i am a witness of jesus and i witness to people for jesus in hopes of doing good works. and bringing others to christ.
i also work as a cashier
i have worked as a janitor
i have worked as a security guard
and temporary laborer on odd jobs and on call.
so if your question is about being a cashier, the answer is yes.
however, a true disciple, which is defined by the new testament, says a person "denies" self and takes up his cross. Jesus also said to a few people to sell all they have and count the cost.
everything i own fits in my car. and pretty soon i might not even own the car or this computer.
my uncle frowns on current literal interpretation of the above verses, the LDS church has a "lay" ministry where people are priests but they are also families, despite the teachings of joseph smith parable of the cook and the butcher.
the bible does say a person cannot serve two masters at the same time. but there are part time missions in the church as well.
the bible also denies false prophets who prophecy for money.
so go figure. which one do you want to do.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
can a person believe in God and practice witchcraft?
there are several ways to answer this.
the first is: God SAid "dont practice it" (i.e. that it! thats final, now way) the bible even says dont even practice Homeopathy! i think in English its even used word for word.
2nd Jesus said: if you cast out devils you are not in the practice of causing the two types of demon possession or mind control. pharmecutical sorcery. jesus was accused of casting demons out because he was prince of demons and was accused of sorceries himself.
3rd, Jesus said: he had no power of himself. yet at pentecost Jesus promised to give power to apostles but they had to wait.
4th witchcraft is defined by the lips of witches in the bible as being poisoners, however most believe they are healers. .
Yet, i say they are just as much illegal poisoners as a NURSE is legally prosecuted for practicing medicine in todays laws.
5th the bible does not discern that witchcraft is healing or poisoning IN English. it clearly says it is "rebellion" against God.
6th at least one place in the bible it depicts witchcraft as being a "mistress" to whoredoms, which i think is the same thing as saying sex magic. which is also the same thing as becoming the same thing as wine of fornication which is condemned in Genesis 19 (jst) with the daughters of Lott. (see my previous reproofs)
7th there are superstitions, there are primal-fears that debunk what people are taught to be exaggerated false beliefs of what wiccans believe. however, there are testimonies of wiccans as well that declare such witchcrafts as being of satan. its like a gateway "drug" is to an addict but in spiritual idolatry and power
8th. there are people who believe learning witchcraft and potions and spells is also a form of self defense. but it can be likened to drinking coffee and ending up having to drink 5 or 10 cups of coffee each day to get the same result, and its called diminishing returns but its still poisoning self and it still causes Neurotic behavior.
9th the same thing can be said for all pharmecutical medicine, especially in higher doses. all pharmecutical medicines cause mental illness and eventuall physcial symptoms as well. Psychosis is the leading mental illness that prescription drugs cause and most prescription drugs are just altered forms of street drugs and illegal drugs.
10th. one persons' medicine could kill another person.
11th, both the word witccraft and sorcery are the same word in Hebrew and in Greek. when looking at the words in the book of revelation!
12th there are at least 9 different biblical definitions of witchcraft, and none of them agree.
13. in the book of revelation, the term for sorcery is also used as a definition of "deceit" as a tool that is used by the enemy "church" of christ, (*see rev 18:4)
question was asked on Yahoo QAR&S
july 09
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090709110049AABPoUV
the first is: God SAid "dont practice it" (i.e. that it! thats final, now way) the bible even says dont even practice Homeopathy! i think in English its even used word for word.
2nd Jesus said: if you cast out devils you are not in the practice of causing the two types of demon possession or mind control. pharmecutical sorcery. jesus was accused of casting demons out because he was prince of demons and was accused of sorceries himself.
3rd, Jesus said: he had no power of himself. yet at pentecost Jesus promised to give power to apostles but they had to wait.
4th witchcraft is defined by the lips of witches in the bible as being poisoners, however most believe they are healers. .
Yet, i say they are just as much illegal poisoners as a NURSE is legally prosecuted for practicing medicine in todays laws.
5th the bible does not discern that witchcraft is healing or poisoning IN English. it clearly says it is "rebellion" against God.
6th at least one place in the bible it depicts witchcraft as being a "mistress" to whoredoms, which i think is the same thing as saying sex magic. which is also the same thing as becoming the same thing as wine of fornication which is condemned in Genesis 19 (jst) with the daughters of Lott. (see my previous reproofs)
7th there are superstitions, there are primal-fears that debunk what people are taught to be exaggerated false beliefs of what wiccans believe. however, there are testimonies of wiccans as well that declare such witchcrafts as being of satan. its like a gateway "drug" is to an addict but in spiritual idolatry and power
8th. there are people who believe learning witchcraft and potions and spells is also a form of self defense. but it can be likened to drinking coffee and ending up having to drink 5 or 10 cups of coffee each day to get the same result, and its called diminishing returns but its still poisoning self and it still causes Neurotic behavior.
9th the same thing can be said for all pharmecutical medicine, especially in higher doses. all pharmecutical medicines cause mental illness and eventuall physcial symptoms as well. Psychosis is the leading mental illness that prescription drugs cause and most prescription drugs are just altered forms of street drugs and illegal drugs.
10th. one persons' medicine could kill another person.
11th, both the word witccraft and sorcery are the same word in Hebrew and in Greek. when looking at the words in the book of revelation!
12th there are at least 9 different biblical definitions of witchcraft, and none of them agree.
13. in the book of revelation, the term for sorcery is also used as a definition of "deceit" as a tool that is used by the enemy "church" of christ, (*see rev 18:4)
question was asked on Yahoo QAR&S
july 09
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090709110049AABPoUV
Friday, July 3, 2009
weapons of warfare scriptures
is it better to learn NO more war? or to learn War and be the srongest warrior race?
Rev. 12: 7, 17
7 And there was awar in heaven: bMichael and his cangels fought against the dragon; and the ddragon fought and his angels,
17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Rev. 13: 4, 7
4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?
7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
Rev. 17: 14
14 These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.
Isa. 2: 4
4 And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Micah 4: 3
3 And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their aswords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Ezek. 32: 27
27 And they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to hell with their weapons of war: and they have laid their swords under their heads, but their iniquities shall be upon their bones, though they were the terror of the mighty in the land of the living.
zzzzzzzzzz
Isa. 13: 5
5 They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the Lord, and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land.
zzzzzzzz
Acts 7: 22
22 And Moses was alearned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.
Do men have the whole word of God?
Matt. 4: 4
4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Luke 11: 28
28 But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.
1 Cor. 4: 20
20 For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.
1 Cor. 14: 36
36 What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only?
Eph. 5: 6
6 Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.
Heb. 4: 12
12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
it is also written that God does NOT always give His word to man.
zzzzzzzzzz
Deut. 4: 2
2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.
Rev. 22: 18
18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall aadd unto these things, God shall add unto him the bplagues that are written in this book:
zzzzzzzzzzz
Jer. 23: 9, 11, 13-16, 21, 25-26, 28, 30-31, 33-34, 37
9 Mine heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine hath overcome, because of the Lord, and because of the words of his holiness.
11 For both prophet and priest are profane; yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, saith the Lord.
13 And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria; they prophesied in Baal, and caused my people Israel to err.
14 I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.
15 Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets; Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink the water of gall: for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth into all the land.
16 Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord.
21 I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied.
zzzzzzzzzzzzz
8 For thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Let not your prophets and your diviners, that be in the midst of you, deceive you, neither hearken to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
3:44 PM 6/18/2008
Deut. 18: 15, 18, 20, 22
15 The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken;
18 I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.
20 But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
22 When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.
zzzzzzzzzz
Jer. 27: 9, 14-16, 18
9 Therefore hearken not ye to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreamers, nor to your enchanters, nor to your sorcerers,
zzzzzzzzzz
1 Kgs. 19: 1, 10, 14, 16
1 And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and withal how he had slain all the prophets with the sword.
zzzzzzzzzz
3:53 PM 6/18/2008
Rev. 12: 7, 17
7 And there was awar in heaven: bMichael and his cangels fought against the dragon; and the ddragon fought and his angels,
17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Rev. 13: 4, 7
4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?
7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
Rev. 17: 14
14 These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.
Isa. 2: 4
4 And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Micah 4: 3
3 And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their aswords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Ezek. 32: 27
27 And they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to hell with their weapons of war: and they have laid their swords under their heads, but their iniquities shall be upon their bones, though they were the terror of the mighty in the land of the living.
zzzzzzzzzz
Isa. 13: 5
5 They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the Lord, and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land.
zzzzzzzz
Acts 7: 22
22 And Moses was alearned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.
Do men have the whole word of God?
Matt. 4: 4
4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Luke 11: 28
28 But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.
1 Cor. 4: 20
20 For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.
1 Cor. 14: 36
36 What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only?
Eph. 5: 6
6 Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.
Heb. 4: 12
12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
it is also written that God does NOT always give His word to man.
zzzzzzzzzz
Deut. 4: 2
2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.
Rev. 22: 18
18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall aadd unto these things, God shall add unto him the bplagues that are written in this book:
zzzzzzzzzzz
Jer. 23: 9, 11, 13-16, 21, 25-26, 28, 30-31, 33-34, 37
9 Mine heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine hath overcome, because of the Lord, and because of the words of his holiness.
11 For both prophet and priest are profane; yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, saith the Lord.
13 And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria; they prophesied in Baal, and caused my people Israel to err.
14 I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.
15 Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets; Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink the water of gall: for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth into all the land.
16 Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord.
21 I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied.
zzzzzzzzzzzzz
8 For thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Let not your prophets and your diviners, that be in the midst of you, deceive you, neither hearken to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
3:44 PM 6/18/2008
Deut. 18: 15, 18, 20, 22
15 The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken;
18 I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.
20 But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
22 When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.
zzzzzzzzzz
Jer. 27: 9, 14-16, 18
9 Therefore hearken not ye to your prophets, nor to your diviners, nor to your dreamers, nor to your enchanters, nor to your sorcerers,
zzzzzzzzzz
1 Kgs. 19: 1, 10, 14, 16
1 And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and withal how he had slain all the prophets with the sword.
zzzzzzzzzz
3:53 PM 6/18/2008
animal rights Tibetan story
What do you think of this quote:?
"Be ye kind one to another, and to all the creatures of God."
Tibetan Gospel Lection 38 Jesus
Additional Details
"wherefore i say unto all who desire to be my disciples, keep your hands from bloodshed and let no flesh meat enter your mouths, for God is just and bountiful, who ordaineth that man shall live by the fruits and seeds of the earth alone. But if any animal suffer greatly, and if its life be a misery unto it. or if it be dangerous to you, reliase it from its life quickly, and with as little pain as you can, Send it forth in love and mercy, but torment it not, and God the Father-Mother wil shew mercy unto you, as ye have shown mercy unto those given into your hands. And whatsoever ye do unto the Cast of these my children, ye do it unto me. For I am in them and they are in me, Yea, I am in all creatures and all creatures are in me. In all their joys I rejoice, in all their afflictions I am afflicted." verse 4 - 7
6 days ago
"And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, they who partake of benefits which are gotten by wrongin one of God's creatures, cannot be righteous; nor can they touch holy things, or teach the mysteris fo the kingdom who hands are stained With blood, or show mouths are defiled with flesh. vs 2
more quotes:
on vegan, animal rights, eating meat!
it is actually written by Paul, if anything he does, seemingly, offends anyone he will stop doing it.
the tibetan new testament compiled by Glenn kimball and translated in the 1880 or 90's seems to say that eating meat is a sin to christ "if the animal is 'slaughtered"'
but the bible says that it is the doctrine of "devils" to forbid to eat meat. which is the true interpretaion and true translation and true tradition.
i am undergoing this debate right now.
if you believe the bible words directly as it is written now, it is not an offense to christians to be vegan unless the person is absolutely rude.
if you believe the tibetan translation which seems to be allegedly translated from a "source" manuscript, than being a vegetarian is more the HOLY way and the HIGHER way of spirituality.
(Rev Gideon Jasper Richard Ousley - 1892)
in the bible it says dont eat anything strangled
or anything offered unto an idol
in the tibetan new testament it says He condemns eating meat or any animal that has been slaughtered.
he also condemns Hunting in this manuscript! (see my earlier posts)
however in the LDS church, he make a finer point about eating meat sparingly and in times of famine.
there is so much abundance why would anyone need to eat meat.
in the doctrine and covenants, i think d&c 89, it specifically says do not drink hot drinks because of the health of the belly. it doesnt say cafience but many mormons assume cafiene while many others drink coke and pepsi.
edit:4 Behold, verily, thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation
9 And again, hot drinks are not for the body or belly.
the word of wisdom is about eating healthy, and it hints at conspiracies of evil intent you should read for yourself
another quote:
And jesus said unto them, Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias speak of you, and your forefathers, saying this People draweth nigh unto Me, with their mouths, and honour me with their lips, but therir heart is far from me, for in vain do they worship Me teaching and believing, and teaching for divine doctrines, the commadments of men in my name but to satisfy their own lusts.
15 As also Jeremiah bear witness when he saith, concerning blood offerings and sacrifices I the Lord God commanded none of these things in the day that ye came out of Egypt, but only this I commanded you to do, reighteousness, walk in the ancient paths, do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God
16 But ye did not hearken to Me, Who in the beginning gave you all manner of seed, and fruit of the trees and seed having been for the food and healing of mand and beast. And they said, Thou speakest against the law.
17And he said against Moses indeed I do not speak nor against the law, but agains them who corrupted his law, which he permitted for the hardness of your hearts. But, behold, a greater than Moses is here! and they were wrath and took up stones to cast at him. And Jesus passed through their midst and was hidden from their violence.
Again it is written, From the rising of the sun unto the setting of the same, my Name shall be great among the Gentiles, and incense with apure Offering shall be offered unto me. But ye have made it a desolation with your offerings of blood and used the sweet incense only to cover the ill savour thereof. I am come not to destroy the law but to fulfil it.
8 Know ye not what is written? Obedience is better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of rams. I, the Lord, am weary of your burnt offerings, and vain oblations, your hands are full of blood.
9 And is it not written, what is the true sacrifice? Wash you and make you clean and put away the evil from before mine eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do well. Do justice for the fatherless and the widow and all athare oppressed. So doing ye shall fulfil the law.
10. The day cometh when all that which is in the outer court, which pertaineth to blood offerigs, shall be taken away ad pure worshippers shall worship the Eternal in purity and in truth.
11. Ad they said, Who are thou that seekest to day away with the sacrifices, and despiseth the see of Abraham? From the greeks and the Egyptians hast thou learnt this blasphemy?
12 And Jesus said, Before Abraham was, I Am. And the refused to listen and some said, he is inspired by a demon, and tohers said, he is mad; and they went their way and told these things to the priests and elders. And they were wrath, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy.
another quote:
Again ye have been told, Thou shalt not commit adultery, but I say unto you, if man or woman join toegether in marriage with unhealthy bodies, and beget unhealthy offspring, they are guilty, even though they hve not taken their neighbour's spouce: and if any have not taken a woman who belongeth to another, but desire in their hearth and seek after her, they have committed adultery already in spirit.
animal rights quote:
And some of his disciples came and told him of a certain Egyptian, a son of Belial, who taught that it was lawful to torment animals, if their sufferings brought any profit to men.
2. And jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, they who parake of benefits which are gottn by wronging ofe of God's creatures, canot be righteous; nor can they touch holy things, or teach the mysteries of the kingdom, who hands are stained with Blood, or whose mouths are defiled with flesh.
3 God giveth the grains and the fruits of the earth for food: and for righteous man truly there is no other lawful sustenace for the body.
4. ...Wherefore I say unto al who desire to be my disciples, keep your hand from bloodshed ad let no flesh meat enter your mouths, for God is just and bountiful, who ordaineth that man shall live by the fruits and seeds of the earth alone
5.But if any animal suffer greatly, and if it ..
6. and whatsoever y do unto the Cast of these my chilren ye do it unto me. For I am in them and they are in me, Yea, I am in all creatures and all creatures are in m e. In all their joys I rejoice, in all their afflictions i am afflicted. Wherefore I say unto you: Be ye kind one to another, and to all the creatures of God.
reincarnation
Jesus sat in the porch of the Temple, and some came to learn his doctrine, and one said unto him, Master, what teaches thou concerning life?
2 and he said unto them, Blessed are they who suffer many experiences, for they shall be made perfect through suffering; they shall be as the agels of God in Heaven and shall die no more, neither shall they be born any more, for death and birth have no more dominion over them.
3 they who suffered and overcome shall be made IPillars in the Temple of my God, and they shall go out no more. Verily I say unto you, except ye be born again of water and of fire, ye canot see the kingdom of God.
When jesus knew how the pharisees had murmured and complained because he made and baptized more disciple than John, he left Judea, and departed unto Galilee
2 And jesus came to a certain Tree and abode beneath it many days. And there came Mary Magdalene and other women and ministered unto thim of their substance, and he taught daily all that came unto him
3 And the birds gathered around him, and welcomed him with their song, and other living creatures came unto his feet, and he fed them, and they ate out of his hands
4 and when he departed he blessed the women who shewed love unto him, and turing to the fig tree, he blessed it also, saying: Thou hast given me shelter and shade from the burning heat, and withal thou has given me food also.
5 Blessed be thou, increase and be frutful, and let all who come to thee, find rest and shade and food, and let the birds of the air rejoice in thy branches
6 And behold the tree grew and flourished exceedinlgy, and its braches took root downward, and sent shoots upwad, and it spread mightily, so that no tree was like unto it for its size and beauty, and the abundance and goodness of its fruit.
7 And as Jesus entered into a certain village he saw a young cat which had none to care for her, and she was hungry and cried unto him, and he took her up, and put her inside his garment, and she lay in his bosom.
8 And whe he came into the village he set food and drink befor ethe cat, and she ate and drank, and shewed thanks unto him. And he gave her unto one of his disciples, who was a widow, whose name was Lorenza, ad she took care of her.
9 And some of the people said, This man careth for all creatures, are they his borthers and siters that he should love them? And he said unto them Verily these are your fell creatures of the great Household of God, yea, they are your brethren and sisters, having the same breath of life in the Eternal
10 And whosoever careth for one of the least of thse, and giveth it to eat and drink in its need, the same doeth it uto me, and whoso willingly suffereth one of thse to be in want, and defendeth itnot when evilly entreated,s suffereth teh evil as done unto me; for as ye have done in this life, so shall it be done unto you in the life to come.
blood offerings
Jesus was teaching his disciple in the outer court of the Temple and one of them said unto him: Master, it is said by the preiest that without shedding of blood there is no remission. Can thent he blood offering of the law take away sin?
2 and Jesus answered: o blood offering, of beast or bird, or man, can take away sin, fo hwo can the conscience be purged from sin by the shedding of innocet blood? Nay, it will increase the condemnation.
3. The priests indeed receive such offerings as a reconcilliation of the worshippers for the trespasses against the law of Moses, but for sins against the Law of God there can be no remission, save by repentance and amendment.
4. Is it not written in the prophets, Put your blood sacrifices to your burnt offerings, and away with them, and cease ye from the eating of flesh, for I spake not to your father nor commanded them, when i brought them out of Egypt, concerning these things? But this thin I commanded saying:
5. Obey my voice and walk in the ways that I have commanded you, and ye shall be my people, and it shall be well with you. But they hearkened not. nor inclined their ear.
6. And what doeth the Eternal command you but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God? Is it not written taht in the beginning God ordained teh fruits of the trees and the seeds and the herbs to be food for all flesh?
7. But they have made the house of prayer a den of thieves, and for the pure oblation with Incense, they have polluted my alters with blood, and eaten of the flesh of the slain.
8. But I say unto you: Shed no innocent blood nor eat ye flesh. Walk uprightly, love mercy, and do justly, and your days shall be long in the land.
9. The corn that growth from the earth with the other grain, is it not transmuted by the Sprit into my flesh? the grapes of the vineyard, with the other fruits are they not transmuted by the Spirit into my blood? Le these with your bodies and souls be your Memorial to the Eternal.
story of the camel
And Jesus was traveliling to jerusalem, and there came a camel heaveny laden with wood. And the camel woulc not drag it up the hill whither he went for the weight thereof, ad the driver beat him and cruelly ill-treated him, but he couldmake him go no further.
13 And Jesus seeing this, said unto him, Wherefore beatest thou thy brother? And the man answered, I wot not that he is my brother, is he not a beast of burden and made to serve me?
14 And Jesus said, Hath not the same God made of the same substance the camel and they children who serve thee, and have ye not one breath of life which ye have both received fro God?
15 And the man marvelled much at this sayig, and he ceased from beating the camel, and took off some of the burden and the camel walked up the hill as Jesus went before him, and stopped no more till he ended his journey
16 And the camel knew Jesus, having felt of the love of God in him. And the man inquired further of the doctrine, and Jesus taught him gladly and he became his disciple.
They who believe in me, out of their hearts shall flow rivers of water, and that which is given unto them shall they speak with power, and their doctrine shall be living water. (this he spake of the spirit, which they that believed o nhim should receive, for the fulness of the Spirit was not yet given becasue tha tjesus was not yet glorified).
And if a desire be unto thee as thy life, and it turn thee from the truth, cast it out from thee, for it is beter to enter life possessing truth, than losing it to be cast into outer darkness.
Better to suffer than to inflict Pain
And if that seem desirable to thee which costs another pain or sorrow, cast it out of thine heart; so shalt thou attain to peace. Better it is to endure sorrow, than to inflict it, on those who are weaker. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Parent Who is in Heaven is perfect.
And it came to pass that the Lord departed from the City and over the mountains with his disciples. And they came to a mountain whosw ways were steep and there they found a man with a besat of burden.
2 But the horse had falen down, for it was over laden, and he struck it till the blood flowed. And Jesus went to him and said: "Son of cruelty, why srikest thou thy beast? Seest thou not that it is too weak for its burden, and knowedst thou not that it suffereth?"
3 But the man answered and said: "What hast thou to do therewith? I may strike it as much as it pleaseth me, for it is mine own, and I bought it with a goodly sum of money. Ask them who are with thee, fo rthey are of mind acquaintance and know thereof."
4 And some of his disciples answered and said: Yea, Lord, it is as he saith, We have seen when he bought it. And th eLord said again "see ye not then how it bleedeth, and hear ye not also how it waileth and lamenteth?" But they answered ad said: "Nay, Lord, we hear not that it waileth and lamaneteth?"
5 And the Lord was sorrowful, and said: "Woe unto you becasue of the dulness of your hearts, ye hear not how it lamenteth and crieth unto the heavenly Cre3ator for mercy, but thrice woe unto him against whom it crieth and waileth in its pain."
6 And he went forward and touched it, and the horse stood up, and its wournds were healed. But to the an he said: "Go now thy way and strike it henceforth nno more, if thou also desireth to find mercy."
7 and seeing the people come unto himj, Jesus, said unto his disciples Becasue of the sick I am sick; becasue of the hungry I am hungry; becasue of the thristy I am athirst.
8 He also said, I am come to end the sacrifices and feasts of blood, and if ye cease not offering and eating of flesh and blood, the wrath of God shall not cease from you, even as it came to your fathers in teh wilderness, who lusted for flesh and they eat to their content and were filled with rottenness, and th eplague consumed them.
9 and i say unto you, Though ye be gathered together in my bosom , if y keep not my commandments I will cst you forth. For if ye keep not the lesser mysteries, who shall give you the greater
10 He that is faithful in that which is lest is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.
11 If therefore ye have not been faithful in the mammon of unrighteousness, who will commit to your trust the true riches? ...
Hunting
And as Jesus was going with some of his disciple he met with a certain man who trained dogs to hunt other creatures. And he said to the man, Why doest thou thus? and the man said, By this I live and what profit is there to any in these creatures? these creatures are weak, but the dogs they are strong. And Jesus said, Thou lackest wisdom and love. Lo, every creature which God hath made hath its end, and purpose, and who can say what good is there in it? or what profit to thyself, or mankind?
and, for thy living, behold the fields yieldig their increase, ad the fruit-bearing trees and the herbs; what needest thou more than these which honest work of thy hands will not give to thee? Woe to the stron gwho misuse their strength, Woe to the hunters for they shall be hunted. And the man marvelled, and left off training the dogs to hunt, and taught them to save life rather than destroy, and he learned of the docties of Jesu and became his disciple.
Lion
and on a certain day as he was passing by a mountain side nigh unto the desert, ther met him a lion and many men were pursuing him with stones and javelins to slay him.
But Jesus rebuked them, saying, Why hunt ye these creatures of God, which are more noble than you? By the cruelties of many generations they were made the enemies of man who shoul dhave been his freinds.
If the power of God is shown in them, so also is shown his long suffering and compassion. Cease ye to be persecute this creature who desireth not to harm you, see y not how he fleeth from you, and is terrifed by your violence?
And the lion came and lay at the feet of jesus, and shewed love to him; and the pople were astonished, and said, Lo, this man loveth all cratures and hath power to command even these besats from the desert, and they obey him.
Nativity of Jesus the christ (Iesus)
Now the birth of Jesu-Maria the christ was on this wise. It came to pass in those days, that there went out a decre from Caesar Augustus, that all th world should be taxed. And all the people of Syyria wen to be taxed, everyo one to his own city, and it was midwinter.
and joseph with mary also went up from Galilee, out of the city of nazareth into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (becasue they were of the house and lineage of David), to be taxed with mary his espoused wife, who was great with child.
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn child in a Cave, and warped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, which was in the cave; because there was no room for them in the inn. And behold it was filled with many lights, on either side Twelve, bright as the Sun in his glory.
And there were in the same cave an ox, and a horse, and an ass, and a sheep, and beneath the manger was a cat with her little ones, and there were doves also, overhead, and each had its mate after its kind, th emale with the female.
Thus it came to pass that he was born in the midst of the animals which through the redemption of man from ignorance and selfishness, he came to redeem from their sufferings, by the manifestation or the sons and the daughters of God
And there were in teh same country, shepherds abiding in the feild, keeping wartch over their flock by night. And when they came, lo, the angel of God came upon them, ad the glory of the Highest shoe round about them; and they were sore afraid.
and the angel said unto them, fear not: for, behold, I bring ou good tidings fo great joy, which shall be to all people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a saviour, which is Christ, the Holy oNe of God. And this shall be a sign uto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in th ehighest, and on earth peace twoard men of goodwill.
And it came to pas, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which our God hath made known unto us.
And they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph in the cave, and the Baby lying in a manger. Ad when they had seen these things, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning the child.
"Be ye kind one to another, and to all the creatures of God."
Tibetan Gospel Lection 38 Jesus
Additional Details
"wherefore i say unto all who desire to be my disciples, keep your hands from bloodshed and let no flesh meat enter your mouths, for God is just and bountiful, who ordaineth that man shall live by the fruits and seeds of the earth alone. But if any animal suffer greatly, and if its life be a misery unto it. or if it be dangerous to you, reliase it from its life quickly, and with as little pain as you can, Send it forth in love and mercy, but torment it not, and God the Father-Mother wil shew mercy unto you, as ye have shown mercy unto those given into your hands. And whatsoever ye do unto the Cast of these my children, ye do it unto me. For I am in them and they are in me, Yea, I am in all creatures and all creatures are in me. In all their joys I rejoice, in all their afflictions I am afflicted." verse 4 - 7
6 days ago
"And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, they who partake of benefits which are gotten by wrongin one of God's creatures, cannot be righteous; nor can they touch holy things, or teach the mysteris fo the kingdom who hands are stained With blood, or show mouths are defiled with flesh. vs 2
more quotes:
on vegan, animal rights, eating meat!
it is actually written by Paul, if anything he does, seemingly, offends anyone he will stop doing it.
the tibetan new testament compiled by Glenn kimball and translated in the 1880 or 90's seems to say that eating meat is a sin to christ "if the animal is 'slaughtered"'
but the bible says that it is the doctrine of "devils" to forbid to eat meat. which is the true interpretaion and true translation and true tradition.
i am undergoing this debate right now.
if you believe the bible words directly as it is written now, it is not an offense to christians to be vegan unless the person is absolutely rude.
if you believe the tibetan translation which seems to be allegedly translated from a "source" manuscript, than being a vegetarian is more the HOLY way and the HIGHER way of spirituality.
(Rev Gideon Jasper Richard Ousley - 1892)
in the bible it says dont eat anything strangled
or anything offered unto an idol
in the tibetan new testament it says He condemns eating meat or any animal that has been slaughtered.
he also condemns Hunting in this manuscript! (see my earlier posts)
however in the LDS church, he make a finer point about eating meat sparingly and in times of famine.
there is so much abundance why would anyone need to eat meat.
in the doctrine and covenants, i think d&c 89, it specifically says do not drink hot drinks because of the health of the belly. it doesnt say cafience but many mormons assume cafiene while many others drink coke and pepsi.
edit:4 Behold, verily, thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation
9 And again, hot drinks are not for the body or belly.
the word of wisdom is about eating healthy, and it hints at conspiracies of evil intent you should read for yourself
another quote:
And jesus said unto them, Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias speak of you, and your forefathers, saying this People draweth nigh unto Me, with their mouths, and honour me with their lips, but therir heart is far from me, for in vain do they worship Me teaching and believing, and teaching for divine doctrines, the commadments of men in my name but to satisfy their own lusts.
15 As also Jeremiah bear witness when he saith, concerning blood offerings and sacrifices I the Lord God commanded none of these things in the day that ye came out of Egypt, but only this I commanded you to do, reighteousness, walk in the ancient paths, do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God
16 But ye did not hearken to Me, Who in the beginning gave you all manner of seed, and fruit of the trees and seed having been for the food and healing of mand and beast. And they said, Thou speakest against the law.
17And he said against Moses indeed I do not speak nor against the law, but agains them who corrupted his law, which he permitted for the hardness of your hearts. But, behold, a greater than Moses is here! and they were wrath and took up stones to cast at him. And Jesus passed through their midst and was hidden from their violence.
Again it is written, From the rising of the sun unto the setting of the same, my Name shall be great among the Gentiles, and incense with apure Offering shall be offered unto me. But ye have made it a desolation with your offerings of blood and used the sweet incense only to cover the ill savour thereof. I am come not to destroy the law but to fulfil it.
8 Know ye not what is written? Obedience is better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of rams. I, the Lord, am weary of your burnt offerings, and vain oblations, your hands are full of blood.
9 And is it not written, what is the true sacrifice? Wash you and make you clean and put away the evil from before mine eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do well. Do justice for the fatherless and the widow and all athare oppressed. So doing ye shall fulfil the law.
10. The day cometh when all that which is in the outer court, which pertaineth to blood offerigs, shall be taken away ad pure worshippers shall worship the Eternal in purity and in truth.
11. Ad they said, Who are thou that seekest to day away with the sacrifices, and despiseth the see of Abraham? From the greeks and the Egyptians hast thou learnt this blasphemy?
12 And Jesus said, Before Abraham was, I Am. And the refused to listen and some said, he is inspired by a demon, and tohers said, he is mad; and they went their way and told these things to the priests and elders. And they were wrath, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy.
another quote:
Again ye have been told, Thou shalt not commit adultery, but I say unto you, if man or woman join toegether in marriage with unhealthy bodies, and beget unhealthy offspring, they are guilty, even though they hve not taken their neighbour's spouce: and if any have not taken a woman who belongeth to another, but desire in their hearth and seek after her, they have committed adultery already in spirit.
animal rights quote:
And some of his disciples came and told him of a certain Egyptian, a son of Belial, who taught that it was lawful to torment animals, if their sufferings brought any profit to men.
2. And jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, they who parake of benefits which are gottn by wronging ofe of God's creatures, canot be righteous; nor can they touch holy things, or teach the mysteries of the kingdom, who hands are stained with Blood, or whose mouths are defiled with flesh.
3 God giveth the grains and the fruits of the earth for food: and for righteous man truly there is no other lawful sustenace for the body.
4. ...Wherefore I say unto al who desire to be my disciples, keep your hand from bloodshed ad let no flesh meat enter your mouths, for God is just and bountiful, who ordaineth that man shall live by the fruits and seeds of the earth alone
5.But if any animal suffer greatly, and if it ..
6. and whatsoever y do unto the Cast of these my chilren ye do it unto me. For I am in them and they are in me, Yea, I am in all creatures and all creatures are in m e. In all their joys I rejoice, in all their afflictions i am afflicted. Wherefore I say unto you: Be ye kind one to another, and to all the creatures of God.
reincarnation
Jesus sat in the porch of the Temple, and some came to learn his doctrine, and one said unto him, Master, what teaches thou concerning life?
2 and he said unto them, Blessed are they who suffer many experiences, for they shall be made perfect through suffering; they shall be as the agels of God in Heaven and shall die no more, neither shall they be born any more, for death and birth have no more dominion over them.
3 they who suffered and overcome shall be made IPillars in the Temple of my God, and they shall go out no more. Verily I say unto you, except ye be born again of water and of fire, ye canot see the kingdom of God.
When jesus knew how the pharisees had murmured and complained because he made and baptized more disciple than John, he left Judea, and departed unto Galilee
2 And jesus came to a certain Tree and abode beneath it many days. And there came Mary Magdalene and other women and ministered unto thim of their substance, and he taught daily all that came unto him
3 And the birds gathered around him, and welcomed him with their song, and other living creatures came unto his feet, and he fed them, and they ate out of his hands
4 and when he departed he blessed the women who shewed love unto him, and turing to the fig tree, he blessed it also, saying: Thou hast given me shelter and shade from the burning heat, and withal thou has given me food also.
5 Blessed be thou, increase and be frutful, and let all who come to thee, find rest and shade and food, and let the birds of the air rejoice in thy branches
6 And behold the tree grew and flourished exceedinlgy, and its braches took root downward, and sent shoots upwad, and it spread mightily, so that no tree was like unto it for its size and beauty, and the abundance and goodness of its fruit.
7 And as Jesus entered into a certain village he saw a young cat which had none to care for her, and she was hungry and cried unto him, and he took her up, and put her inside his garment, and she lay in his bosom.
8 And whe he came into the village he set food and drink befor ethe cat, and she ate and drank, and shewed thanks unto him. And he gave her unto one of his disciples, who was a widow, whose name was Lorenza, ad she took care of her.
9 And some of the people said, This man careth for all creatures, are they his borthers and siters that he should love them? And he said unto them Verily these are your fell creatures of the great Household of God, yea, they are your brethren and sisters, having the same breath of life in the Eternal
10 And whosoever careth for one of the least of thse, and giveth it to eat and drink in its need, the same doeth it uto me, and whoso willingly suffereth one of thse to be in want, and defendeth itnot when evilly entreated,s suffereth teh evil as done unto me; for as ye have done in this life, so shall it be done unto you in the life to come.
blood offerings
Jesus was teaching his disciple in the outer court of the Temple and one of them said unto him: Master, it is said by the preiest that without shedding of blood there is no remission. Can thent he blood offering of the law take away sin?
2 and Jesus answered: o blood offering, of beast or bird, or man, can take away sin, fo hwo can the conscience be purged from sin by the shedding of innocet blood? Nay, it will increase the condemnation.
3. The priests indeed receive such offerings as a reconcilliation of the worshippers for the trespasses against the law of Moses, but for sins against the Law of God there can be no remission, save by repentance and amendment.
4. Is it not written in the prophets, Put your blood sacrifices to your burnt offerings, and away with them, and cease ye from the eating of flesh, for I spake not to your father nor commanded them, when i brought them out of Egypt, concerning these things? But this thin I commanded saying:
5. Obey my voice and walk in the ways that I have commanded you, and ye shall be my people, and it shall be well with you. But they hearkened not. nor inclined their ear.
6. And what doeth the Eternal command you but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God? Is it not written taht in the beginning God ordained teh fruits of the trees and the seeds and the herbs to be food for all flesh?
7. But they have made the house of prayer a den of thieves, and for the pure oblation with Incense, they have polluted my alters with blood, and eaten of the flesh of the slain.
8. But I say unto you: Shed no innocent blood nor eat ye flesh. Walk uprightly, love mercy, and do justly, and your days shall be long in the land.
9. The corn that growth from the earth with the other grain, is it not transmuted by the Sprit into my flesh? the grapes of the vineyard, with the other fruits are they not transmuted by the Spirit into my blood? Le these with your bodies and souls be your Memorial to the Eternal.
story of the camel
And Jesus was traveliling to jerusalem, and there came a camel heaveny laden with wood. And the camel woulc not drag it up the hill whither he went for the weight thereof, ad the driver beat him and cruelly ill-treated him, but he couldmake him go no further.
13 And Jesus seeing this, said unto him, Wherefore beatest thou thy brother? And the man answered, I wot not that he is my brother, is he not a beast of burden and made to serve me?
14 And Jesus said, Hath not the same God made of the same substance the camel and they children who serve thee, and have ye not one breath of life which ye have both received fro God?
15 And the man marvelled much at this sayig, and he ceased from beating the camel, and took off some of the burden and the camel walked up the hill as Jesus went before him, and stopped no more till he ended his journey
16 And the camel knew Jesus, having felt of the love of God in him. And the man inquired further of the doctrine, and Jesus taught him gladly and he became his disciple.
They who believe in me, out of their hearts shall flow rivers of water, and that which is given unto them shall they speak with power, and their doctrine shall be living water. (this he spake of the spirit, which they that believed o nhim should receive, for the fulness of the Spirit was not yet given becasue tha tjesus was not yet glorified).
And if a desire be unto thee as thy life, and it turn thee from the truth, cast it out from thee, for it is beter to enter life possessing truth, than losing it to be cast into outer darkness.
Better to suffer than to inflict Pain
And if that seem desirable to thee which costs another pain or sorrow, cast it out of thine heart; so shalt thou attain to peace. Better it is to endure sorrow, than to inflict it, on those who are weaker. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Parent Who is in Heaven is perfect.
And it came to pass that the Lord departed from the City and over the mountains with his disciples. And they came to a mountain whosw ways were steep and there they found a man with a besat of burden.
2 But the horse had falen down, for it was over laden, and he struck it till the blood flowed. And Jesus went to him and said: "Son of cruelty, why srikest thou thy beast? Seest thou not that it is too weak for its burden, and knowedst thou not that it suffereth?"
3 But the man answered and said: "What hast thou to do therewith? I may strike it as much as it pleaseth me, for it is mine own, and I bought it with a goodly sum of money. Ask them who are with thee, fo rthey are of mind acquaintance and know thereof."
4 And some of his disciples answered and said: Yea, Lord, it is as he saith, We have seen when he bought it. And th eLord said again "see ye not then how it bleedeth, and hear ye not also how it waileth and lamenteth?" But they answered ad said: "Nay, Lord, we hear not that it waileth and lamaneteth?"
5 And the Lord was sorrowful, and said: "Woe unto you becasue of the dulness of your hearts, ye hear not how it lamenteth and crieth unto the heavenly Cre3ator for mercy, but thrice woe unto him against whom it crieth and waileth in its pain."
6 And he went forward and touched it, and the horse stood up, and its wournds were healed. But to the an he said: "Go now thy way and strike it henceforth nno more, if thou also desireth to find mercy."
7 and seeing the people come unto himj, Jesus, said unto his disciples Becasue of the sick I am sick; becasue of the hungry I am hungry; becasue of the thristy I am athirst.
8 He also said, I am come to end the sacrifices and feasts of blood, and if ye cease not offering and eating of flesh and blood, the wrath of God shall not cease from you, even as it came to your fathers in teh wilderness, who lusted for flesh and they eat to their content and were filled with rottenness, and th eplague consumed them.
9 and i say unto you, Though ye be gathered together in my bosom , if y keep not my commandments I will cst you forth. For if ye keep not the lesser mysteries, who shall give you the greater
10 He that is faithful in that which is lest is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.
11 If therefore ye have not been faithful in the mammon of unrighteousness, who will commit to your trust the true riches? ...
Hunting
And as Jesus was going with some of his disciple he met with a certain man who trained dogs to hunt other creatures. And he said to the man, Why doest thou thus? and the man said, By this I live and what profit is there to any in these creatures? these creatures are weak, but the dogs they are strong. And Jesus said, Thou lackest wisdom and love. Lo, every creature which God hath made hath its end, and purpose, and who can say what good is there in it? or what profit to thyself, or mankind?
and, for thy living, behold the fields yieldig their increase, ad the fruit-bearing trees and the herbs; what needest thou more than these which honest work of thy hands will not give to thee? Woe to the stron gwho misuse their strength, Woe to the hunters for they shall be hunted. And the man marvelled, and left off training the dogs to hunt, and taught them to save life rather than destroy, and he learned of the docties of Jesu and became his disciple.
Lion
and on a certain day as he was passing by a mountain side nigh unto the desert, ther met him a lion and many men were pursuing him with stones and javelins to slay him.
But Jesus rebuked them, saying, Why hunt ye these creatures of God, which are more noble than you? By the cruelties of many generations they were made the enemies of man who shoul dhave been his freinds.
If the power of God is shown in them, so also is shown his long suffering and compassion. Cease ye to be persecute this creature who desireth not to harm you, see y not how he fleeth from you, and is terrifed by your violence?
And the lion came and lay at the feet of jesus, and shewed love to him; and the pople were astonished, and said, Lo, this man loveth all cratures and hath power to command even these besats from the desert, and they obey him.
Nativity of Jesus the christ (Iesus)
Now the birth of Jesu-Maria the christ was on this wise. It came to pass in those days, that there went out a decre from Caesar Augustus, that all th world should be taxed. And all the people of Syyria wen to be taxed, everyo one to his own city, and it was midwinter.
and joseph with mary also went up from Galilee, out of the city of nazareth into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (becasue they were of the house and lineage of David), to be taxed with mary his espoused wife, who was great with child.
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn child in a Cave, and warped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, which was in the cave; because there was no room for them in the inn. And behold it was filled with many lights, on either side Twelve, bright as the Sun in his glory.
And there were in the same cave an ox, and a horse, and an ass, and a sheep, and beneath the manger was a cat with her little ones, and there were doves also, overhead, and each had its mate after its kind, th emale with the female.
Thus it came to pass that he was born in the midst of the animals which through the redemption of man from ignorance and selfishness, he came to redeem from their sufferings, by the manifestation or the sons and the daughters of God
And there were in teh same country, shepherds abiding in the feild, keeping wartch over their flock by night. And when they came, lo, the angel of God came upon them, ad the glory of the Highest shoe round about them; and they were sore afraid.
and the angel said unto them, fear not: for, behold, I bring ou good tidings fo great joy, which shall be to all people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a saviour, which is Christ, the Holy oNe of God. And this shall be a sign uto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in th ehighest, and on earth peace twoard men of goodwill.
And it came to pas, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which our God hath made known unto us.
And they came with haste, and found Mary and Joseph in the cave, and the Baby lying in a manger. Ad when they had seen these things, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning the child.
Hand signs and liberals same
i stopped listening to Rush when i realized he was a mouthpiece for secret combination (secret societies).
along with Oriely and Hannity, who claim to be a group of righteous people. and add glenn beck to that group too. They all have one thing in common. sign language.
God rebukes secret societies and the use of Speaking with their hands! Jesus rebuked an adulterous generation that seeks for signs. ONE of the biggest lies perpetrated on the american citizen is the sign of the "ok".
I called it the sign of the zero.
you can find this same hand sign found in many paintings of saints and jesus. but i asked the question whether or not these paintings are false witness.
when i read the verse in the book of revelation 18:4, i realized that men of God are declared to be following satan. i think this hand-sign fully defiines what they are all following, and i think they are not following jesus.
Come OUT of HER! the angel says, to the people of God.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080624130403AA3XKoC&r=w&pa=FZptHWf.BGRX3OFPgDBWVAwhMv3Q4g9u0gwNBJVuPpuEBFQ9CQ--&paid=answered#A4FOPkDFKHXU1Io2BSaP
Bohemian Grove, are they a people that worships God, or a fallen angel?
the participants at bohemian grove and around the country in other places participate in religious rituals, one of which is proxy human sacrifice? would not this be a fallen angel or an idol rather than the true God.
follow up question, bohemian grove participants, would not a proxy human sacrifice be defined as a terrorist ?
ACT!
under the laws Homeland security.
i understand that many hundreds of people are counted as terrorists for less simple and minor transgressions?
along with Oriely and Hannity, who claim to be a group of righteous people. and add glenn beck to that group too. They all have one thing in common. sign language.
God rebukes secret societies and the use of Speaking with their hands! Jesus rebuked an adulterous generation that seeks for signs. ONE of the biggest lies perpetrated on the american citizen is the sign of the "ok".
I called it the sign of the zero.
you can find this same hand sign found in many paintings of saints and jesus. but i asked the question whether or not these paintings are false witness.
when i read the verse in the book of revelation 18:4, i realized that men of God are declared to be following satan. i think this hand-sign fully defiines what they are all following, and i think they are not following jesus.
Come OUT of HER! the angel says, to the people of God.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080624130403AA3XKoC&r=w&pa=FZptHWf.BGRX3OFPgDBWVAwhMv3Q4g9u0gwNBJVuPpuEBFQ9CQ--&paid=answered#A4FOPkDFKHXU1Io2BSaP
Bohemian Grove, are they a people that worships God, or a fallen angel?
the participants at bohemian grove and around the country in other places participate in religious rituals, one of which is proxy human sacrifice? would not this be a fallen angel or an idol rather than the true God.
follow up question, bohemian grove participants, would not a proxy human sacrifice be defined as a terrorist ?
ACT!
under the laws Homeland security.
i understand that many hundreds of people are counted as terrorists for less simple and minor transgressions?
intergalacticsithalliance
[16:04] GodofMars2: did you check out NRN yet?
[16:04] GodofMars2: and what is the link to your clan
[16:04] {SC}Darth_Terest: I am speaking with Arnon now.
[16:04] GodofMars2: ok nm
[16:05] {SC}Darth_Terest: My clan is more of an Alliance.
[16:05] {SC}Darth_Terest: I'm trying to see if NRN will be the first clan to join my allaince.
[16:06] GodofMars2: whats the link anyway
[16:08] {SC}Darth_Terest: 1 sec.
[16:08] {SC}Darth_Terest: http://newintergalacticsithempire.webs.com/
[16:13] GodofMars2: i would join your alliance but im still a good jedi.
[16:13] GodofMars2: lol
[16:14] {SC}Darth_Terest: Gtg, important issue.
[16:14] {SC}Darth_Terest: Have a good day.
[16:14] GodofMars2: isnt it true that All Sith get their power from spirit possession? or is it the true power of the higher levels of the sith masters ?!!!
[16:14] {SC}Darth_Terest: ?
[16:15] {SC}Darth_Terest: Palpatine had clones
[16:15] GodofMars2: oh yeah
[16:15] {SC}Darth_Terest: his spirit posseed one
[16:15] GodofMars2: now ive heard everythign
[16:15] {SC}Darth_Terest: then when that one died
[16:15] {SC}Darth_Terest: he would possess another one
[16:15] GodofMars2: ah thats the unwritten MOVIE
[16:15] GodofMars2: the secret he wanted to share with Vader
[16:16] GodofMars2: makes lots of sense to me
[16:16] {SC}Darth_Terest: the only way he was killed for good is that all the dead jedi had to combine their powers to trap him in the never world of the force forever
[16:16] GodofMars2: natural evolution and progression too
[16:16] {SC}Darth_Terest: It took all of them to trap him.
[16:17] GodofMars2: is this in a book somewhere ?
[16:17] {SC}Darth_Terest: So you see, Palpatine truely was the most powerful sith
[16:17] GodofMars2: i can imagine good jedi learning this secret too
[16:17] GodofMars2: and the knowledge not being evil
http://newintergalacticsithempire.webs.com/
[16:04] GodofMars2: and what is the link to your clan
[16:04] {SC}Darth_Terest: I am speaking with Arnon now.
[16:04] GodofMars2: ok nm
[16:05] {SC}Darth_Terest: My clan is more of an Alliance.
[16:05] {SC}Darth_Terest: I'm trying to see if NRN will be the first clan to join my allaince.
[16:06] GodofMars2: whats the link anyway
[16:08] {SC}Darth_Terest: 1 sec.
[16:08] {SC}Darth_Terest: http://newintergalacticsithempire.webs.com/
[16:13] GodofMars2: i would join your alliance but im still a good jedi.
[16:13] GodofMars2: lol
[16:14] {SC}Darth_Terest: Gtg, important issue.
[16:14] {SC}Darth_Terest: Have a good day.
[16:14] GodofMars2: isnt it true that All Sith get their power from spirit possession? or is it the true power of the higher levels of the sith masters ?!!!
[16:14] {SC}Darth_Terest: ?
[16:15] {SC}Darth_Terest: Palpatine had clones
[16:15] GodofMars2: oh yeah
[16:15] {SC}Darth_Terest: his spirit posseed one
[16:15] GodofMars2: now ive heard everythign
[16:15] {SC}Darth_Terest: then when that one died
[16:15] {SC}Darth_Terest: he would possess another one
[16:15] GodofMars2: ah thats the unwritten MOVIE
[16:15] GodofMars2: the secret he wanted to share with Vader
[16:16] GodofMars2: makes lots of sense to me
[16:16] {SC}Darth_Terest: the only way he was killed for good is that all the dead jedi had to combine their powers to trap him in the never world of the force forever
[16:16] GodofMars2: natural evolution and progression too
[16:16] {SC}Darth_Terest: It took all of them to trap him.
[16:17] GodofMars2: is this in a book somewhere ?
[16:17] {SC}Darth_Terest: So you see, Palpatine truely was the most powerful sith
[16:17] GodofMars2: i can imagine good jedi learning this secret too
[16:17] GodofMars2: and the knowledge not being evil
http://newintergalacticsithempire.webs.com/
lost manuscript korn found
The Lost Archive
Missing for a half century, a cache of photos
spurs sensitive research on Islam's holy text
By ANDREW HIGGINS
January 12, 2008; Page A1
-- Munich, Germany
On the night of April 24, 1944, British air force bombers hammered a former Jesuit college here housing the Bavarian Academy of Science. The 16th-century building crumpled in the inferno. Among the treasures lost, later lamented Anton Spitaler, an Arabic scholar at the academy, was a unique photo archive of ancient manuscripts of the Quran.
The 450 rolls of film had been assembled before the war for a bold venture: a study of the evolution of the Quran, the text Muslims view as the verbatim transcript of God's word. The wartime destruction made the project "outright impossible," Mr. Spitaler wrote in the 1970s.
Mr. Spitaler was lying. The cache of photos survived, and he was sitting on it all along. The truth is only now dribbling out to scholars -- and a Quran research project buried for more than 60 years has risen from the grave.
"He pretended it disappeared. He wanted to be rid of it," says Angelika Neuwirth, a former pupil and protégée of the late Mr. Spitaler. Academics who worked with Mr. Spitaler, a powerful figure in postwar German scholarship who died in 2003, have been left guessing why he squirreled away the unusual trove for so long.
Ms. Neuwirth, a professor of Arabic studies at Berlin's Free University, now is overseeing a revival of the research. The project renews a grand tradition of German Quranic scholarship that was interrupted by the Third Reich. The Nazis purged Jewish experts on ancient Arabic texts and compelled Aryan colleagues to serve the war effort. Middle East scholars worked as intelligence officers, interrogators and linguists. Mr. Spitaler himself served, apparently as a translator, in the German-Arab Infantry Battalion 845, a unit of Arab volunteers to the Nazi cause, according to wartime records.
During the 19th century, Germans pioneered modern scholarship of ancient texts. Their work revolutionized understanding of Christian and Jewish scripture. It also infuriated some of the devout, who resented secular scrutiny of texts believed to contain sacred truths.
The revived Quran venture plays into a very modern debate: how to reconcile Islam with the modern world? Academic quarrying of the Quran has produced bold theories, bitter feuds and even claims of an Islamic Reformation in the making. Applying Western critical methods to Islam's holiest text is a sensitive test of the Muslim community's readiness to both accommodate and absorb thinking outside its own traditions.
MORE
Learn more about the Corpus Coranicum project, plus read the Quran in English and see other languages and readings"It is very exciting," says Patricia Crone, a scholar at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study and a pioneer of unorthodox theories about Islam's early years. She says she first heard that the Munich archive had survived when attending a conference in Germany last fall. "Everyone thought it was destroyed."
The Quran is viewed by most Muslims as the unchanging word of God as transmitted to the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. The text, they believe, didn't evolve or get edited. The Quran says it is "flawless" and fixed by an "imperishable tablet" in heaven. It starts with a warning: "This book is not to be doubted."
Quranic scholarship often focuses on arcane questions of philology and textual analysis. Experts nonetheless tend to tread warily, mindful of fury directed in recent years at people deemed to have blasphemed Islam's founding document and the Prophet Muhammad.
A scholar in northern Germany writes under the pseudonym of Christoph Luxenberg because, he says, his controversial views on the Quran risk provoking Muslims. He claims that chunks of it were written not in Arabic but in another ancient language, Syriac. The "virgins" promised by the Quran to Islamic martyrs, he asserts, are in fact only "grapes."
Ms. Neuwirth, the Berlin professor now in charge of the Munich archive, rejects the theories of her more radical colleagues, who ride roughshod, she says, over Islamic scholarship. Her aim, she says, isn't to challenge Islam but to "give the Quran the same attention as the Bible." All the same, she adds: "This is a taboo zone."
Ms. Neuwirth says it's too early to have any idea what her team's close study of the cache of early texts and other manuscripts will reveal. Their project, launched last year at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and Humanities, has state funding for 18 years but could take much longer. The earliest manuscripts of the Quran date from around 700 and use a skeletal version of the Arabic script that is difficult to decipher and can be open to divergent readings.
Mystery and misfortune bedeviled the Munich archive from the start. The scholar who launched it perished in an odd climbing accident in 1933. His successor died in a 1941 plane crash. Mr. Spitaler, who inherited the Quran collection and then hid it, fared better. He lived to age 93.
The rolls of film, kept in cigar boxes, plastic trays and an old cookie tin, are now in a safe in Berlin. The photos of the old manuscripts will form the foundation of a computer data base that Ms. Neuwirth's team believes will help tease out the history of Islam's founding text. The result, says Michael Marx, the project's research director, could be the first "critical edition" of the Quran -- an attempt to divine what the original text looked like and to explore overlaps with the Bible and other Christian and Jewish literature.
A group of Tunisians has embarked on a parallel mission, but they want to keep it quiet to avoid angering fellow Muslims, says Moncef Ben Abdeljelil, a scholar involved in the venture. "Silence is sometimes best," he says. Afghan authorities last year arrested an official involved in a vernacular translation of the Quran that was condemned as blasphemous. Its editor went into hiding.
Many Christians, too, dislike secular scholars boring into sacred texts, and dismiss challenges to certain Biblical passages. But most accept that the Bible was written by different people at different times, and that it took centuries of winnowing before the Christian canon was fixed in its current form.
Muslims, by contrast, view the Quran as the literal word of God. Questioning the Quran "is like telling a Christian that Jesus was gay," says Abdou Filali-Ansary, a Moroccan scholar.
Modern approaches to textual analysis developed in the West are viewed in much of the Muslim world as irrelevant, at best. "Only the writings of a practicing Muslim are worthy of our attention," a university professor in Saudi Arabia wrote in a 2003 book. "Muslim views on the Holy Book must remain firm: It is the Word of Allah, constant, immaculate, unalterable and inimitable."
Ms. Neuwirth, the Berlin Quran expert, and Mr. Marx, her research director, have tried to explain the project to the Muslim world in trips to Iran, Turkey, Syria and Morocco. When a German newspaper trumpeted their work last fall on its front page and predicted that it would "overthrow rulers and topple kingdoms," Mr. Marx called Arab television network al-Jazeera and other media to deny any assault on the tenets of Islam.
Europeans started to study the Quran in the Middle Ages, largely in an effort to debunk it. In the 19th century, faith-driven polemical research gave way to more serious scientific study of old texts. Germans led the way.
Their original focus was the Bible. Priests and rabbis pushed back, but scholars pressed on, challenging traditional views of the Old and New Testaments. Their work undermined faith in the literal truth of scripture and helped birth today's largely secular Europe. Over time, some turned their attention to the Quran, too.
In 1857, a Paris academy offered a prize for the best "critical history" of the Quran. A German, Theodor Nöldeke, won. His entry became the cornerstone of future Western research. Mr. Nöldeke, says Ms. Neuwirth, is "the rock of our church."
The Munich archive began with one of Mr. Nöldeke's protégés, Gotthelf Bergsträsser. As Germany slid towards fascism early last century, he hunted down old copies of the Quran in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. He took photographs of them with a Leica camera.
In 1933, a few months after Hitler became chancellor, Mr. Bergsträsser, an experienced climber, died in the Bavarian Alps. His body was never given an autopsy; rumors spread of suicide or foul play.
His work was taken up by Otto Pretzl, another German Arabist. He too set off with a Leica. In a 1934 journey to Morocco, he wangled his way into a royal library containing an old copy of the Quran and won over initially suspicious clerics, he said in a handwritten report about his trip.
The Nazis began to use Arabists early in the war when German forces began pushing into regions with large Muslim populations, first North Africa and then the Soviet Union. Scholars were used to broadcast propaganda and to help set up mullah schools for Muslims recruited into the German armed forces.
Mr. Pretzl, the manuscript collector, appears to have worked largely in military intelligence. He interrogated Arabic-speaking soldiers captured in the invasion of France, then, according to some accounts, set off on a mission to stir up an Arab uprising against British troops in Iraq. His plane crashed.
Axel Hölper
Film from the Quran photo archive
Responsibility for the Quran archive fell to Mr. Spitaler, who had helped collect some of the photos. During the war, Mr. Spitaler served in the command offices in Germany and later as an Arabic linguist in Austria, gaining only a modest military rank, records indicate.
After the war, he returned to academia. Instead of reviving the Quran project, he embarked on a laborious but less-sensitive endeavor, a dictionary of classical Arabic. After nearly half a century of work, definitions were published only for words beginning with two letters of the 28-letter Arabic alphabet.
Mr. Spitaler rarely published papers, but was widely admired for his mastery of Arabic texts. A few scholars, however, judged him overly cautious, unproductive and hostile to unconventional views.
"The whole period after 1945 was poisoned by the Nazis," says Günter Lüling, a scholar who was drummed out of his university in the 1970s after he put forward heterodox theories about the Quran's origins. His doctoral thesis argued that the Quran was lifted in part from Christian hymns. Blackballed by Mr. Spitaler, Mr. Lüling lost his teaching job and launched a fruitless six-year court battle to be reinstated. Feuding over the Quran, he says, "ruined my life."
He wrote books and articles at home, funded by his wife, who took a job in a pharmacy. Asked by a French journal to write a paper on German Arabists, Mr. Lüling went to Berlin to examine wartime records. Germany's prominent postwar Arabic scholars, he says, "were all connected to the Nazis."
Berthold Spuler, for example, translated Yiddish and Hebrew for the Gestapo, says Mr. Lüling. (Mr. Spuler's subsequent teaching career ran into trouble in the 1960s when, during a Hamburg student protest, he shouted that the demonstrators "belong in a concentration camp.") Rudi Paret, who in 1962 produced what became the standard German translation of the Quran, was listed as a member of "The Institute for Research on and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life." Despite their wartime activities, the subsequent work of such scholars is still highly regarded.
By the mid-1970s, Mr. Spitaler in Munich was nearing retirement at the university there. He began moving boxes into a room set aside for the dictionary project at Bavaria's Academy of Sciences. His last doctoral student in Munich, Kathrin Müller, who was working on the dictionary, says she looked inside one of the boxes and saw old film. She asked Mr. Spitaler what it was but didn't get an answer. The boxes, she now realizes, contained the old Quran archive. "He didn't want to explain anything," she says.
In the early 1980s, when the archive was still thought to be lost, two German scholars traveled to Yemen to examine and help restore a cache of ancient Quran manuscripts. They, too, took pictures. When they tried to get them out of Yemen, authorities seized them, says Gerd-Rüdiger Puin, one of the scholars. German diplomats finally persuaded Yemen to release most of the photos, he says.
Mr. Puin says the manuscripts suggested to him that the Quran "didn't just fall from heaven" but "has a history." When he said so publicly a decade ago, it stirred rage. "Please ensure that these scholars are not given further access to the documents," read one letter to the Yemen Times. "Allah, help us against our enemies."
Berlin Quran expert Ms. Neuwirth, though widely regarded as respectful of Islamic tradition, got sideswiped by Arab suspicion of Western scholars. She was fired from a teaching post in Jordan, she says, for mentioning a radical revisionist scholar during a lecture in Germany.
Around 1990, Ms. Neuwirth met Mr. Spitaler, her old professor, in Berlin. He was in his 80s and growing frail, but remained sharp mentally. He "got sentimental about the old times," recalls Ms. Neuwirth. As they talked, he casually mentioned that he still had the photo archive. He offered to give it to her. "I had heard it didn't exist," she says. She later sent two of her students to Munich to collect the photo cache and bring it to Berlin.
The news didn't spread beyond a small circle of scholars. When Mr. Spitaler died in 2003, Paul Kunitizsch, a fellow Munich Arabist, wrote an obituary recounting how the archive had been lost, torpedoing the Quran project. Such a venture, he wrote, "now appears totally out of the question" because of "the attitude of the Islamic world to such a project."
Information about the archive's survival has just begun trickling out to the wider scholarly community. Why Mr. Spitaler hid it remains a mystery. His only published mention of the archive's fate was a footnote to an article in a 1975 book on the Quran. Claiming the bulk of the cache had been lost during the war, he wrote cryptically that "drastically changed conditions after 1945" ruled out any rebuilding of the collection.
Ms. Neuwirth, the current guardian of the archive, believes that perhaps Mr. Spitaler was simply "sick of" the time-consuming project and wanted to move on to other work. Mr. Lüling has a less charitable theory: that Mr. Spitaler didn't have the talents needed to make use of the archive himself and wanted to make sure colleagues couldn't outshine him by working on the material.
Mr. Kunitzsch, the obituary author, says he's mystified by Mr. Spitaler's motives. He speculates that his former colleague decided that the Quran manuscript project was simply too ambitious. The task, says Mr. Kunitzsch, grew steadily more sensitive as Muslim hostility towards Western scholars escalated, particularly after the founding of Israel in 1948. "He knew that for Arabs, [the Quran] was a closed matter."
Ms. Müller, Mr. Spitaler's last doctoral student, says the war "was a deep cut for everything" and buried the prewar dreams of many Germans. Another possible factor, she adds, was Mr. Spitaler's own deep religious faith. She opens up a copy of a Quran used by the late professor, a practicing Catholic, until his death. Unlike his other Arabic texts, which are scrawled with notes and underlinings, it has no markings at all.
"Perhaps he had too much respect for holy books," says Ms. Müller.
--Almut Schoenfeld contributed to this article.
Write to Andrew Higgins at andrew.higgins@wsj.com
• Read the letters to the editor on this article
Missing for a half century, a cache of photos
spurs sensitive research on Islam's holy text
By ANDREW HIGGINS
January 12, 2008; Page A1
-- Munich, Germany
On the night of April 24, 1944, British air force bombers hammered a former Jesuit college here housing the Bavarian Academy of Science. The 16th-century building crumpled in the inferno. Among the treasures lost, later lamented Anton Spitaler, an Arabic scholar at the academy, was a unique photo archive of ancient manuscripts of the Quran.
The 450 rolls of film had been assembled before the war for a bold venture: a study of the evolution of the Quran, the text Muslims view as the verbatim transcript of God's word. The wartime destruction made the project "outright impossible," Mr. Spitaler wrote in the 1970s.
Mr. Spitaler was lying. The cache of photos survived, and he was sitting on it all along. The truth is only now dribbling out to scholars -- and a Quran research project buried for more than 60 years has risen from the grave.
"He pretended it disappeared. He wanted to be rid of it," says Angelika Neuwirth, a former pupil and protégée of the late Mr. Spitaler. Academics who worked with Mr. Spitaler, a powerful figure in postwar German scholarship who died in 2003, have been left guessing why he squirreled away the unusual trove for so long.
Ms. Neuwirth, a professor of Arabic studies at Berlin's Free University, now is overseeing a revival of the research. The project renews a grand tradition of German Quranic scholarship that was interrupted by the Third Reich. The Nazis purged Jewish experts on ancient Arabic texts and compelled Aryan colleagues to serve the war effort. Middle East scholars worked as intelligence officers, interrogators and linguists. Mr. Spitaler himself served, apparently as a translator, in the German-Arab Infantry Battalion 845, a unit of Arab volunteers to the Nazi cause, according to wartime records.
During the 19th century, Germans pioneered modern scholarship of ancient texts. Their work revolutionized understanding of Christian and Jewish scripture. It also infuriated some of the devout, who resented secular scrutiny of texts believed to contain sacred truths.
The revived Quran venture plays into a very modern debate: how to reconcile Islam with the modern world? Academic quarrying of the Quran has produced bold theories, bitter feuds and even claims of an Islamic Reformation in the making. Applying Western critical methods to Islam's holiest text is a sensitive test of the Muslim community's readiness to both accommodate and absorb thinking outside its own traditions.
MORE
Learn more about the Corpus Coranicum project, plus read the Quran in English and see other languages and readings"It is very exciting," says Patricia Crone, a scholar at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study and a pioneer of unorthodox theories about Islam's early years. She says she first heard that the Munich archive had survived when attending a conference in Germany last fall. "Everyone thought it was destroyed."
The Quran is viewed by most Muslims as the unchanging word of God as transmitted to the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. The text, they believe, didn't evolve or get edited. The Quran says it is "flawless" and fixed by an "imperishable tablet" in heaven. It starts with a warning: "This book is not to be doubted."
Quranic scholarship often focuses on arcane questions of philology and textual analysis. Experts nonetheless tend to tread warily, mindful of fury directed in recent years at people deemed to have blasphemed Islam's founding document and the Prophet Muhammad.
A scholar in northern Germany writes under the pseudonym of Christoph Luxenberg because, he says, his controversial views on the Quran risk provoking Muslims. He claims that chunks of it were written not in Arabic but in another ancient language, Syriac. The "virgins" promised by the Quran to Islamic martyrs, he asserts, are in fact only "grapes."
Ms. Neuwirth, the Berlin professor now in charge of the Munich archive, rejects the theories of her more radical colleagues, who ride roughshod, she says, over Islamic scholarship. Her aim, she says, isn't to challenge Islam but to "give the Quran the same attention as the Bible." All the same, she adds: "This is a taboo zone."
Ms. Neuwirth says it's too early to have any idea what her team's close study of the cache of early texts and other manuscripts will reveal. Their project, launched last year at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science and Humanities, has state funding for 18 years but could take much longer. The earliest manuscripts of the Quran date from around 700 and use a skeletal version of the Arabic script that is difficult to decipher and can be open to divergent readings.
Mystery and misfortune bedeviled the Munich archive from the start. The scholar who launched it perished in an odd climbing accident in 1933. His successor died in a 1941 plane crash. Mr. Spitaler, who inherited the Quran collection and then hid it, fared better. He lived to age 93.
The rolls of film, kept in cigar boxes, plastic trays and an old cookie tin, are now in a safe in Berlin. The photos of the old manuscripts will form the foundation of a computer data base that Ms. Neuwirth's team believes will help tease out the history of Islam's founding text. The result, says Michael Marx, the project's research director, could be the first "critical edition" of the Quran -- an attempt to divine what the original text looked like and to explore overlaps with the Bible and other Christian and Jewish literature.
A group of Tunisians has embarked on a parallel mission, but they want to keep it quiet to avoid angering fellow Muslims, says Moncef Ben Abdeljelil, a scholar involved in the venture. "Silence is sometimes best," he says. Afghan authorities last year arrested an official involved in a vernacular translation of the Quran that was condemned as blasphemous. Its editor went into hiding.
Many Christians, too, dislike secular scholars boring into sacred texts, and dismiss challenges to certain Biblical passages. But most accept that the Bible was written by different people at different times, and that it took centuries of winnowing before the Christian canon was fixed in its current form.
Muslims, by contrast, view the Quran as the literal word of God. Questioning the Quran "is like telling a Christian that Jesus was gay," says Abdou Filali-Ansary, a Moroccan scholar.
Modern approaches to textual analysis developed in the West are viewed in much of the Muslim world as irrelevant, at best. "Only the writings of a practicing Muslim are worthy of our attention," a university professor in Saudi Arabia wrote in a 2003 book. "Muslim views on the Holy Book must remain firm: It is the Word of Allah, constant, immaculate, unalterable and inimitable."
Ms. Neuwirth, the Berlin Quran expert, and Mr. Marx, her research director, have tried to explain the project to the Muslim world in trips to Iran, Turkey, Syria and Morocco. When a German newspaper trumpeted their work last fall on its front page and predicted that it would "overthrow rulers and topple kingdoms," Mr. Marx called Arab television network al-Jazeera and other media to deny any assault on the tenets of Islam.
Europeans started to study the Quran in the Middle Ages, largely in an effort to debunk it. In the 19th century, faith-driven polemical research gave way to more serious scientific study of old texts. Germans led the way.
Their original focus was the Bible. Priests and rabbis pushed back, but scholars pressed on, challenging traditional views of the Old and New Testaments. Their work undermined faith in the literal truth of scripture and helped birth today's largely secular Europe. Over time, some turned their attention to the Quran, too.
In 1857, a Paris academy offered a prize for the best "critical history" of the Quran. A German, Theodor Nöldeke, won. His entry became the cornerstone of future Western research. Mr. Nöldeke, says Ms. Neuwirth, is "the rock of our church."
The Munich archive began with one of Mr. Nöldeke's protégés, Gotthelf Bergsträsser. As Germany slid towards fascism early last century, he hunted down old copies of the Quran in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. He took photographs of them with a Leica camera.
In 1933, a few months after Hitler became chancellor, Mr. Bergsträsser, an experienced climber, died in the Bavarian Alps. His body was never given an autopsy; rumors spread of suicide or foul play.
His work was taken up by Otto Pretzl, another German Arabist. He too set off with a Leica. In a 1934 journey to Morocco, he wangled his way into a royal library containing an old copy of the Quran and won over initially suspicious clerics, he said in a handwritten report about his trip.
The Nazis began to use Arabists early in the war when German forces began pushing into regions with large Muslim populations, first North Africa and then the Soviet Union. Scholars were used to broadcast propaganda and to help set up mullah schools for Muslims recruited into the German armed forces.
Mr. Pretzl, the manuscript collector, appears to have worked largely in military intelligence. He interrogated Arabic-speaking soldiers captured in the invasion of France, then, according to some accounts, set off on a mission to stir up an Arab uprising against British troops in Iraq. His plane crashed.
Axel Hölper
Film from the Quran photo archive
Responsibility for the Quran archive fell to Mr. Spitaler, who had helped collect some of the photos. During the war, Mr. Spitaler served in the command offices in Germany and later as an Arabic linguist in Austria, gaining only a modest military rank, records indicate.
After the war, he returned to academia. Instead of reviving the Quran project, he embarked on a laborious but less-sensitive endeavor, a dictionary of classical Arabic. After nearly half a century of work, definitions were published only for words beginning with two letters of the 28-letter Arabic alphabet.
Mr. Spitaler rarely published papers, but was widely admired for his mastery of Arabic texts. A few scholars, however, judged him overly cautious, unproductive and hostile to unconventional views.
"The whole period after 1945 was poisoned by the Nazis," says Günter Lüling, a scholar who was drummed out of his university in the 1970s after he put forward heterodox theories about the Quran's origins. His doctoral thesis argued that the Quran was lifted in part from Christian hymns. Blackballed by Mr. Spitaler, Mr. Lüling lost his teaching job and launched a fruitless six-year court battle to be reinstated. Feuding over the Quran, he says, "ruined my life."
He wrote books and articles at home, funded by his wife, who took a job in a pharmacy. Asked by a French journal to write a paper on German Arabists, Mr. Lüling went to Berlin to examine wartime records. Germany's prominent postwar Arabic scholars, he says, "were all connected to the Nazis."
Berthold Spuler, for example, translated Yiddish and Hebrew for the Gestapo, says Mr. Lüling. (Mr. Spuler's subsequent teaching career ran into trouble in the 1960s when, during a Hamburg student protest, he shouted that the demonstrators "belong in a concentration camp.") Rudi Paret, who in 1962 produced what became the standard German translation of the Quran, was listed as a member of "The Institute for Research on and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life." Despite their wartime activities, the subsequent work of such scholars is still highly regarded.
By the mid-1970s, Mr. Spitaler in Munich was nearing retirement at the university there. He began moving boxes into a room set aside for the dictionary project at Bavaria's Academy of Sciences. His last doctoral student in Munich, Kathrin Müller, who was working on the dictionary, says she looked inside one of the boxes and saw old film. She asked Mr. Spitaler what it was but didn't get an answer. The boxes, she now realizes, contained the old Quran archive. "He didn't want to explain anything," she says.
In the early 1980s, when the archive was still thought to be lost, two German scholars traveled to Yemen to examine and help restore a cache of ancient Quran manuscripts. They, too, took pictures. When they tried to get them out of Yemen, authorities seized them, says Gerd-Rüdiger Puin, one of the scholars. German diplomats finally persuaded Yemen to release most of the photos, he says.
Mr. Puin says the manuscripts suggested to him that the Quran "didn't just fall from heaven" but "has a history." When he said so publicly a decade ago, it stirred rage. "Please ensure that these scholars are not given further access to the documents," read one letter to the Yemen Times. "Allah, help us against our enemies."
Berlin Quran expert Ms. Neuwirth, though widely regarded as respectful of Islamic tradition, got sideswiped by Arab suspicion of Western scholars. She was fired from a teaching post in Jordan, she says, for mentioning a radical revisionist scholar during a lecture in Germany.
Around 1990, Ms. Neuwirth met Mr. Spitaler, her old professor, in Berlin. He was in his 80s and growing frail, but remained sharp mentally. He "got sentimental about the old times," recalls Ms. Neuwirth. As they talked, he casually mentioned that he still had the photo archive. He offered to give it to her. "I had heard it didn't exist," she says. She later sent two of her students to Munich to collect the photo cache and bring it to Berlin.
The news didn't spread beyond a small circle of scholars. When Mr. Spitaler died in 2003, Paul Kunitizsch, a fellow Munich Arabist, wrote an obituary recounting how the archive had been lost, torpedoing the Quran project. Such a venture, he wrote, "now appears totally out of the question" because of "the attitude of the Islamic world to such a project."
Information about the archive's survival has just begun trickling out to the wider scholarly community. Why Mr. Spitaler hid it remains a mystery. His only published mention of the archive's fate was a footnote to an article in a 1975 book on the Quran. Claiming the bulk of the cache had been lost during the war, he wrote cryptically that "drastically changed conditions after 1945" ruled out any rebuilding of the collection.
Ms. Neuwirth, the current guardian of the archive, believes that perhaps Mr. Spitaler was simply "sick of" the time-consuming project and wanted to move on to other work. Mr. Lüling has a less charitable theory: that Mr. Spitaler didn't have the talents needed to make use of the archive himself and wanted to make sure colleagues couldn't outshine him by working on the material.
Mr. Kunitzsch, the obituary author, says he's mystified by Mr. Spitaler's motives. He speculates that his former colleague decided that the Quran manuscript project was simply too ambitious. The task, says Mr. Kunitzsch, grew steadily more sensitive as Muslim hostility towards Western scholars escalated, particularly after the founding of Israel in 1948. "He knew that for Arabs, [the Quran] was a closed matter."
Ms. Müller, Mr. Spitaler's last doctoral student, says the war "was a deep cut for everything" and buried the prewar dreams of many Germans. Another possible factor, she adds, was Mr. Spitaler's own deep religious faith. She opens up a copy of a Quran used by the late professor, a practicing Catholic, until his death. Unlike his other Arabic texts, which are scrawled with notes and underlinings, it has no markings at all.
"Perhaps he had too much respect for holy books," says Ms. Müller.
--Almut Schoenfeld contributed to this article.
Write to Andrew Higgins at andrew.higgins@wsj.com
• Read the letters to the editor on this article
Conception of Christ Tibetan story
Immaculate conception of Iesus the Christ
And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent fro God, unto a city of Galilee, anmed Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; an dthe virgin's name was Mary
Now Joseph was a just and ratioal Mind, and he was skilled in all manner of work in wood and in stone. And Mary was a tender and discerning Soul, and she wrought veils for the temple. And they were both pure before God; and of them both was Jesu-Maria who is called the christ.
And the angel came in unto her and said, Hail, Mary, thou that art highly favoured, for the Mother of God is with thee: blessed art thou among women and blessed be the fruit of they womb.
And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with God and, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a child, and He shall be great and shalt be called a Son of the Highest.
And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? and the angel answered and said unto her The Holy Spirit shall come upon Joseph they Spoiuse, and the power of ht eHighest shall overshadow thee, O Mary, therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Christ, the child of God, and his Name on earth shalt be called jesu-maria, for he shall save the peole form their sins, whosoever shall rpent and obey his Law.
Therefore ye shall eat no flesh, nor drink strong drink, for the child shall be consecreated unto God from its mother's womb, and neither flesh nor strong drin shall he take, nor shall razor touch his head.
And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God no thing shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to they word. And teh angel departed from her
and ithe same day the angel Gabriel appeared unto Joseph in a dream and said unto him, Hail, Joseph, thou art highly favoured, for the Fatherhood of God is with thee. Blessed ar thou amonng men and blessed be the fruit of thy loins.
and as Joseph thought upon these words he was troubled, and the angel of the Lord said unto him, Fear not, Joseph, thou Son of David, for thou has found favor with God, and behold thou shalt beget a child, and thou shalt call his name Jesu-Maria for he shall save his peole from their sins.
Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which ws written in the prophets saying, Behold a Maiden shall conceive and be with child and shall bring forth a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God within us.
Then Joseph benig raised from sleep did as the angel had bidden him, and went in unto Mary, his espoused bride, and she conceived in her womb the Holy ONE.
And mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judea and entered into the house of Zacharias and saluted Elisabeth.
And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent fro God, unto a city of Galilee, anmed Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; an dthe virgin's name was Mary
Now Joseph was a just and ratioal Mind, and he was skilled in all manner of work in wood and in stone. And Mary was a tender and discerning Soul, and she wrought veils for the temple. And they were both pure before God; and of them both was Jesu-Maria who is called the christ.
And the angel came in unto her and said, Hail, Mary, thou that art highly favoured, for the Mother of God is with thee: blessed art thou among women and blessed be the fruit of they womb.
And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with God and, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a child, and He shall be great and shalt be called a Son of the Highest.
And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? and the angel answered and said unto her The Holy Spirit shall come upon Joseph they Spoiuse, and the power of ht eHighest shall overshadow thee, O Mary, therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Christ, the child of God, and his Name on earth shalt be called jesu-maria, for he shall save the peole form their sins, whosoever shall rpent and obey his Law.
Therefore ye shall eat no flesh, nor drink strong drink, for the child shall be consecreated unto God from its mother's womb, and neither flesh nor strong drin shall he take, nor shall razor touch his head.
And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God no thing shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to they word. And teh angel departed from her
and ithe same day the angel Gabriel appeared unto Joseph in a dream and said unto him, Hail, Joseph, thou art highly favoured, for the Fatherhood of God is with thee. Blessed ar thou amonng men and blessed be the fruit of thy loins.
and as Joseph thought upon these words he was troubled, and the angel of the Lord said unto him, Fear not, Joseph, thou Son of David, for thou has found favor with God, and behold thou shalt beget a child, and thou shalt call his name Jesu-Maria for he shall save his peole from their sins.
Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which ws written in the prophets saying, Behold a Maiden shall conceive and be with child and shall bring forth a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God within us.
Then Joseph benig raised from sleep did as the angel had bidden him, and went in unto Mary, his espoused bride, and she conceived in her womb the Holy ONE.
And mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judea and entered into the house of Zacharias and saluted Elisabeth.
elephants nephi
yahoo question asked: are there elephants in the americas?
maybe there are wooley mamoths in north america
but the book of mormon quote is talking about south america or mexico
see the yahoo link below for definitive archelogy
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090610144157AAaklK3
see the website about mormon answers:
http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_BMProb2.shtml#elephant
best answer was:
The Jaredites not only wrote their witness to the elephant, but they claimed the animal was of great use to them. The Jaredites lived in Americas long before Lehi and his family arrived.
Eminent Austrian Ethnologist, Dr. Robert Heine-Geldern reported to one Dr. Cyle Keeler that there were five elephant effigies found in Mexico.
Dr. Verrill, a well-known archaeologist who did fieldwork for the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, when describing figures from Cocle, Panama said “The most astonishing of the idols is one bearing a figure which is so strikingly and obviously elephantine that it cannot be explained away by any of the ordinary theories of being a conventionalized or exaggerated tapir, ant-eater or macaw. Not only does this figure show a trunk, but in addition it has the big leaf-like ears and the forward-bending knees peculiar to the elephants. Moreover, it shows a load or burden strapped upon its back.”
maybe there are wooley mamoths in north america
but the book of mormon quote is talking about south america or mexico
see the yahoo link below for definitive archelogy
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090610144157AAaklK3
see the website about mormon answers:
http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_BMProb2.shtml#elephant
best answer was:
The Jaredites not only wrote their witness to the elephant, but they claimed the animal was of great use to them. The Jaredites lived in Americas long before Lehi and his family arrived.
Eminent Austrian Ethnologist, Dr. Robert Heine-Geldern reported to one Dr. Cyle Keeler that there were five elephant effigies found in Mexico.
Dr. Verrill, a well-known archaeologist who did fieldwork for the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, when describing figures from Cocle, Panama said “The most astonishing of the idols is one bearing a figure which is so strikingly and obviously elephantine that it cannot be explained away by any of the ordinary theories of being a conventionalized or exaggerated tapir, ant-eater or macaw. Not only does this figure show a trunk, but in addition it has the big leaf-like ears and the forward-bending knees peculiar to the elephants. Moreover, it shows a load or burden strapped upon its back.”
why doesnt god destroy false religions
some one asks why God doesnt destroy all false religions
i answered on yahoo QAR&S
dont be opposed to all religions in every sense of the word and dogma, even i protest many doctrines.
Jesus himself protested false prophets and "leaven" of the pharisees and saducees and also "traditions" and false teachers.
Now! i am a witness... (sigh)
i have seen jesus and an angel appeared in my bedroom. i have learned all the inconsistencies that i can think of in the bible and in christian traditions and false imaginations of interpretations. (but its not all "our" fault) its not their fault due to the conspiracies that have existed throughout all history.
My Mother is a humanist Atheist also! and i grew up with grant to free agency. I chose to follow religion and submit and to believe in righteousness and hence i became a witness for being a valiant as I couldve been.
why didnt he stop other religions!
this question can be answered several ways and 10,000 authors can write 1000 books each on this subject. if they had the will. clearly freedom of religion is a god-given right, according to the constitution and bill of rights. (as one fact)
free agency and free will are used synomonously to explain we have been given the right to choose, although in every generation God has sent prophets to declare idolatry to be a sin
and it is also obviously NOT true that every False religion has survived, except only that humans chose to follow them.
when men lived 900 years on the land, God destroyed all flesh because he said later, if all men were like babble, no flesh would live and be saved. because all flesh were dominated by satan-devil-worshippers. and all flesh became corrupted because of sexual practices that made the land filthy with disease.
therefore it can be concluded that God did destroy all enemy religions with the generation of NOAH, and then destroyed several cities agains for doing the same things with sodom and gomorah in the days of Abraham
and then by the time Moses became the ONLY Authority and Prophet in the earth, the armies of Israel, (the chosen covenant people of the times) were then commanded to destroy all these idolatries. So in one sense you are wrong about your conclusion, but in another sense you are correct.
this is what jesus said: Let good and evil grow up together! (do you remember this verse?) and in the last day, bind all the tares together and all the wheat, and cast the tares into the oven to be burned.
so you see one day Jesus (who was given "all authority in heaven and in earth) has a day of judgment appointed, and those that are the wheat will be those who are resurrected because of righteousness unto righteousness.
so i hope you read all these possible answers! otherwise you wont have any answers. to reprove your assumption.
i answered on yahoo QAR&S
dont be opposed to all religions in every sense of the word and dogma, even i protest many doctrines.
Jesus himself protested false prophets and "leaven" of the pharisees and saducees and also "traditions" and false teachers.
Now! i am a witness... (sigh)
i have seen jesus and an angel appeared in my bedroom. i have learned all the inconsistencies that i can think of in the bible and in christian traditions and false imaginations of interpretations. (but its not all "our" fault) its not their fault due to the conspiracies that have existed throughout all history.
My Mother is a humanist Atheist also! and i grew up with grant to free agency. I chose to follow religion and submit and to believe in righteousness and hence i became a witness for being a valiant as I couldve been.
why didnt he stop other religions!
this question can be answered several ways and 10,000 authors can write 1000 books each on this subject. if they had the will. clearly freedom of religion is a god-given right, according to the constitution and bill of rights. (as one fact)
free agency and free will are used synomonously to explain we have been given the right to choose, although in every generation God has sent prophets to declare idolatry to be a sin
and it is also obviously NOT true that every False religion has survived, except only that humans chose to follow them.
when men lived 900 years on the land, God destroyed all flesh because he said later, if all men were like babble, no flesh would live and be saved. because all flesh were dominated by satan-devil-worshippers. and all flesh became corrupted because of sexual practices that made the land filthy with disease.
therefore it can be concluded that God did destroy all enemy religions with the generation of NOAH, and then destroyed several cities agains for doing the same things with sodom and gomorah in the days of Abraham
and then by the time Moses became the ONLY Authority and Prophet in the earth, the armies of Israel, (the chosen covenant people of the times) were then commanded to destroy all these idolatries. So in one sense you are wrong about your conclusion, but in another sense you are correct.
this is what jesus said: Let good and evil grow up together! (do you remember this verse?) and in the last day, bind all the tares together and all the wheat, and cast the tares into the oven to be burned.
so you see one day Jesus (who was given "all authority in heaven and in earth) has a day of judgment appointed, and those that are the wheat will be those who are resurrected because of righteousness unto righteousness.
so i hope you read all these possible answers! otherwise you wont have any answers. to reprove your assumption.
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