The success of Jesus? This world or the next? (Counter-productive Christian evangelism)

It seems to me that much Christian evangelism is counter-productive - putting people off becoming a Christian, rather than encouraging them; because of the Christian having a mistaken understanding of what Jesus did; and also because the Christian is incoherent about whether Jesus succeeded in his mission, or not. 

Many or most Christians seem to have the idea that Jesus made this a better world. That the life of Jesus was therefore an inflexion-point in history - Before Jesus, bad; after Jesus... getting better. 

Such Christians (and they seem to have been a large majority, at least among writers) seem to believe that after Jesus, life started started improving - especially for Christians. 

They assume Jesus made this world a better place. 

This kind of Christian usually believes that Jesus's core mission was to set up a church; and the church's mission was to make this a better world - and that this was actually done. 

Such Christians look at history and believe that the Christian societies were better than the others. They look at modern life and perceive to their satisfaction that the Christians are the best people - that conversion to Christianity improves people, that the Christian church is a force for good in the world. 

The first problem with this conceptualization of what Jesus did, is that there are plenty of people who disagree that the life of Jesus was an inflexion point after which the world began to get better - they just don't see this; they perceive many and terrible exceptions to it.

Some people would say that Jesus made no significant difference to the world - that the world carried on much as before. Some would say that the difference Jesus made was sometimes good, sometimes bad. And same with the Christian church/ churches - a mixed picture. 

There are plenty of people who don't see the founding of Christian churches as a net positive achievement, and who do no agree that any particular Christian church has been a force for good in the world.

In a nutshell - many people feel it is just wrong to claim that the life of Jesus made the world a better place; or that the Christian church has been and is a force for good in improving human life.   

They conclude that - if making a better world including better human lives is what Christianity is about, and the "evidence" for this is the history of the world and the nature of human society today; then Christianity cannot be true; and indeed might well be a force for harm. 

A further confusion is the Second Coming of Christ. 

Many Christians don't seem to realize what a weird and unconvincing idea this is! 

It means that Jesus's life was actually a failure, or else at best a very partial success; because the Second Coming predicts that despite Jesus, and the church he is supposed to have founded; this life will either stay bad, or get so bad, that Jesus will need to come again and "finish the job". 

("Finishing the job" means, pretty much, that Jesus (second time around) will make this life and world so much better that it is perfectly satisfying in every way.)

The need to finish the job; means either that Jesus did not wholly succeed - or that he actually failed. 

This idea is strange enough in itself to many people; I mean, why on earth would not the divine Jesus do everything that needed to be done in his first coming? Why would it be a good thing to delay the necessary by some indefinite (and now very long) period?

And then there is the problem of why the Second Coming has been delayed for two millennia? 

If life on earth can be made perfect, and if doing this really was Jesus's work and achievement - then surely it ought to be made perfect ASAP - rather than being delayed, and delayed? 

The many, various, and often complex explanations for the delay in the Second Coming are very seldom convincing; such that those who conclude that this was the way things work in Christianity, almost always become impatient for the Second Coming - or believe it to be imminent. 

So far many generations have so far been disappointed in this hope or expectation. 

 

The point I have been working towards is that the above are misunderstandings of what Jesus came to do, and what he did, and the nature of his success. 

Jesus did not come to make this world a better place, neither did Jesus come to found a church that would make this world a better place. 

So whether the world was made better or worse by the life of Jesus, or by Christian churches, is not relevant. 

That's not what Jesus was about. 

Jesus came to make possible, eternal resurrected life in Heaven: he came, in other words, to offer a new possibility of life everlasting to all Men - which we call "salvation". 

 And Jesus succeeded completely this aim, his real aim. 

...Which also means that the Church is not (and never has been) essential to the success of Jesus: a church may be helpful or unhelpful for a partiucar person in attaining salvation. 

But Jesus ensured that Men's achievement of salvation was possible (although not equally easy, because Men differ) for all Men, in every situation; in all religions and churches (or no religion nor church).  

I think Christians can be, and ought to be, quite clear and simple about this - for themselves, and in interacting with others... 

Jesus's life and work was not about improving this mortal life on earth. If it had been, then Jesus failed.

Jesus's life and work was about improving the next world, the world beyond death: and in this Jesus succeeded completely and first-time around. 

(No need for a Second Coming to "finish it off - it is already finished.). 

Jesus's work was done - is done.  

Now it is up-to-us, each of us; to choose or reject the possibility that Jesus has made available. 

Entertaining the idea of Christ's second coming in the 'etheric' realm

I have blogged before on the strange revelation or prophecy from the early 1900s onward and standing at the heart of Rudolf Steiner's entire (vast) corpus - and therefore - presumably, although I'm not sure - that also of Owen Barfield.

You will need to read that post first...

Now; I find that I cannot just put this prophecy aside and move-on, but I keep returning to think about and consider the matter. Because if it was true - this would, of course, be the most important fact in the world - and, although Steiner (in his later works) was often/ usually wrong in detail, he was nearly-always right in essence.

Thus I shall entertain the thought that Rudolf Steiner was factually correct that the Second Coming of Christ has by-now already happened, and not as an incarnation of the bodily Christ but in 'the etheric'; and I shall further assume that while the core revelation is true, the details are mistaken - so that there needs to be a clarification.

Then, I shall see where this experimental-assumption gets-me; and whether it makes any kind of sense...


1. If Steiner genuinely knew that Christ was to return in the Etheric; my understanding is that this was not a chronologically exact foreseeing of the future - because I believe such predictions to be an impossibility.

So that in reality Steiner's prophecy was actually an announcement of a current state of affairs; and it meant that the Second Coming had already happened, which is (I infer) how Steiner knew about it.

So instead of something going-to-happen circa 1933, let's assume instead that there was a return of Christ from circa 1750 - in other words from the beginnings of the movement called Romanticism.

This is how Steiner could sense the event; sense it both directly - as an ongoing reality; a fact of daily life; and he could also sense it from his profound studies of Goethe and the other German Romantics, and the change that had come over their thinking.


2. What about the Etheric? What does that mean?

Translating Steiner's categories of The Self (as I understand them) the Etheric comes in-between the Physical Body and Consciousness (the Astral Body) - so Christ's return is not in his body (i.e. he is not incarnated), and it is also not in a way of which people are conscious.

The Etheric implies that Christ is felt; a transformation of Life, an unconscious feeling, at the level of instinct.

The presence of Christ in the Etheric is known as an instinctive feeling.  


3. Does this make general sense? Yes, it does.

The impulse of Romanticism came upon Western culture beginning from 1750 - affecting poetry, literature - including the invention of the novel almost exactly in 1750, music, visual arts, philosophy...

Romanticism also affected Western culture, through several later waves - eg the 1890s, the 1920s, the 1960s-70s) in terms of a new and strong (often destructive) impulse of individualism, political radicalism and revolution, the sexual revolution, an assertion of the instinctive (and 'primitive', or 'tribal').

In religion and spirituality we could point to Quakerism, the US New Religions of the middle 1900s, New England Transcendentalism, Walt Whitman, DH Lawrence, the Beats, the New Age... Every movement (good, and - mostly - bad) that contains a theme of instinct, personal revelation, intuition, utopia, altered consciousness, hopes of transcendence or higher evolution; all such could be interpreted as having some degree of unconscious awareness of the new possibilities deriving from the actual felt presence of Christ. 

We could posit that there was indeed a second coming of Christ perceptible at an unconsicous level; but distorted, and indeed twisted to evil by such factors as adherence to materialism; the pro-instinctive, short-termist and hedonic theories of the sexual revolution; consumerism; and by the cultivated spite and resentments of the various Leftisms and, in general, politics conceived as primary.

Probably the main evil-tending distortion is that Modern Man will not allow himself to become conscious of Christ. 

In other words, we could ascribe the malign phenomena of Steiner's own amazing 1918 true-prophecy to Western Man's failure to respond properly to the Second Coming; indeed, by our wicked choice to have perverted and inverted our instinctively-felt urgings of Christ.


4. What would be the implications? (Continuing to entertain the notion that this understanding is correct.)

Well, one implication would be that we need to become conscious of Christ's presence... This needs stating more strongly: we must become conscious of Christ's presence in this world, and of his direct influences on each of us, individually.

To become conscious of an instinctive-feeling means that we each need to do 'scientific' work - because that is the core nature of science: to do science is to become explicitly conscious of phenomena.

Therefore we each need to become scientists of our-selves.

And that is exactly what Steiner and Owen Barfield (and, of course - following them, myself) have argued is the primary task of Modern Man; which is to embark on a 'scientific' introspection, to develop a clear knowledge of our own thinking, to make intuitions both primary and explicit; and to do all this is the Christian context of its being done in light of the first and second commandments to love God, and neighbour.


5. Does this kind of 'Second Coming' even make sense to a Christian?

Well, maybe. I am more inclined to think so than before I embarked on this exercise.

It may make sense if our understanding is that this mortal life is about experiences from-which we need to learn in order to become more divine. If, in other words, our main task (as mature adults) is theosis rather than salvation - because salvation, while not universal, is by-default; and Hell must positively be chosen.

On such a basis, it is imaginable that a return of Christ at the level of unconscious instinctive awareness may be a means to this end.


In sum; I am surprised what good sense can be made from making the contingent assumption that Steiner was correct-but-with-errors when he announced the Return of Christ in the Etheric...

My shock on reading Matthew, Mark and Luke after sustained immersion in the Fourth Gospel

I have been reading the Fourth Gospel, almost exclusively, for most of a year - deliberately avoiding (so far as is possible) the other Gospels, the New Testament, and indeed the whole of the rest of the Bible. I found the Gospel wholly convincing, at the deepest level of which I am capable.

Over the past couple of days I have read quickly through the Synoptic Gospels (in the order Mark, Matthew then Luke) - to try and get a sense of how they strike me; having come to what feels like a secure and true understanding of Jesus's nature and teaching from the Fourth Gospel.

The experience, so far, is very shocking. The Synoptics, each in somewhat different ways, seem to have missed the point and made something very different than Jesus intended. Unlike the unity and coherence of the Fourth, none of the other Gospels make sense of Jesus's teaching.

Mark reads as incomplete, a collection of notes from various sources, not integrated - and without a take home message; set it aside for now. Matthew seems to be fitting Jesus into the Old Testament expectations, without taking any note of what Jesus actually said. Luke tells a good story - but the teachings are all over the place, and again it is unclear what the core implications are supposed to be.

When the same events are reported as we can read-about in the Fourth Gospel; the other three evangelists consistently misunderstand the significance; and get them in the wrong (and a meaningless) order.

My feeling is that Matthew and Luke are not very concerned about stating clearly what Jesus actually said, nor are they troubled about the contradictions between their reported deeds and teachings - because both have apparently seized upon the imminence of Jesus's Second Coming when all such minutiae will be swept away.

Even misrepresentations of God's basic Goodness are scattered here and there, as if casually and without comment. And the reason for such apparent carelessness seems to be that Jesus will very soon be coming again (in clouds of glory etc) to end this world. For Matthew and Luke, the imminent Second Coming is The Big Message.  

Yet in light of the Fourth Gospel, the Second Coming is clearly a false invention, and one that would serve no role in the work of Jesus. An invention that could only have been made by someone who fundamentally misunderstood the nature of Jesus's teaching and gift. Plus, It Didn't Happen - so one might have supposed that this would put an end to any notion of the Synopic Gospels pretense to primary authority...

(And the Second Coming is only the largest of numerous dissonant and inappropriate additions to Jesus's teachings that are found in the Synoptics.)

Shocking indeed; especially when it is realised that it was the Synoptics which 'won' authority in the Christian churches; and the supreme Fourth Gospel which was wrongly relegated to the status of a kind of optional extra appendix to the Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts and the Epistles of Paul.

I believe in the End Times, but not in the Second Coming

Just to clarify: I believe in the End Times, which are the times when this earth and the divinely-created experience of mortal life will come to an end. And I believe that these are those End Times.

But I do Not believe in the Second Coming of Jesus. Why not, when it's 'in the Bible'?

First, because the Second Coming is not in the Fourth Gospel - which is the first hand account of Jesus by his beloved disciple written (Chapters 1-20) shortly after the ascension. Niether is it in Mark. It is only in Luke and Matthew, written some time later, based on second-hand information, and each (especially Matthew) with a definite agenda concerning the Jewish Messiah and what he would accomplish (especially politically).

The Second Coming is a stark assertion that Jesus failed to accomplish his mission during his lifetime and before his ascension - and this I reject utterly!

I assert, on the contrary, that Jesus accomplished everything he set out to do; and provided everything each person needs (principally the guidance and comfort of the Holy Ghost) to achieve salvation after death and achieve theosis during mortal life.

And - mainly - this belief I find confirmed by the Holy Ghost. 

Note added: This post is intended to explain my use of terms in this blog; and why. It is not intended to persuade others to believe as I do. That's your business. Which means yours; in these times - whatever-you-call-em - your core convictions ought not passively to be absorbed from institutions; not even churches. Institutions should not be trusted.

So Western Civilization is ending for sure. But is this part of a predictable historical cycle or pendulum swing, with recovery inevitable?

There is some kind of a consensus - especially among Christians - that Western Civilization is ending, and that this multi-stage collapse is substantially self-inflicted - partly suicidal due to hedonic materialism and cowardice of the unreligious-aspiritual masses; and partly the outcome of deliberate contrivance among the Western/ Globalist leadership class. 

Where opinions differ, is related to what happens afterwards. 

Many people apparently have the assumption that human history is either cyclical, or like a pendulum; and that Western Civilization is therefore destined to dwindle but (sooner or later) recover and be "reborn". 

And such people take hope from this - or at least they claim to.  

This cyclical/ pendulum assumption is popular even among Christians, which I find quite strange - given that pretty much everything that the New Testament says about human history states explicitly that it is destined to be linear, unidirectional, ending with the End Times. 

Some of the New Testament links the End Times with a "second coming", a return of Jesus Christ;  although the premier authority, and earliest secondhand, Gospels sources do not describe a second coming of Jesus.

I mean the Gospel called "John", which is an eyewitness account from a beloved disciple and (Chapters 1-20) was composed shortly after the events described; ; and "Mark" which is the first recorded of the second-hand, post-ascension Gospels). 

However, whether or not the End Times are also regarded as a Second Coming; the point is that for the New Testament the path of human history is linear. 

Linear and not repetitive. 

The Christian conception of history is therefore not primarily cyclical, nor a matter of pendulum swings - and if apparent recurrences do occur, then these can only be approximate; because they are  subordinate to an overall and basic linearity. 

And this, of course, fits with the pattern of human history as it appears spontaneously to the simple observer. 

My conclusion is that when (not if) Western Civilization begins to collapse quickly and undeniably; there will be no coherent "Christian" reason to expect that Western Civilization will ever re-develop. 

But even if there was, I find it very hard to believe that people who take consolation and derive hope from cyclical/ pendulum theories of history are being sincere! 

I mean: I find it hard to believe that they really do derive genuine consolation and real hope from their assumption that - although we shall collapse soon; nonetheless some future, unknown and unrelated, persons shall experience a return of something-like Western Civ.  

This is so feeble and remote an expectation that I strongly suspect it serves merely as an excuse for here-and-now mental laziness and cowardice; for current dishonesty and evasiveness. 

Anyway; that's how the stuff about cycles and pendulum swings strikes me; as yet another instance of clutching at fake straws. 

Gospel of Matthew though the lens of the Fourth Gospel: Chapter 3

I set aside the first two Chapters of Matthew as being unreliable, probably legendary accretions and/or adopted to butress the argument of the Gospel as a whole. So Chapter 3 is the first part of Matthew's Gospel that is consistent with the Fourth Gospel - and it is an account of the teachings of John the Baptist.

This is interesting, as the author of the Fourth Gospel was a disciple of John's before he became a disciple of Jesus - so when there is subtanative disagreement, the Fourth Gospel is clearly to be preferred.

Let's see whether there is anything about Matthew 3 that adds to or deepens our understanding of John.

Matthew 3: [1] In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, [2] And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. [3] For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. [4] And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey. 

So far this is much the same as the Fourth. Except for: Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Here Matthew seems to be reporting John stating that there is not much time for those living 'now' to repent. He will later have Jesus say the same. 

[5] Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan, [6] And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins. [7] But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? [8] Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:

Matthew introduces here a favourite 'repent or else' theme (not a part of the Fourth Gospel) that there is a wrath to come, an apocalypse, the second coming of Jesus; which will specifically affect the Pharisees and Sadducees to whom John is talking. In other words the wrath is coming soon. The implication seems to be that John's baptism was a matter of people confessing and repenting their sins and being absolved; and that this procedure was to safeguard these people from the wrath to come.

The attack on Pharisees and Sadducees who are coming to John for Baptism seems wrong. Surely they are doing precisely what Matthew wants everybody to do - which is, from terror of the burning to come for those who are not baptised, they will accept baptist at the cost of repentance.

Matthew's basic method in his Gospel is to induce fear of 'Hell' which will be inflicted soon; and describe what to do to escape this fate. What to do entails following a set of rules that is even more numerous and rigorous than those of the Pharisees - Jesus adds to The Law. But this was presumably regarded as a genuine possibility precisely because the apocalyptic second coming was not far away...


[9] And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. [10] And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 

This is the 'or else' part of of the 'repent, or else'. In other words, if people do not confess, repent and be baptized - they will be 'cast into the fire'. I suppose that the attack of the Ps and Ss is actually a criticism of their lack of rigour, their hypocritical failure to live by the laws they profess to follow. Whereas in the Fourth Gospel, Jesus preaches an extremely simple message of loving and following Jesus to life everlasting; nothing about following laws or living a prescribed life.

[11] I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: [12] Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. [13] 

Here is the idea of 'Hell' as an eternal punishment, of unquenchable fire; which will be implemented soon - within the lives of the people to whom John is talking. And also the idea that Hell is the default state - which everyone will go to excepting those who are saved. Jesus will divide people into those he gathers, and those he casts into fire. 

Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. [14] But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me? [15] And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him. [16] And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: [17] And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

This is descriptively similar to the account in the Fourth Gospel - but whereas in the Fourth this event is a divinization of Jesus, leading directly on to his miracles; no such link is made by Matthew.

In sum, what we get from Matthew Chapter 3 (compared with the Fourth Gospel) is the completely different, alien and contradicting idea that the main thing about Jesus was that he was shortly to return, and divide Men into his own whom he gathers, and those who shall burn forever.

This teaching is also attributed to John the Baptist, and the only difference is that John was an agent describing how to be saved from the burning; while Jesus is the judge who will himslef make the division of men. John gave the theory; Jesus will implement the practice.  So this is the implied sense in which John 'prepares the way of the Lord'.

By contrast the Fourth Gospel has nothing about this scheme; no imminent second coming, no burning punishment; and John the Baptist's role seems to be to enable Jesus to become divine by baptism.

In Matthew, however, Jesus is already (in Chapters 1 and 2) marked-out as divine by his miraculous, prophecy-fulfilling childhood and youth; so John's baptism is merely done in order to 'fulfil all righteousness' and to enable the signs of the descent of the dove and the voice from heaven.

So, do I get anything valuable from Matthew 3? Just one thing - which is that what John was doing with his baptising was probably a temporary 'cleansing' of the individual from sin; active only in this mortal life and with no implications for eternal life.

What about "he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire" - this suggests that Jesus will himself be doing a better kind of baptism. But the Fourth Gospel states that Jesus himself never baptised anyone. So this is either an error, or else refers to baptism in a symbolic way.

Since Jesus is assumed to be returning imminently to dive the heavenly wheat from the hell-bound chaff, it looks as if this means the judgment itself: baptism of the Holy Ghost is for the wheat; and baptism of fire is for the chaff, baptism of fire being an indirect way of referring to the unquenchable fires of damnation. 

This corresponds with John's report in the Fourth Gospel that the 'normal' thing that happened when he baptised, was that individuals were 'touched' by the divine spirit; that they were momentarily divinized and thereby (presumably) cleansed of their sins up to that moment. John did not change the prospect for the individuals he baptised, he did not change their fate - but, nonetheless, what John was doing (as described in the Fourth Gospel) was new, different, and contrary to the usual laws and rules and sacrifices of the Jews of that era. John was, in this sense, the first to practise the new dispensation; albeit in a partial, and this-worldly, form.

But when Jesus was baptised by John, uniquely the spirit stayed upon him, meaning (I suppose) that Jesus became permanently divine by the agency of John: John had this absolutely vital role (as the Fourth Gospel implies) in making Jesus fully divine.


Note: I found the above detailed analysis to be a depressing exercise; and probably will not continue with it through the rest of the Matthew Gospel. It is the kind of thing that becomes necessary when the Fourth Gospel is really believed - but it is probably better to make such decisions in a broad brush way than to engage in this kind of miserable dissection... 

Unreliable Prophecy

The problem with prophecy is that - when it is made public - it never seems to come true; or - even when some would interpret it as validated; prophecy never seems to do any good.

I have read many sincere, detailed prophecies made over the past fifty years or so; and they are often completely wrong - as wrong as it is possible to be.

There were, for example, from the 1970s - 1990s (and again leading up to 2012) many channelled messages about an imminent landing of aliens on earth and the consequences, and multiple predictions of an imminent planetary breakthrough to a higher 'frequency/ vibrational' level of consciousness. Didn't happen.


The only valid prophecy I have encountered has been Rudolf Steiner's of 1918 - about which I have written extensively. Perhaps significantly this was a pessimistic prophecy - about what bad things would happen if Western man continued to reject the reality of the spiritual; if we continued to assume the truth of materialism. And even in 1918 this was an extrapolation of a century-plus trend. 

But Steiner's main prophecy - of the Second Coming of Christ in c1933, was completely wrong - at many levels. Instead of Christ we got Hitler as Chancellor - although Anthroposophists actually interpret Hitler as a demonic reaction against the Second Coming. But if the 1918 prophecy is straightforwardly true, then the Second Coming prophecy is falsified by the same common sense criteria.

Another of Steiner's main prophecies was that Ahriman (Satan, the Antichrist) would be incarnated in c2000 - so I suppose that remains a possibility, although I think we might have noticed by now?

But from Steiner we can see that being A Prophet does not mean that one is correct about most things, most of the time. And if only a small percentage of  statements are accurate - and we don't know which percent until afterwards - then this really isn't much use.


There are several ways by which, it has been suggested, God could enable prophecy. But the question is why he would want to do this.

Prophecy essentially assumes divine planning to a timetable. And why would God (at least the Christian God) want to do that? And if he did, why would he want people to know about it. And if he did want people to know about it - why choose a human prophet as the mechanism - and expect the message to be accurately disseminated and understood?


There is no doubt that - through the ages - there has been a fascination with prophecies. But public, objective, social prophecy is beginning to strike me as a wrong idea at root. It may be a fascination - one I personally feel pretty strongly; but that fascination may be idle or evil rather than good.

I can certainly see the value in personal prophecy - among family, friends and the like. This can serve a function of retrospective validation - as apparently happened among Jesus's disciples when after his resurrection, they recalled some relevant prophecies. But something goes terribly wrong when these are made public, with 'general prophecy', when prophecies are made into objective statements, applicable to 'all'; when they are supposed to affect public policy.

Indeed, the most convincing stories of prophecy are when The Public disbelieve and ignore The Prophet, but a much smaller group of the prophet's family, friends, followers do believe; and these 'believers' are able to escape some prophesied disaster.

A good example is at the beginning of the Book of Mormon, when the prophet Lehi are ignored by the authorities, but he and his family escape the destruction of Jerusalem. Or in fiction when, in Watership Down, the shaman rabbit Fiver predicts the destruction of the burrow, is ognored by teh chief rabbit, but escapes with his brother and a small group of followers.   



I am certainly guilty, many times over, of worrying about what the future holds in general terms unless... or of trying to avert one or another prophecy. But surely this is a fault? Surely I ought to be discerning what I ought to do now - and (so far as possible) setting aside what might (but probably will not) happen as a consequence?

Or, if I did recieve a real prophecy, then this would surely not be about anything large scale - but about what should happen to myself or my family; something I can directly affect: where my personal decision is significant. 


Like most people, I want to be reassured that If I do X, then Y will eventuate; but we know that it is seldom possible really to know what will happen - too many factors impinge. Most importantly, all people (all Beings) have agency, and are capable of choosing. In principle, conscious behaviour cannot be known in advance - only guessed.

And therefore what we ought to do, ought not primarily to be aimed at consequences - especially when we know what it is right to do regardless of consequences. That seems the case in real prophecy - the future is not known with any great precision; but what ought to be done is clear. 

We may, if we are sincere, come to understand the reality of our situation - and this will include what we personally should do in consequence. To get back to that broadly-fulfilled 1918 prophecy of Steiner - we may reasonably infer that the bad consequences happened for broadly the reasons Steiner stated 100 years ago. But we only knew that for sure in (perhaps) the past generation or two; many decades after the prophecy was made.

And what we do not know is the consequences that would actually eventuate from here-and-now if we (from this point) did what Steiner rrecommended and remedied the defects Steiner outlined... If we (you and me, other people) regarded the spiritual realm as real, developed a more frequent and intense awareness of the spiritual realm etc.  What effect would this have?


In sum, even if we know that the prophecy was true, and what we ought to do about it  - this does not tell us what would happen if we actually went ahead and did it. If (for example) there was a general recognition that 'Steiner was right after all!' (at least, in that particular lecture of 1918).

What then: what would be the resulting consequences?

It seems we would need yet another prophecy!

Courageous faith in Divine Providence should now replace politics

I have often reviewed 'esoteric' spiritual teachings from the last decades of the twentieth century - and even among those that I would regard as genuinely Christian, and which there is considerable insight and wisdom; there is an recurrent error. 

And that error is to make spiritual generalizations about the spiritual uplifting of the generality of people in the world. Purported plans and schemes about how the mass of people can and should be raised to a higher spiritual level - perhaps presaging the believed-in 'second coming' of Jesus Christ. 

In other words; the spiritual teachings tend to become political - albeit a spiritual kind of politics. And indeed, this usually seems to the the major motivation. A person has some kind of (partly valid) insight or inspiration, and then makes it into some kind of a system by-which (it is claimed) God intends to raise-up many or most Men before the longed-for second coming. 

Now, despite believing that we are in the End Times; I do Not believe in the second coming of Jesus Christ for reasons I have set out before - I regard this as a post-Jesus error. So, naturally I regard it as mistaken to reason in this way.  

But with the events since early 2020 to hammer-home the message; it seems ever clearer to me that we are supposed to set-aside mass considerations with respect to salvation and the spiritual war in general; we are supposed to stop being political.  

This is very difficult, because most people are more deeply convinced of their political convictions than of anything else. Yet, I think it is being made evident to us that to be political is intrinsically and necessarily to ally oneself with the powers of evil. 

As the months go by, and it becomes undeniable that all powerful social institutions are now on the side of Satan; the only path open to Christians gets to be that of working from one-self (and those one loves, directly and personally). 

...In brief: to commit oneself to the side of God, Good and the divine creation and to follow Jesus Christ - and leave the rest to God. 

We need to develop a real faith that this is what God wants us to do; and that insofar as we can achieve it in our-selves - then God will work through us. 

Furthermore; that God can, will and does work through the 'group' of human individuals who are thus aligned: God will do this and we ought not to be interfering. 

Any and all individuals who are (at any particular time) aligned with Good; are-being deployed for the Good of the world by God in invisible and unknown ways. This is happening all the time, and it is why Good remains undefeated, and continues to win victories - despite overwhelming global demonic-serving power versus the apparent worldly-powerlessness of real Christians. 

But these are not 'political' victories, to be read-about in the mass media or official announcements; they are spiritual victories - and often directed at the post-mortal salvation of particular people who are open to them and desire them. 

In a nutshell; I believe that we are intended to work from our own actual individual situation - regarding this mortal life as a time for recognizing and learning from the experiences God offers us; and having a real, practical and courageous faith to leave the large-scale social organizing to God's creative work behind the scenes. 

The old term is divine providence. In these times we are called-upon to have faith in divine providence as never before - including that, as Christian, we recognize our own free agency, and the need for us individually to exercise it - because that is how God does good, and indeed the main (or perhaps only) way that God can do good in such a world as now - when socio-political group-good is dead and gone. 

And this is easy for God to do - it is what God does; but is almost impossible for us to see - and actually impossible for us to predict: hence the absolute need for faith, sustained by solid hope in the resurrected life to come. 

Note: This may seem nebulous at first, because so utterly unfamiliar - yet anyone who really understands Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings has been given the best imaginable lesson in the workings of providence for Good. 

The hope (not mine) of a divine negentropic/ alchemical redemption of this mortal life and world

As I have previous said, from reading the Fourth Gospel as well as the core sense of Christianity, I do not believe that Jesus Christ promised a Second Coming. On the contrary, I believe Jesus fully achieved everything he incarnated to achieve in a cosmological sense - in terms of changing reality; and that since ascension His role is to guide all who ask for His help, by the Holy Ghost. 

But a familiar worldly-Messianic project of redemption of this sinful and suffering mortal life, of Jesus returning to take-up kingship of a New and Purified this-world, seems to have been introduced into Christianity at an early stage - and continues. 

For such redemption to happen, this-world would need to be remade, in such a way that all that is evil and of-sin - including death - would be removed, purified, transformed; and only Good remain. 

This might be envisaged to happen all-at-once at the second coming; but there have always (I think) been some who saw this happening gradually, incrementally, a bit at a time. 

I first understood this in listening to lectures by Stanley Messenger in which he expounded the ideas of Rudolf Steiner. In this explanation, the spilled blood of the crucified Christ entered the substance of the Being that is planet earth; and initiated a process of transformation that could be explained in terms of alchemy and homoeopathy; and would lead eventually to the total redemption of earth and everything the dwells here. In the end (as I understand it) there would be a complete integration of all, into full accord with divine purposes. 

I have also come across what seems to me a variation of this basic idea in Philip K Dick's Exegesis; where he is discussing Jacob Bohme and AN Whitehead. PKD's version is that this reality began as dominated by chaos and continues as entropy. God began creation in this context; and there has since been a process by which creation gradually overtook chaos; in which negentropy incrementally overwhelms entropy... Until either at or by the Second Coming, the process is completed and all that is evil, destructive - all suffering and pain - is transformed into Goodness and Happiness. 

My above summaries are themselves of secondary sources, thus unreliable as to detail - but I offer them as the kind of thing that would need to happen if this mortal world were to be saved, redeemed, made into Heaven on Earth. In other worlds, all that is evil, all destructive change, all death - would need to be transformed into harmony with divine creation. 

And this transformation is regarded as something that will happen. It is not a matter of choice, but of processes acting-irresistibly-upon Beings. Evil and Sin are eliminated by being made good. 

Now - I regard this as both impossible - because evil cannot be made Good; and undesirable to Christians - because salvation must be chosen.  

More fundamentally; I do not believe that this is what will happen! I think it is a mistake to suppose that Jesus said he would make Heaven on earth, or by processes incrementally to transform mortal to immortal life. 

The real situation is much simpler; which is that evil and sin will not because cannot be eliminated in this world and mortal life; which is why we must die and be resurrected to enter the state of only-Goodness: we must be born again.  

Those, and only those, who choose resurrection (and allow/ embrace the necessary transformative changes to themselves) will be added to Heaven, will join Heavenly life - leaving-behind their sins and all evil; and from thence, living only by love. 

This mortal realm with its sins and evil will be left-behind; as a place for those who choose to hold to their sins and evil, and those who choose not to live wholly by love. 

Such must happen; in order that Heaven be possible; and it must happen because eternal Beings must dwell somewhere.

And if Beings do not want to dwell in Heaven, then they will remain in some part or variant of the mixed-world of this-world of mortality - where entropy and creation contend. 

This Romantic era and the end of all groups...

Rudolf Steiner prophecied that there would be a second coming of Christ 'in the etheric' from about 1933 - and somehow Anthroposophists still believe that this has actually happened; despite that the 'evidence' for this event includes the coming to power of National Socialism in Germany!

And since the hippies of the middle 1960s, there has been a constant undercurrent with waves of belief in a happening and incipient New Age of the spirit, of enhanced consciousness. The term New Age itself became popular in the 1980s with much activity related to neo-shamanism, neo-paganism etc.; and in the late 90s the coming millenium led to another crest of expectation. Then there was another surge of excitement related to the Mayan Calendar ending on the winter solstice of December 2012.

There is currently, I think, another post 2016 resurgence of belief that there is an awakening of Western Man, a mass seeing-through of the lies and propaganda of the Illuminati - this supposedly signalled by a increased populism and higher profile (including banning) of people like David Icke, Julian Assange and Alex Jones specifically, alternative/ 'conspiracy' theories of politics and society more generally. Many apparently expect major positive spiritual and consciousness change - and soon.

What fascinates me is not so much the expectation, but how - time after time - people can become convinced that the New Age is actually happening.

People who claim that there are more people haveing more spiritual experiences (more visions, more miracles, more paranormal events...); that there is a massive change enhancement of spiritual interests - a shift away from materialism, consumerism, the mainstream. That people are becoming more idealistic, more elevated in consciousness and so on. Not just the hope of change, but a conviction that chnage is already ongoing and afoot.


I have heard such things claimed by hundreds of people, spread over many decades; and flying in the face of very obvious, massive and relentless (albeit stepwise and incremental) increases in materialism, consumerism, politicisation, bureaucracy, progressive narrowing of minds and public discourse; increases in surveillance, propaganda advertising, micro-social control. 

How does this happen? How can people believe the opposite of what is obvious in the face of what one would suppose to be contrary evidence?  If the burning of the Reichstag really counts as evidence for the second coming of Christ (as I have heard several eminent Anthroposophists claim), then surely anything can prove anything!

My feeling is that it is to do with the way that groups work on the individual - and the way that  individuals have usually known truth. The New Age types of spirituality are strongly associated with 'group work' of various kinds, and I think it is the 'psychodynamics' of groups that explain the sense of objective spiritual progress that comes to grip so many minds so strongly.


A small intense group can, it seems, come to believe and validate almost anything. The groups have experiences together - whether that be visions, mediumship, channeling. or experiences in relation to UFOs, megaliths or crop circles; and the process by which knowledge and emotions reflect back-and-forth within the group, combined with relations of authority and discipleship and emotional dependence and support, can create an experience of amplification and increase - that is felt as a generalised awakening in The World.

On top of this the expansion of mass media and bureaucracy has affected all forms of organisation - so that there are more books, materials and media generally on almost every topic - including all kinds of spirituality. Organisations that survive have (almost always) either become very intensely inter-personal (as described above) - or else have grown, combined, become professionalised, subsidised... become gripped by the perspective of management, public relations and propaganda (as can be seen from web pages and brochures).

So that it becomes normal within nearly-all groups to perceive that things are moving in the desired direction. After all, that is what people in groups tell each other, and to be a group-member that must be believed.  


This is another reason why I think that this Romantic era implies the end of all groups except for the family, marriage and close friendships (usually dyadic). In sum; I have come to believe that all other forms of human groups have become agents for creating and sustaining delusions.

The New Age delusion, in its various forms, is just one of many such. And the way-out is for each individual to take full responsibility for his own assumptions, love, faith, beliefs and hopes; and adhere strongly only to those personally affirmed by direct intuition.

In this sense, we are On Our Own - but of course, we are never truly on our own, and that is the other side of this Romantic era; we are in society with the divine, the dead and all those whom we love. And it is the reality of that relational experience which makes possible the radical autonomy that is being compelled upon us.

Jesus Christ and the Second Creation - already fully-available, utterly simple; but next-worldly

I'm beginning to think that a proper understanding of the Second Creation, made by the work of Jesus Christ, may be the key to what we most need to understand. 

There has, at least since the Apostle Paul, been a variety of more-or-less complex ideas related to a Second Creation made possible by Jesus; but my sense is that these were all - more or less - this-worldly. All tried to express the Second Creation in terms of possibilities (or duties) for Christians here on earth, in this mortal life. 

There was (for example) the promise or hope that after Jesus' resurrection, "from now" all Christians could participate in the Second Creation in some real sense. That potentially human society and the world itself might be transformed into a Heaven on Earth - either incrementally (via the City of God), or at the Second Coming. 

But what I am suggesting about the reality of the Second Creation is neither complex nor this-worldly; but utterly simple, and next-worldly. 

What I am saying is that the Second Creation is already (and from the time of Jesus) fully-in-existence, that it comes after death and resurrection, and that it is Heaven. 

In different words: Jesus made Heaven, and Heaven is the Second Creation; and all who desire it may follow Jesus to the Second Creation.

But -- this can only happen after death, because Heaven is the realm of the resurrected: the immortally re-incarnated.  

Destiny versus progress: Christians and Time

Christianity is rare among religions in being intrinsically historical, with Jesus Christ coming into the world at an actual time and place, living a life-in-time, and setting-off a sequence leading up to another historical event of the second coming, the end of this earth.

It is a fairly common error, however, for Christians to think and behave as if all times and places and people are The Same. Traditionalist Christians who (rightly) disbelieve in secular notions of 'progress', err in rejecting the necessary idea of destiny.


Destiny implies that there is a real change in 'things' between the incarnation and second coming - the exact nature of this change is a matter for dispute, but not the fact of it. History is real, and goes deep.

This fact is all-but denied by many Christians, who hold fast to the idea that what was right thinking and right living is the same now as it was 200, 1000, or 2000 years ago; they regard this as necessary to avoid 'liberalisation'/ dilution/ apostasy of the faith.

But they are wrong.


There is a qualitative distinction between one who believes that God has a plan or destiny, unfolding throughout history and ultimately aimed at our spiritual condition in post-mortal life; and one who believes in the goodness of secular progress aimed exclusively at material conditions in this life and this world.

Many Christians are confused by the common and usual but mistaken metaphysics which states as dogma that the Christian God is outside of Time - this is neither scriptural nor does it easily accord with the  basic time-contained nature of Christianity, and its unfolding over thousands of years before and after Christ's life.

It has been all-too-common for theologians to think and speak of the divine in terms of infinities and time-less, changeless eternities - a pagan or pure-monotheistic philosophical view of God that has time as the world as illusion.

By contrast, it is simpler and more sustaining for a Christian to put aside infinities and eternities; and to regard this world as having a destiny, a direction in which God hopes and intends the world shall go; but that what actually happens, due to the free will or agency of Men, can and does go-against this destiny; as has probably been happening for the past 200 years at least.

This divine destiny is about individuals as well as masses; it is about me today as well as the timescale of peoples across generations. It is part of our task to acknowledge this, and then try to understand it and live by it.


In other words; I am saying that we need a change in perspective; we need to think in terms of destiny rather than dogma, of the direction we should-be going; rather than organising our lives and societies according to a fixed and eternal blueprint.

We should think in terms of getting back on the right track to the destined future, rather than reverting or recreating some situation in the past.

And should notice there is a truly vast and decisive difference between this, and secular progress. 

Is following Christ truly a case of "Myth made fact" - Is Christianity, indeed, "a myth" at all?

CS Lewis's conversion, as is pretty well known, had much to do with an idea he got (mostly) from JRR Tolkien that in Christianity Myth became Fact. In other words; that various of the myths of the ancient world came true in the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

This is one reason why Lewis regarded Christianity as the completion of paganism (as well as of Judaism) - because in essence it took much of paganism and transformed it by the addition of specifically Christian values - in particular "Faith, Hope, and Charity".

I was greatly influenced by this idea in my own conversion to Christianity; but have now come to regard the "Christian myth" as a misleading distortion of what Jesus actually did and taught. 

My interpretation nowadays is that Christianity is in its essence about the possibility of following Jesus to resurrected eternal life in Heaven - and that this was something new under the sun: an unique possibility; that was (at its core) neither foreshadowed nor foreseen among the ancient religions: neither among Jews nor among Pagans.  

I agree with Lewis that Christianity can be and actually was (especially in the earliest years of Jesus's ministry and the early period after his ascension) an add-on, easily adopted by Jews and Roman or Greek pagans alike...

But I think the reason for this was not because Christianity was aligned with Jewish expectations of the Messiah, nor that it was a completion of Greco-Roman Paganism - but simply because Christianity was a new idea about what happened after death. 

At least initially, therefore, a new Christian convert could (and apparently did) continue to practise his previous this-worldly religion; but with the additional expectation of resurrected eternal life after death...

Instead of (for instance) dying in expectation of the underworld ghost-life of Sheol or Hades, or returning by some version of reincarnation. 

Of course, Christianity as it became, developed and accreted very large and complex mythic elements - for example about Jesus's miraculous conception and early life, and expectation of his second coming. 

So Christianity-as-is has mythical aspects with all sorts of derivations and similarities to other mythic religions. 

But I believe that this was not the case originally, as Jesus lived and taught. 

And presumably this was a major reason why people found it so very difficult to understand what Jesus was actually telling then - i.e. they could not (or would not) discard their existing myths, such as The Messiah. 

And either rejected Jesus for failing to embody the prior myth, or adapted the prior myth to fit Jesus - or else adapted what Jesus did to fit the prior myth (as with the Second Coming, notion) 

I don't know if others agree; but in the IV Gospel I see Jesus trying to tell people something very simple and clear - which they repeatedly fail to comprehend; and this, in part, because they are caught-up in already-existing religious assumptions including myths. 

After Jesus's ascension, things could have (should have, perhaps) gone in the direction of the Christian after-death expectation being added-onto various existing religions - and then modifying their content in a kind of retrospective way (as the expectation of resurrected Heavenly life worked upon the pre-existing religion).

However, this did not happen; and instead Christianity became so elaborated by mythic elements that its clear and simple essence was swamped; but also the confident expectation of being able to choose resurrection was inverted - into the necessity to submit to the judgment of God/Christ-as-King to be-fearfully-hoping to be chosen as worthy of inclusion in Heaven. 

Only in recent generations has it become conceptually and consciously possible to understand that Christianity does not need to be regarded as a true myth; but instead Jesus's work can be recognized as a cosmic transformation, a new post-mortal possibility: a Second Creation -- accessible to those who commit to following Jesus, into and beyond the transformation of resurrection.

What is the most important thing about Jesus Christ: the possibility of resurrected eternal life (the Fourth Gospel), or the Second Coming (Matthew and Luke)?

Three years ago I wrote a post about my - to me shocking - realization that the idea of a Second Coming of Christ was Not a part of his teaching, and had - in effect - displaced Jesus's core teaching of the possibility of resurrection for those who 'followed' Him. 

I still feel much the same as I did then; and am still shocked by what I regard as the distortion or even omission of (what I believe to be) Jesus's overwhelmingly primary teaching concerning eternal life beyond mortal death.

I am especially shocked by the unacknowledged implication that Jesus failed to attain his goals 'the first time round' and therefore needs to return and 'finish the job'.

And/or that Jesus - despite multiple protestations that he was not a King 'of this world' - had promised to come back and perfect this earthly life.  

But I also realize that this is of no interest to most Christians, and indeed utterly unconvincing to them - since they read the Bible (or take their understanding of the Christian faith) on the basis of an utterly different set of assumptions; so that this difference of understanding is incommensurable. 

Nonetheless; I find it deeply reassuring to believe that - in fact - Jesus's core and essential message was very simple - simple enough to be described in a couple of sentences and to be understood by a young child. 

This simple gift from Jesus seems to be exactly what we most need in the world now; and an offer that would also be most likely to lead to salvation beyond mortal death - even for those who die knowing nothing, or only falsehoods and slanders, about Christ. 

An inspired talk on the second coming of Christ from Neil L Andersen

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I have been working-through the talks given at the LDS general conference last weekend. One in particular I found quite astonishingly powerful - this was Elder Neil L Andersen speaking on the subject of living in the latter days, the end times; and the nature of the second coming of Christ.

I would urge anyone interested to watch this fifteen minute video all-through, and with close attention.

I came away from it energized, en-couraged and hopeful, and grateful to live in a time of God-inspired living prophets.

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/04/thy-kingdom-come?lang=eng

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Did Jesus complete his work? Matthew and Luke say no; the Fourth Gospel (of John) says yes

One major difference between the Fourth Gospel and the Gospels of Matthew and Luke; is that the Fourth Gospel account is one of Jesus finishing his job after his resurrection and ascension.

We are told that Jesus has completed his work. Nothing more needs to be done - except for each person to choose whether or not to follow Jesus.

Whereas Matthew and Luke, with their assertion of a second coming, assert that the ascended Jesus had done only half the job.

The job would be finished only with the second coming of Christ.

Furthermore, the Acts of the Apostles (continuing Luke), and Paul's Epistles also assert that the efforts of Men - by teaching and organising, are needed in order to complete the work of Jesus.

By my understanding, both cannot be correct.

(Note: I believe that the Fourth Gospel is the correct teaching.) 

If you don't want resurrected eternal life in Heaven - well, then you aren't a Christian (surely?)

If you don't want resurrected eternal life in Heaven - then you aren't a Christian. That seems straightforward fact - because, if you want something else, then you don't want this. 

Yet when I have previously written on this subject, I have received comments and communication that seem to emanate from a feeling of hurt or exclusion - as if I was somehow preventing access to people who (instead of resurrection and Heaven) wanted Nirvana, to be reincarnated to further mortal lives, to become a spirit, or insensible, or have their Self/Ego annihilated. 

(Positively to be a Christian needs more than wanting resurrected life in Heaven - because Christian also requires a conviction/ faith/ trust that this can only be attained by (in some sense) following Jesus Christ - although Christians differ widely in their understanding of what 'follow' means and entails.) 

Reflecting on this strange matter - whereby, for example - people seem to want both 1.) to be resurrected with an eternal body, living as a person in Heaven, in the presence of Jesus Christ and God the Father; and simultaneously after dying to become to be a spirit (with no body); not a person - because without agency or self-awareness; and assimilated-into or absorbed-by a God who is an impersonal deity.  

How could such contradiction and confusion arise? 

I think the reason is simple - which is that people do not think seriously about what happens after biological death - and self-identified Christians do not think much about what actually happens at resurrection and in Heaven. 

Resurrection has become so uncertain, people seem afraid to think beyond it. Furthermore, by some doctrines, resurrection is delayed - perhaps to the 'second coming', day-of-judgment (something not told us by the Fourth Gospel - where both Lazarus and Jesus resurrect within a couple of days, and there is no such thing as the 'second coming'). 

At any rate, resurrection is treated as if far-off, and in some sense is regarded as not-our-concern; and indeed there is a superstitious sense that it is presumptuous (hence unlucky) even to think about it but certainly to speak or write about it. 

I sometimes feel this myself - even though I don't agree with it; that I am 'tempting fate' by 'taking for granted' my resurrection to the extent of thinking beyond it- despite that (in the Fourth Gospel) it seems clear that Jesus wants us to be confident about our salvation (in the same way a young child should be confident about the love of his parents). 

At any rate; this mental block on resurrected life has many malign effects. For one thing, it makes for this confusion as it what is, and what is Not, Christianity. For another, it has made people massively over-focused on this mortal life - as if what happened here and now was the 'main point' of Christianity; whereas exactly the opposite is told by the Fourth Gospel.

Christianity is primarily about what happens after biological death; and that is made clear in principle: resurrected, eternal life, in Heaven, as Sons of God. It is by the implications of this other-worldly fact that we may infer what Christianity means for this-world.  

The effect that Jesus Christ has on this mortal life can be imagined as a glorious light cast back from the reality of our life-beyond-death; and this means we need to regard that resurrected life as real. 

We need to expect our own personal resurrection into Heaven with maximum confidence; need to dwell upon it - including the details and specifics, as best we may. Only thus can we combat the colossal weight of totalitarian materialism that presses-down upon us; a mass and detail of this-worldly-ness - that otherwise would tend to crush us into hope-less-ness and despair.  

What is "The" story of Jesus? There are actually Two stories

People talk as if there is "the" story of Jesus Christ - as told in "The Gospels"; but there isn't really one story but two stories; unless you make certain prior assumptions. 

These prior assumptions are either 

1. That all the Gospels are all telling the same story...

2. Or that Matthew, Mark, and Luke ("Luke" including Acts, by the same author and continuing the narrative) are telling "the" story; and John is a kind of optional-extra commentary or supplement to the three "Synoptics". 

But Mark does not tell a story; so can be excluded from this consideration. 

And if you do not make these assumptions but instead regard the remaining three narrative Gospels as separate entities, then there is a broad narrative common to Matthew and Luke; but John is an almost completely different story (although sharing some of the same names and approximate events - albeit with apparently different meanings). 

Luke and John present Jesus as The Messiah as miraculously born of an anointed and noble ancestry, a much prophesied and long-awaited savour of the Jewish nation. 

However Jesus did not accomplish the Messiah's promises during his mortal lifespan, and also included non-Jews in the scope of those to be saved. 

Thus, the main "take home message" of Matthew and Luke is that Jesus will in future return to save his people - here on earth; and the gospels describe the setting-up of a new priesthood based on the disciples, whose job is to preach to the nations and set up a church. 

So, Matthew and Luke describe a Jesus emerging from the Ancient Hebrew religion and people; a future based in the Second Coming and some kind of Heaven-on-Earth; and the centrality of a new, single, and (intentionally) universal church.   

Whereas the Gospel called John describes Jesus only from age thirty to thirty-three; and in relation to his baptism and recognition as Messiah by John the Baptist. 

But this "Messiah" is one who brings the possibility of eternal resurrected life in Heaven, after death, and for all those who follow him. 

In essence, John's Gospel is as simple as that.

Differences from Matthew-Luke include that in the Gospel called John; Jesus completed his task - therefore there is neither need nor mention of a Second Coming. 

And the promised Heaven comes after our death, not on earth. 

And there is no setting up of an institutional church or organized priesthood - these are apparently not required. 

To my mind, comparing Matthew-Luke with John, these are significantly different stories; so there is no "the" Christian story - but at least two, and these two are different.  

Conclusion...

We need to choose. 

We might potentially reject both stories - and devise/discover another story (as did Rudolf Steiner, for instance); or reject both stories and choose to believe none of the Gospels. Which latter is, of course, what most people in the world have done. But I shall not further consider these possible options here.

But if we believe that the Gospels in some way contain the true story of Jesus Christ, then...

Either: 1. There are two - essentially incompatible - stories of Jesus in the Gospels; and we should acknowledge this, and either make a choice between them. 

This is my choice: to believe that "John" the Fourth Gospel story tells the true story of Jesus Christ.  

Or: 2. We essentially consign the Gospel called John to secondary and subordinate status - to be interpreted in light of the Synoptic Gospels (and other parts of the Bible, especially perhaps the Epistles).

This has been the choice of the Christian churches throughout history: i.e. that Matthew-Luke-Acts (supplemented by Paul) tell the true story of Jesus Christ - and John gets interpreted so as to fit-in, as required. 

 

How I understand the meaning of these End Times

I often state that we are now "in the End Times" - and I am convinced of it. 

I do Not mean by this that the "Second Coming" of Christ is imminent, because (from my Fourth Gospel perspective) I regard the idea of the Second Coming as false - and indeed bizarre; because Jesus did his work, his work is done, it was completely successful, and there is no reason for Christ to come again. 

I do not have any very specific notion of how or when the End will come-about or what it will entail; but I think we (the human race) have gone beyond a point of no return, and have entered a positive-feedback cycle where each deleterious change leads to further harm in a compounding fashion; such that matters accelerate towards ruin. 

The main reason I have reached this conclusion is that we live - for the first and only time in history (so far as I know) - in a time of net (and increasing) value-inversion - such that the mainstream, official and high-status value-system is the opposite of reality; hence the opposite of truth. 

Because values are inverted, it means that (on average, overall) evaluations of Good and evil (beautiful and ugly/ true and false/ virtue and sin) are upside-down; so that attempts to understand and choose that which is Good will instead home-in-on evil; attempts to make things better will make them worse; attempts to create order will amplify chaos, and attempts to solve problems will make them worse. 

This has happened because sin has the upper hand among those persons, nations, institutions that have the greatest power (wealth, status, influence) - and the apparent mass majority of the populace have become hedonic and despairing - without purpose or meaning; therefore demotivated and cowardly. 

Although this value-inversion does not apply to everyone; and Men remain as free as they always have been to repent and attain salvation; they have ceased (on the whole) to desire salvation. 

Most modern Men will not be saved because they do not want to be saved - indeed they find the idea of resurrection to eternal life in Heaven to be positively aversive: dull, boring, silly, childish, or indeed itself evil.

Modern Man typically wants to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering in mortal life then either painlessly to die into total annihilation; or at least to cease to be a Man with a self and agency; or else (perhaps especially among the ruling Establishment) seeks an afterlife of (demonic) hedonic/ sadistic domination and spiteful destruction.  

Is this a hope-less perspective? No - because hope is properly located in post-mortal eternity; not in this brief and entropic mortal life. 

But is it excessively pessimistic to assume that we are beyond the point at which matters could be turned-around? After all, Men are still free to change their minds - that is not-impossible, so perhaps it may happen? 

Why then; if mass repentance could happen in principle, am I convinced that it will not happen?  

Partly because of the Biblical prophecies about End Times which seem to contain the insight that there will be a point of no return. These put the idea into my mind. 

Then the phenomenon of value-inversion. Value-inversion is so weird and unnatural and false (dissonant with reality, useless for prediction) that one would expect it to be self-correcting - IF it could be corrected. 

Yet instead of value-inversion being self-limiting, instead of it reducing in the face of - what one would suppose - is obvious; value-inversion is spreading, getting worse, and solidifying. 

Evidence for this is... everything in public discourse - the mass media, high status officialdom, large corporations. 

Apparent exceptions soon turn out to be merely apparent. 

Such a situation I find to be so strange, unprecedented, beyond logic and love; that I can only conclude that it represents the deep nature of many Men. 

Why now, why not before? 

Because things change, history is linear and does not repeat; and each Man is unique and brings to the world a nature and disposition from pre-mortal existence. 

Ultimately, I think (I don't know) that history changes due to the changing nature of incarnated Men. 

Modern Men are as-they-are substantially because that is how they were (on the whole) when incarnated. They are not predestined to damnation - because everybody is a free agent; but they (we) are overall more evil than any generations in history. 

It is (was) from this increased original and innate greater-evil, that these times are as they are. 

Is "love thy neighbour" work for the salvation of others? And our main *job* in this worldly life?

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Many thanks to those who contributed ideas to yesterday's 'bleg' for understanding of the second great commandment: 'love thy neighbour'.

My sense is that it is all this, and more.

As one of the greatest commandments, I feel that 'love thy neighbour' must be about more than my own personal salvation (which is, presumably, 'covered' by the commandment to love Christ as lord and saviour).

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I feel that if the commandment to love God is first, and is about our own salvation - then the second commandment must be more than a condition placed upon our salvation (I mean more than just another thing we must do in order to be saved, and if we do not do it then we will not be saved).

In other words, I feel that the commandment to love thy neighbour is not mostly (or only) about ourselves, but also (and mainly) about the neighbour; and since LTN is a commandment of God, then it must be about the salvation of the neighbour (and not 'merely' his worldly happiness).

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Yet, it is clear that salvation is individual - in the sense that each individal soul must - by free will - accept the salvation which Christ has won for us.

So, I have devised a metaphor (story, parable - what you will) for my own use; by which I explain to myself how, on the one hand, my love of others is primarily for their good (not mine); and, on the other hand, how this might work in terms of them choosing salvation for themselves.

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From the Eastern Orthodox, I take the idea that after death the soul is escorted by two angels through various demonic temptations after which a choice is made: Heaven or Hell.

This choice is influenced by Christian prayers for the dead.

For the traditional Orthodox these prayers are operative in worldly time, during forty days following death, after which the choice is made (the first judgment - which may be revised at the second coming).

But from a more Roman Catholic (and philosophical) tradition of understanding I take the idea that these prayers operate via eternity (prayers from time address God in eternity, for whom all time is as one) - so that prayers for the dead at any time may operate at any time - whether in the future or retrospectively.

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So I imagine the soul after death brought to a point of decision: Heaven or Hell, and there being all manner of accumulated sins, bad habits and temptations which would lead that person to choose Hell.

Against this are the benefits of Christian life, prayers for the dead (prayers from past, present and future - coming together at this point); and love from other people - from 'neighbours'.

But how could this work?

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Well, perhaps the person is made aware of the love of those who have loved him in life on earth - even when that love was not known during life on earth, even when that love was not reciprocated during life on earth.

The soul becomes aware that those who loved him want him to choose Heaven, not Hell.

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Or, in a weaker sense, those who loved him advise him to choose God. They do not compel the decision (any more than in real life) - the will is free to choose Hell, despite the advise of those who love him.

(And indeed this often happens in earthly life - as when a foolish and impulsive teenager rejects wise and loving advice from those with experience; and embarks upon a course of deliberate sinfulness, or inversion of good and evil.)

But we are (or should be) more likely to take the advise of those who love us, then the advice of those whose motivations may be malign.

The choice remains free. Nonetheless, love is a factor in the decision.

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So, some will refuse God despite the awareness of the desire of those who love him.

But, it is an advantage, perhaps a crucial advantage (a factor among other factors) - indeed perhaps the difference between salvation and damnation - for the soul after death to become aware of the love of those who loved him during life.

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Perhaps this could be envisaged to work in terms of love making itself known to the dead soul, and the soul deciding at that point whether to reciprocate that love - which is salvation; or reject that love - which is damnation.

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Thus the first commandment (to love God) is seen as our eternal destiny, as the decision each must make, and must make for himself; while the second commandment (to love neighbour) is (from that moment of choosing to love God) our salvific job on earth: the most important thing we could possibly do.

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