I first saw the Jesus did not die on the cross discussion in the early 1980s and pushed into an examination of it for a number of years. It had, as I found it, numerous sources and participants ancient and current. I never heard the discussion at seminary in the late 60s, and believe me, if it had any currency then, even the smallest amount, I would have heard of it then and there.
Memory is dim, but I seem to recall that my first whiff of the discussion was from Janet Bach, who, with her husband Richard, ran a filming business in LA and claimed, as a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba, that He affirmed that Jesus did not die on the cross. I checked the Sai literature, with which I was familiar, and did not find Swami saying Jesus did not die on the cross. I did find Swami discussing Jesus’ considerable and peripatetic career after His resurrection from death.
My examination continued through German, Russian, and Tibetan sources, who also spoke of Jesus’ career post-resurrection, including, some of them, burial, finally, at Sri Nagar, a detail Swami also mentions.
The Australian exegete Barbara Thiering treats the Passion Story as an intra-Essene dynastic struggle which did not involve the death of anyone. She attributes the Fourth Gospel to Jesus’ Hand. My good friend Margaret Starbird — along with Thiering — attributes Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ wife, although Thiering regards her as Jesus’ first wife, Lydia being the second.
My conclusion: Jesus died on the cross, was resurrected somehow by God, probably inside the tomb and likely with human agency, and had a long career after His leaving it left the tomb empty.
The only thing I find astonishing is that someone can mistake a blade of grass they mow every week or a hair on their head they comb every day as being any less a miracle than a man’s being brought back to life from a dead body. I mean, how thick do you have to be to not see this?
Anger helps nothing and pushing back is vain waste of time, money, and energy. After all, consider the source, look who said that!
When systems are doing this, self-destroying, they have gotten all the mileage they can from their founding DNA, so they are rotting in place piece by piece. Leave the area might be better advice, to avoid shrapnel spray when the system goes ballistic.
You know, USA has gotten all the mileage it can from her Deist-Humanist founding DNA. That DNA system cannot even stop foreign invasions and dominations by domestic family members. We are still America, but we need a new and improved DNA founding to make us great again. Some substantial labors in that direction are already accomplished.
All the mileage possible has been wrung from the Deist ideas and ideals of the several Enlightenments of the 18th Century. Fascists, Communists, and Progressives by the late 19th Century knew this to be the case. Their Neo-x descendants today know their forebears left them nothing substantial with which to replace Deist ideas and ideals. So, today, all are punish’d.
A plateau of achievement deploying Enlightenment anthropology, political philosophy, and statecraft was reached as early as 1918. Both Huntington and Fukuyama were right, and late to the awareness. Neither would admit what is next and needed because neither knew it.
What is next and needed is what made Deism and Enlightenment possible: Sanathana Dharma.
Nice essay, thanks. I remember plodding and stumbling through these questions, worries, and sorrows. Religion does not help, but God sure does. When asked, and for Himself rather than for some trifle.
I think our thinkers, generally, have missed the salient feature of our times: that a fresh era of history started emerging late in the 19th Century, building through the 20th Century, and now continuing pressure for its own in-corporation. Lash and most look(ed) at the demise of the former era of history. The fresh one, not so much.
The Christian Era is now a petal in the lotus of the Sai Era. The game afoot is to reduce and repeal the mass of laws and regulations and to restrict the law-making process to the prevention of harm. Laws which aim to engineer (nudge) into existence this or that social / economic agenda are not laws at all but engines of oppression.
I find it amusing that antifa are largely teachers and school administrators. This data point bears pondering. No doubt the comment farms also are these, ramified in appearance to comprise tens of thousands whereas in fact they are tens.
Rush found this out when he sent a team to discover who exactly was fomenting boycotts of his advertisers. It looked like thousands whereas it was actually twelve, mostly women, mostly retired school teachers. Rush said his team got even their addresses and phone numbers.
Maybe UniParty are so tolerant of antifa and Black Lesbian Monsters because both belong to UniParty’s financing / voting / election fraud base, namely, teachers and administrators. Like antifa and Black Lesbian Monsters, teachers and administrators also preach hatred of America.
Instead of gentry class, call them alienated class. They deserve the suppression they impose, and exile to forests and deserts. I’d pack them off with all the drugs of every kind they can carry and tell them to have a nice day because they are not coming back to civil society.
Human life is undoubtedly the highest in evolution, and to give it meaning, spiritual endeavour that is pure and holy, is essential. For this way of life, character is all important. Character makes life immortal; it survives even death. Some say that knowledge is power, but it’s not true. Character is power. Even acquisition of knowledge demands good character. So, everyone must yearn to attain flawless character without any trace of evil. Note that Buddha, Jesus Christ, Shankaracharya, Vivekananda, as well as great sages, saints and devotees of the Lord – all of them are treasured in the memory of people even today. What quality made them all memorable for all time? It is the character of each. Wealth, education and social status are of no avail without character. Character is the fragrance of the flower; it gives value and worth. Poets, painters, artists, or scientists may be great, each in their own field; however without character, they can have no standing in society!
- Sathya Sai Baba – Prema Vahini, Chapter 1 / Daily Email, Sai Inspires: Subscription
Whom you call gentry class are not gentle, so they are not gentry. They are expensively-dressed thugs. What thug does not want to look like gentry? The words they use and the things they say, however, reveal them as highly-paid thugs, not gentry.
Bottom scum have risen to the top to replace fresh water there, masquerading as if they belong on top. Now, whose fault, really, is that? They belong on the bottom. Who let them get on top? A criminal is going to be a criminal. They cannot be gentry because they are criminals.
You are the gentry, so why do you allow thugs to take your place conducting affairs? And why do you call them gentry? They are criminals, not gentry. This is not difficult, or is it? Perhaps our attention to standard of living occludes our attention to quality of life?
The “international community” — I dispute that such exists — needs a new array of think tanks. Their uni-mind is so narrow and fanatically self-enforced as to provide painfully insufficient ability for them to adapt and move with fresh circumstances.
It’s a disgrace for supposedly literate persons to allow that condition to overwhelm them. Recent Alaska Ambush is a case in point. Easily knocked off base. Disgraced their country and countrymen.
Let some money bags do fresh for today what JD Rockefeller Jr. did fresh for his day founding CFR. The correct epistemological operational spirit is “Yes, but also ….”
CCP/CIA’s social circle brought us to this point, the Alaska Ambush disgrace. They wanted it, they made it. Americans and Europeans certainly do not and would not.
Fresh ideation is indicated, from a new array of think tanks.
I think this is more evidence of a slow and giant movement of history towards a new mission: global peace. I think we are in what might be termed a luffing time, when the sails are not full because the wind is getting ready to shift round to another direction. Or, to change the metaphor, the period of idleness when the fan has finished rotating in one direction and is about to start rotating in the other.
Since Westphalia, the nations have missioned themselves to produce global prosperity. They succeeded. Now the nations are missioning themselves to produce global peace by agreeing to protect the global prosperity they worked so hard to accomplish. Abraham Accords are a harbinger of this new direction of the wind, this new rotation of the fan.
Furthermore, I think the force and magnitude of this movement of history is caused by force far beyond human ken but beneficial to it. Complaints are not going to be entertained. Gratitudes will be.
Politicians in and out of uniform know the social engineering they pursue is killing recruitment and reenlistment, especially of mil quality young people. Lame, lazy, and crazy flooding in for the we-love-weirdos bennies. So, politicians reason, correctly, that they must force recruitment and incentivize reenlistment on the entire population in order to maintain authorized force levels.
I am sure they know, also, that the quality of the force they conscript will be very low, essentially window-dressing for budget calls — money to defense contractors, with kickbacks to politicians, and the retired GENs and ADMs they install on their boards — not a fighting force. Mil budget today is more a money pass-through to defense contractors, politicians, and retired GOs and ADMs than succor for a fighting force to protect and defend the Constitution.
I am sure the mil bosses are pushing robotics knowing the social engineering mandated by civilian politicians, judges, and themselves is giving them junk human assets for war-fighting ability.
Parallel with this is that nepotism in the officer ranks operates powerfully today, putting large, expensive, and lethal assets under command of incompetent, and worse, officers. The service academies are producing SJWs by the car load.
So yeah, if I were looking at today’s situation, I too would say, conscript everyone, some will be worthwhile, if we’re lucky. The fix, of course, is Civil Defense Battalions attached to local sheriff departments and small unit and arms training for everyone starting circa age twelve.
The cosmos is a magnificent wonder, a source of continuous amazement. It cannot but impress one as a supreme marvel! When an object has to be made, we know, we need someone with the skill, intelligence, and power to make it. Without a maker, nothing can be made. Therefore, how could these visible objects – Sun, Moon, stars, and constellations, move and behave as they do without a designer, a maker, a master? Can they yield to any ordinary power? No! After observing the objects designed and made with such mighty capabilities, intelligent people can easily infer how immeasurable the power of the Maker Himself must be. Look at the marvelous variety in creation. No one thing is the same as another; no one person resembles another. This can only be the sport (leela) of the phenomenon with limitless glory – God. Anyone can understand that no lesser power could be the source. On the basis of the mystery that is inherent in creation, one can easily infer the Almighty Power that created it.
Sathya Sai Baba – Sutra Vahini, Chapter 2 / Daily Email, Sai Inspires: Subscription
Donald Trump won the 2020 election for POTUS going away. He is POTUS until 20 January 2025 and presently in exile. That is the truth. Just stick to it and all will be well.
“Just realize they took the two most pathetic candidates in the history of the Democratic Party: a vice president who didn’t even win a primary in her own state; and a demented pervert, among other things, who can’t even tie his own shoelaces or know where he is. And they crammed them up our nose with a fork of fraud so blatant that it is visible around the world.” Sidney Powell, April 2021