus disappears to pray by himself.  Since he has not finished healing all the sick people are still looking for him.  When his disciples find him Jesus tells them it is time to move on.  So he continues his missionary tour of Galilee.

His other recorded healing in this chapter is of a man with “leprosy”.  Leprosy in the OT, and Jesus’ time was any skin discoloration and even clothing.  So a “miraculous” healing of this sort is questionable at best.  The funny thing about this story is that Jesus continues to tell “demons” and this leper not to tell people who he is or what he can do.  Yet this “leper” would have to go to the priest and offer sacrifice for his cleansing.  The priest would of course want to know why he was offering the sacrifice, to verify that it was sanctified.  The priest would also want to know how this man was cured.  So this “leper” would have to break Jesus command of not telling anyone…by directly telling one of the most powerful men in town.  To say the least, the “leper” does not bother to tell the priest…he tells everyone.  This causes a major stir in all of Galilee (yeah right, this one event is responsible) and Jesus can no longer enter the towns but must stay outside “in lonely places”.

So let’s look at it in today’s perspective.  A man shows up for a few days near you and “heals the sick” and “drives out demons (but won’t let them speak)”.  Would you believe that he was a miracle worker?  Or would you be as skeptical of him as you are of all the other “faith healers” that we hear about in the news today?  No wonder YHWH quite doing “miraculous” healing…distinguishing the true ones from the false ones is beyond our poor humanly capacity.  Even today, with all of our medical technology, we have not measured a miracle yet.
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We will just fast forward to Jesus’ 33 year.  I say his 33^rd birthday because we know that he was born in the 6BC and started his ministry in 27AD.  So he was 33 when he was baptized by John the Baptist.  I will not discuss the differences in each gospel about this event, but when I reach this story in the other gospels I will use this one as a comparison.  Mark writes that immediately after being baptized YHWH tells the crowd that this is his son and the Spirit of God descends upon Jesus.  As soon as the Spirit enters Jesus he is sent out into the desert.  In one quick sentence he is tempted by Satan, but at the same time he is attended by angels.  How can the temptation of Satan be that bad if you have angels attending all your needs?  Jesus couldn’t even forget that he was the Son of Man if he had angels attending him while Satan tempted him.

When his 40 days of “temptation” were over and John the Baptist was in prison, Jesus went into Galilee.  But Nazareth was in Galilee, so basically, Jesus went from Galilee to the Jordan River and back to Galilee.  So Jesus traveled over 63 miles south to somewhere near the Jordan River within 20 miles east of Jerusalem and back to the Sea of Galilee.  The round trip would have taken at least 8 days, just to get baptized by John the Baptist right before he was imprisoned by Herod. 

While he is traveling near the Sea of Galilee (or maybe it was the Lake of Gennesaret, or maybe the Sea of Tiberias) he calls his first disciples.  They were actually fishing, out on the Sea (or Lake) at the time he calls them (at least in this version).  His first disciples are Simon and Andrew.  A little bit later he calls James and John the sons of Zebedee.  Obviously, people knew who he was because all four of these men stop working immediately to follow him.  In fact, James and John leave their father in the boat.  I wonder how the family reunion was after that. 

Jesus travels around the Sea of Galilee from the Jordan River to Capernaum (about 27 miles).  While he is in Capernaum he enters a synagogue and teaches with great authority.  We know that it is with authority because a man stands up to him and tells him he is the “Holy One of God”.  Jesus calls the evil spirit that knows he is the “Holy One” out of the man.  The man certainly could NOT have known that Jesus was the “Holy One” even though Simon, Andrew, James, and John knew that they should follow Jesus and give up their day jobs in the process.  We also know that evil spirits do not exist and cannot be exorcised, but that’s beside the point. 

From Mark’s perspective, these are the first days of Jesus’ ministry.  Everyone knows that YHWH loves him in verse 11.  Simon and Andrew know to leave everything behind and follow him in verse 18.  James and John also know to drop everything and follow him in verse 20.  Yet an unknown man in Capernaum is possessed by an evil spirit because he knows the same thing as these other men.  This is pure logic, we must know that an imaginary evil spirit exists because of this experience and Jesus can control it!

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These nine verses are all that Simon Peter tells the Romans about John the Baptist, as recorded by John Mark.  The important thing to a TrueChristianTM is that of the message that John the Baptist proclaimed.  Baptism with repentance is the name of the game.  Reading the study notes, the way for a Gentile to convert to Judaism was through baptism.  John the Baptist opens repentance baptism to the Israelites.

Here is one of the first Tall Tales in the New Testament:

Mark 1:5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him, confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

That is one whooper!  Everyone in Jerusalem and the countryside were baptized and heard john the Baptist preach about the coming of someone more powerful than him.  Everyone?  Come on, we know the Pharisees and the Sadducees did not get baptized.  Otherwise they would have been waiting with open arms for Jesus! 

But this is not the only non-truth in these nine verses.  Read Mark 1:1-3.  Notice that Mark combines two different verses from the OT together to make one prophecy.  But everyone should take a closer look at where those verses come from.  The TrueChristianTM complains that Atheists take verse out of context.  Well, let’s just see how badly John Mark takes verses out of context.

Mal 2:17-3:1 You have wearied the Lord with your words.  “How have we wearied him?” you ask.  By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them” or “Where is the God of justice?” “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.  Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple: the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” Says the Lord Almighty.

We need to continue this passage to see how badly out of context John Mark has taken it, read Mal 3:2-5 here.  This set of verses in the Book of Malachi is not about John the Baptist.  This prophecy in Malachi is not even about Jesus’ first coming, no, it is about his second coming…the day of Judgment.

But that is not all that is out of context, the section from Isaiah is also wrong, take a look:

Isaiah 40:3-4 A voice of one calling: “In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a high way for our God.  Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.

There is no “voice calling in the desert”!  It is a voice calling to make a way through the desert.  The same voice is calling to flatten mountains, rough terrain, and hills.  And don’t forget to raise up the valleys, that is what the voice is doing…it is not calling out from the desert!

John Mark has made two major blunders and he has not even said a word about Jesus!  Can we be certain that the rest of the Book of Mark will be any better?  Where is the Holy Spirit when you need it to keep the Word of God inerrant?

To make matters worse, this Book of Mark is the source material for the Books of Matthew and Luke.  This is not looking good for the Inerrant Word of God.  I certainly see why it is said in:

1 Cor 2:14 The man without the Spirit does not accept the thing that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Let’s hope that the Book of John is better!  Well on the other hand, the Book of John does not look promising when you read this Wikipedia article.  I know it’s that evil Wikipedia, but hey it’s the most concise material on the web.  Talk about “god bias” verse “non-believer bias”, all the web pages and books revering to the authorship of the Johannine works are so biased it is impossible to tell if the Book of John was written as early as 57AD or as late as 140AD.  But I will get to that in much later posts. 

Before I get to the Book of John I want to cover much more of the OT, NT, Gnostic writing, Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Apocrypha.  I have so much material to work with, and it is all impossibly intriguing to me.  This is so much fun, and I think it will get even better.  Even though I am not looking forward to the Book of Numbers or the repetitiveness of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  The same problem exists, of repetitiveness exists in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.  I do plan on stirring this stuff up and making it interesting for me.

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Matt 16:18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

This verse comes from the story of when Simon Peter first recognizes Jesus as the Christ.  Jesus promises Simon Peter that the church that Peter is going to created will never enter the Greek mythical place of Hades. 

John of Patmos makes it quite clear that Hades and Death are two different things (see below).  So the heathens from Greece know more about the afterlife than most “christians” believe.  Jesus knew that Hades exists, and the Greeks knew that it existed since about the 9^th century BC.  If the Greeks were right about Hades then what about the other Greek Gods, are they also real?  Both the ancient Greeks and Jesus agreed on Hades, did they also agree on the rest of Greek mythology?

In the Book of Revelation, John of Patmos tells of how “like a son of man (Rev 1:13)” holds the keys to both death and Hades.

Rev 1:18 I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever!  And I hold the keys to death and Hades.

First notice the capitalization of words!  The “son of man” and death are not capitalized, yet Hades is.  A true follower of Jesus does not recognize him as the Son of Man, only as someone who looks “like a son of man”.  Since John uses the indefinite article “a” does this mean that there is more than one “son of man”?  The concept of death is also not as important as Hades to John in his dream.  Hades is a place, no doubt the Greek Underworld.  Second, notice that the “Living One” “holds the keys to death and Hades”.  These are two difference concepts.  Let’s see if John will flush these two different concepts out in the remaining verses.

When John sees the “Four Horseman” the first one is Death, who is followed by Hades:

Rev 6:8 I look, and there before me was a pale horse!  Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.  They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine, and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.”

Here John names the rider as Death, with a capitalization.  I will, in later posts, cover this apocalyptic dream because it is so mistranslated that most Christians do not know the “Truth”.  But notice in the verse that Hades is a minion of Death.  Hades follows as Death destroys ¼ of the world. 

This is not the same as how John describes Hades later:

Rev 20:13-14 The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done.  Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.  The lake of fire is the second death.

Notice here that the sea, death, and Hades contain all the dead!  Death is not the only place where the dead are kept.  The sea and Hades also contain the dead.  This Greek mythological place actually holds the dead.  But also notice that heaven does not contain the dead.

In the Christian religion when people die they may be kept in the sea, in death, or in the Greek mythical Underworld.  Where will I wait out the “Day of Judgment”?  Where will the TrueChristianTM stay until the “Day of Judgment”?  Hell does not contain the dead.  Heaven does not hold the dead until the “Day of Judgment”.  Only then will all the TrueChristianTM be let into heaven!  The rest of us will be thrown directly into the lake of fire for the second death. 

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