Anyone researched the "apocryphal" scriptures?

[Shadrak-Daniel]

Hello guys, since I became a victorious gospel believer, I could not calm myself until I found out more information about the complete canon of the bible.  :dontknow:
For example, one pesky subject I could not find myself able to process was why did God plant the tree of knowledge in the middle of the garden of Eden, and as I was troubled by this and was praying about it God led me to read some other variants of the book of Genesis, which are part of the Apocryphal scriptures.

In this version, it is a fallen angel by the name of Samael that planted the tree of knowledge against the will of God.
And furthering to the research I found out that it wasn't even the free choice of Eve that she sinned, at least not by the usage of her full faculties, as I found myself reading the "apocryphal" book of Bartholomew where essentially it is Satan that poisons a river of water with some sort of desire, which Eve drinks of unknowingly which causes her to develop a desire for sin.  :sigh:

But there are a few more concerns which came to the surface, such as further details on the unforgivable sin.

The conclusion is this: I would love to have someone who knows of these "forbidden" scriptures, which were once part of the bible so that I could be helped in better fortifying my faith in UR.

PS: I might even doubt as to why would a scripture that makes both God and man to be more innocent, was considered Apocrypha in the first place?
A version of genesis in which there's genuinely no reason for any sort of damnation as sin was simply the act of a jealous set of angels
And an addition to the new testament to further point to the fact that Jesus rescues souls from Tartarus...
Granted there can be some of these scriptures which blaspheme at the holyness of God and add mysticism into the fold which indeed can be considered vile but not these...

I will leave a link to the book of Bartholomew for whoever may want to have a read:
http://gnosis.org/library/gosbart.htm

[Lazarus Short]

I have read most of the apocrypha, plus the Book of Jasher and Book of Enoch - well, I should say I try to read Enoch, but just can't get into it.  I avoid most Gnostic literature, but have read the Gospel of Thomas. 

[darryl]

the apocryphal  scripture 'the Gospel of Peter' is quoted by writers of the latter end of the second century such as Justin Martyr It's been dated to A. D. 150.Chapter 10 has a voice from heaven asking "Hast thou preached unto them that sleep? And an answer was heard from the cross, saying: Yea".This supports the idea that Jesus preaching the message of salvation to the dead, post- mortem,  was known and believed within 150 years of the Crucifixion.

X. 38 and the sepulchre was opened and both of the young men entered in. When therefore those soldiers saw that, they waked up the centurion and the elders (for they also were there keeping 39 watch); and while they were yet telling them the things which they had seen, they saw again three men come out of the sepulchre, and two of them sustaining the other (lit. the 40 one), and a cross following, after them. And of the two they saw that their heads reached unto heaven, but of him that 41 was led by them that it overpassed the heavens. And they 42 heard a voice out of the heavens saying: Hast thou preached unto them that sleep? And an answer was heard from the cross, saying: Yea.

This fits nicely with Jesus preaching the gospel of salvation to the dead in 1st Peter 4:6. For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.

Also, 1 Peter 3:19?20 "By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; (20) Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water."

Several ancient Christian writings contain references to the descent of Jesus into the 'underworld' and His preaching to the 'departed'.

[Lazarus Short]

Preaching to the dead seems futile.  What if Jesus were preaching to those in Tartarus?

[Shadrak-Daniel]

preaching to the dead = preaching to those in Tartarus. People in Tartarus ARE the dead.

As for an idea, I can therefore be certain that the reason most of these books were added to the Apocrypha was that they could not finish building the eternal damnation message with having such a complete picture of God's plan available for everyone to read.

It is in the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, that the Fallen Angel Samael, plants the tree of knowledge against the will of God in the Garden, as a means to engineer the fall of man, as Samael was either Satan himself or one of his angels, who rebelled against God when He commanded them to worship his image according to the book of Bartholomew.
A jealous, proud and blind angel to the will of God.

This one is also an apocryphal scripture and it is heavily attacked even though Baruch ben Neriah, was a devoted friend and disciple of Jeremiah.

In this version, God clearly has no reason to be thought of as shady, whereas the current version of Genesis, seems more attuned to Satan's original lie and the presumption that God might be evil. :eek:

We really need the true scripture to be uncovered from the filthy clutches of this pathetic loser of an angel...


So a basic scribble of God's plan taking under consideration the full scripture is something like this:

God created the heavens and the Earth, then He made the angels. for a while, it was all good and God would continue expanding His creation as it is natural for Him to do. Here He created a material universe for a new kind of creatures that would take a higher value in God's eyes than the Angels when He commanded the angels to worship His image (mankind), at which point they saw that man is but a speck of dust in comparison to them and they got offended and jealous and proud. Decided to rebel against God in a futile attempt to prove to God that man is fallible and weak (as if THEY can teach the Creator anything). In their rebellion, they poisoned the water and created a poisonous food which would completely sever man's connection to God. In this God cursed the angels with aeons of suffering and pain much greater than anyone could ever imagine, even making them lose their identities thus becoming demons and abominations. (what the angels did here was cheating because they could not have tempted Eve nor Adam to go sin were it not for the weakened states of mind they were given)
God saw this as a perfect opportunity to both prove to all humans who He really is and render justice to all his firstborn. He sent Jesus to consume death by showing the true meaning of Love Everlasting, and at the same time, he showed Humans that we are not exempt from the consequences of any sinful activity. The mercy being greater to man because we were rendered weak by the cheaters of heaven, and not in our full faculties that our ancestors sinned.

Now there's a lake of fire prepared for the refining of the human soul and for the judgement of those evil abominations who were not happy with what they had in the beginning. 

And in the end, God WILL have His Amazing way, of a perfect and embellished and endless creation full of love and life and creativity and freedom which will never end and will be free of any shadow of evil, having everyone know God fully exactly as He is! May His Holy Name be Praised Forevermore Amen!

:dsunny: :Pray:

[Lazarus Short]

There is a way to determine the exact wording of God's Word - it is in the mathematical coding of the text.  I'm not talking about the ELS codes, for they are another level of coding, but the "simple" coding of letter = number, as discovered and elaborated by Ivan Panin.  He reasoned that the Word should involve coherent patterns and patterns-within-patterns of numbers, and it turns out that they revolve around the number seven.  If even one letter is missing, the patterns fall apart, and that is why Jesus stated that no jot or tittle could be missing.  Panin worked on his subject for fifty years and produced a mathematical Bible, but they are rare and expensive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Panin

https://www.bereanpublishers.com/bible-numerics-the-works-of-ivan-panin/

https://biblebelievers.org.au/panin2.htm

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Mysterious_Ways/Ivan_Panin_Bible_Codes_Mathematical_Signature.htm

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Mysterious_Ways/Ivan_Panin_Bible_Codes_Mathematical_Signature.htm

https://www.khouse.org/articles/1995/102/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGgZRbrgR1w

[Cardinal]

There is a way to determine the exact wording of God's Word - it is in the mathematical coding of the text.  I'm not talking about the ELS codes, for they are another level of coding, but the "simple" coding of letter = number, as discovered and elaborated by Ivan Panin.  He reasoned that the Word should involve coherent patterns and patterns-within-patterns of numbers, and it turns out that they revolve around the number seven.  If even one letter is missing, the patterns fall apart, and that is why Jesus stated that no jot or tittle could be missing.  Panin worked on his subject for fifty years and produced a mathematical Bible, but they are rare and expensive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Panin

https://www.bereanpublishers.com/bible-numerics-the-works-of-ivan-panin/

https://biblebelievers.org.au/panin2.htm

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Mysterious_Ways/Ivan_Panin_Bible_Codes_Mathematical_Signature.htm

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Mysterious_Ways/Ivan_Panin_Bible_Codes_Mathematical_Signature.htm

https://www.khouse.org/articles/1995/102/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGgZRbrgR1w

Thanks for these links! I already knew about the ELS codes, which I think are astounding and further proof of what we already know by the Spirit, but I never heard of this man's work on another one. Going to check them out.....

[Cardinal]

I have read most of the apocrypha, plus the Book of Jasher and Book of Enoch - well, I should say I try to read Enoch, but just can't get into it.  I avoid most Gnostic literature, but have read the Gospel of Thomas.

Granted, it's been decades since I read them all, but I didn't then feel that any of them save possibly Maccabees, had any value at all, and were at best, just regurgitating what was already said in the established canon.so here's the thing; we already know from ELS codes that the Torah is perfect, not one letter can be off or the codes are jacked, and it states that HE put the 2 trees there, so I don't think that can be abrogated by anything written anywhere else. It's common knowledge that many so called books were written, because they have great monetary value, so forgeries abounded. In addition to that, even in the disciple's days, the Gnostics were giving them fits trying to inject their own form of righteousness into the walks of the new converts. This spirit is still alive and well and trying to distort things even today.

Additionally, the natural always reflects spiritual truths, as does the Tabernacle of Moses, which Heb. 9 tells us is the pattern of heavenly or spiritual things, because it came forth from the Spirit, and so the 2 trees are the same as the 2 pieces of furniture in the MIDST of the Tabernacle; we are His tabernacle. The gold candlestick is representative of the new Spirit of redeemed man with Christ as His head (lit servant candle in the middle), and the table of showbread is representative of the unredeemed heart/soul of man upon whom after spirit redemption, the Torah/Word  becomes gradually quickened as it is written upon his heart. This "tree" has a serpent in it, just as death (it is the ministration of death, it brought death of the flesh to the hearer) has a stinger, and that stinger is sin. This is why it said we were dead in sins and trespasses; both of those are contrary to the requirements of the Torah. No evil angel had any part in the "construction" of man, but once "constructed" the adversary planted tares while Adam slept (God put him to sleep but you cannot find where He woke him up until you read, "Arise and shine.....", because Christ is what raises the dead. Blessings...

[jabcat]

I have read most of the apocrypha, plus the Book of Jasher and Book of Enoch - well, I should say I try to read Enoch, but just can't get into it.  I avoid most Gnostic literature, but have read the Gospel of Thomas.

This spirit is still alive and well and trying to distort things even today.

Christ is what raises the dead. Blessings...

:2thumbs:

[Lazarus Short]

I was looking here:

http://www.newenglandbiblesales.com/products.html

and more than once they said, about Panin's New Testament, "It is amazing how similar his 1914 NT is to the 2001 English Standard Version!"

[darryl]

Preaching to the dead seems futile.  What if Jesus were preaching to those in Tartarus?

I'd say that's what 'preaching to the dead' means....giving the Good News to the departed in Tartarus. That's my Hope.....that there is a chance after death to accept Jesus...maybe that's why it's called the 'aionion gospel' in Revelations....it's not just for this world.

[Shadrak-Daniel]

I have read most of the apocrypha, plus the Book of Jasher and Book of Enoch - well, I should say I try to read Enoch, but just can't get into it.  I avoid most Gnostic literature, but have read the Gospel of Thomas.

Granted, it's been decades since I read them all, but I didn't then feel that any of them save possibly Maccabees, had any value at all, and were at best, just regurgitating what was already said in the established canon.so here's the thing; we already know from ELS codes that the Torah is perfect, not one letter can be off or the codes are jacked, and it states that HE put the 2 trees there, so I don't think that can be abrogated by anything written anywhere else. It's common knowledge that many so called books were written, because they have great monetary value, so forgeries abounded. In addition to that, even in the disciple's days, the Gnostics were giving them fits trying to inject their own form of righteousness into the walks of the new converts. This spirit is still alive and well and trying to distort things even today.

Additionally, the natural always reflects spiritual truths, as does the Tabernacle of Moses, which Heb. 9 tells us is the pattern of heavenly or spiritual things, because it came forth from the Spirit, and so the 2 trees are the same as the 2 pieces of furniture in the MIDST of the Tabernacle; we are His tabernacle. The gold candlestick is representative of the new Spirit of redeemed man with Christ as His head (lit servant candle in the middle), and the table of showbread is representative of the unredeemed heart/soul of man upon whom after spirit redemption, the Torah/Word  becomes gradually quickened as it is written upon his heart. This "tree" has a serpent in it, just as death (it is the ministration of death, it brought death of the flesh to the hearer) has a stinger, and that stinger is sin. This is why it said we were dead in sins and trespasses; both of those are contrary to the requirements of the Torah. No evil angel had any part in the "construction" of man, but once "constructed" the adversary planted tares while Adam slept (God put him to sleep but you cannot find where He woke him up until you read, "Arise and shine.....", because Christ is what raises the dead. Blessings...

I do not understand this aggressive position from which I'm being talked to from I did not intend to provoke anyone as this seemed and still does, like the best version of God which empowers my Universal reconciliation mindset and I thought it will empower everyone else too...

But if this is the case I'm going to ask a few questions of my own:

How can I trust the "Good father" who engineered sin and death and planted it as an attractive tree smack in the middle of the garden?
What's the point of being redeemed, if God is the author of Evil in the first place?
And how can I be sure there is universal reconciliation if half of God's heart is FOR evil since He created it?

I don't buy this defensive position to a version of scripture that darkens God simply because a man-made code says it ought to be so.
Speaking of the Code, has the guy who made it taken under consideration any one book from the so-called "apocryphal" books which complete the message of God?
And since we are trusting in imperfect man's ability to discern truth via mathematics, we might as well believe every mathematical explanation of creation even Darwinian evolution and the big bang and the multiverse. Cause math surely proves those to...

That code to me seems more like pagan mysticism trying to get into truth, just like numerology, astrology, reincarnation and so many nightmarish lies of the devil.

Universal reconciliation makes much more sense from the perspective that God did not authored any evil whatsoever. And that the first creatures are responsible for this evil rather than the Father who "loves" his creation but plant's cancer right smack in the middle of it.
Why the reliance on a man-made code, when Love Wins Always is more than enough to just get the message.
God used evil to highlight His goodness. He did not plant cancer in the middle of His creation and said to a bunch of babies basically, don't touch the fire (but babies always do) so, no i won't defend a scripture that darkens God.

(Suffering from ADHD and anxiety surely does benefit in the effort to discern evil from good)

Meaning to add this: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Is%20the%20Bible%20infallible.htm
Here someone highlights some serious points about the inerrancy of scripture.


Quotation from this link which garners interest:
But consider the second chapter of Revelation, in which Jesus is speaking directly to the seven churches. In verse 18, Jesus begins speaking to the church at Thyatira, and as the passage continues he says that he will murder the children of a woman who has been committing adultery and eating foods offered to idols. If Jesus did what he said he would do, that would make him a murderer. If he didn't do what he said he would do, that would make him a liar. In either case, he would not be perfect, as the Christian religion claims. If Jesus is perfect, the Bible cannot be infallible, due to this passage which portrays him as a monster who murders children for their mother's sins. And there is another problem with this passage because Saint Paul said that he could eat foods offered to idols, and in the gospels, Jesus taught that what a person eats does not defile the person. So why is Jesus suddenly using the eating of foods offered to idols as a reason to murder a woman's children?
This passage has Jesus saying that he will judge Christians by their works, even to the point of murdering their children, when elsewhere in the Bible Christians are instructed to believe in grace, to forgive unconditionally, and to love even their enemies. Since Jesus spoke strongly against hypocrisy on numerous occasions, how can he escape coming off as a hypocrite here? I believe this passage indicates that either (1) Jesus was a murderer, or (2) Jesus was a liar, or (3) someone was pretending to speak for Jesus. In any case the Bible is not infallible unless it is "perfection" to murder children for something their mother did.

Now, on to the verses about slavery and sex slavery. Most of these commandments have been directly attributed to Moses, the Bible's great lawgiver, and the first and greatest of the Hebrew prophets. The Bible claims that Moses spoke to God and received commandments directly from him. But if a wise, just, loving God spoke to Moses, how can the Bible attribute such evil, unjust commandments to Moses? The answer may be quite simple: perhaps Moses didn't originate the evil verses attributed to him. If you read the Bible's own account of the "new" book of Moses "discovered" by the Levite priests during the reign of the child-king Josiah (2 Kings 22), it seems obvious that this "new book of Moses" was a forgery, as the priests immediately went on a killing spree, slaughtering the priests of other sects, and even digging up the bones of dead priests, to desecrate them. The "new" book of Moses "discovered" by these murderous priests was probably the horrendous book of Deuteronomy, which commands all sorts of evil actions, such as stoning children to death, and also constantly commands the Israelites to "share" the fruit of their labor with the Levites, who then didn't have to work to make a living. In other words, it was a scam.

So having all this under consideration, how is it that a code decides what is morally right and not Love?
I wonder, hasn't this spirit that wants to change things already did the work with the present and commonly accepted canon of scripture?

Therefore i rest my case in that God is TRULY and WHOLLY LOVE, and never authored any shade of evil and that whatever code defends the integrity of scripture, if not LOVE based, it ain't gonna pass for truth.
Love begets Truth! Christ's sacrifice alone makes more sense from a loving God's position who did not think of creating evil than from a "power and tradition makes right" position

[Cardinal]

I have read most of the apocrypha, plus the Book of Jasher and Book of Enoch - well, I should say I try to read Enoch, but just can't get into it.  I avoid most Gnostic literature, but have read the Gospel of Thomas.

Granted, it's been decades since I read them all, but I didn't then feel that any of them save possibly Maccabees, had any value at all, and were at best, just regurgitating what was already said in the established canon.so here's the thing; we already know from ELS codes that the Torah is perfect, not one letter can be off or the codes are jacked, and it states that HE put the 2 trees there, so I don't think that can be abrogated by anything written anywhere else. It's common knowledge that many so called books were written, because they have great monetary value, so forgeries abounded. In addition to that, even in the disciple's days, the Gnostics were giving them fits trying to inject their own form of righteousness into the walks of the new converts. This spirit is still alive and well and trying to distort things even today.

Additionally, the natural always reflects spiritual truths, as does the Tabernacle of Moses, which Heb. 9 tells us is the pattern of heavenly or spiritual things, because it came forth from the Spirit, and so the 2 trees are the same as the 2 pieces of furniture in the MIDST of the Tabernacle; we are His tabernacle. The gold candlestick is representative of the new Spirit of redeemed man with Christ as His head (lit servant candle in the middle), and the table of showbread is representative of the unredeemed heart/soul of man upon whom after spirit redemption, the Torah/Word  becomes gradually quickened as it is written upon his heart. This "tree" has a serpent in it, just as death (it is the ministration of death, it brought death of the flesh to the hearer) has a stinger, and that stinger is sin. This is why it said we were dead in sins and trespasses; both of those are contrary to the requirements of the Torah. No evil angel had any part in the "construction" of man, but once "constructed" the adversary planted tares while Adam slept (God put him to sleep but you cannot find where He woke him up until you read, "Arise and shine.....", because Christ is what raises the dead. Blessings...

I do not understand this aggressive position from which I'm being talked to from I did not intend to provoke anyone as this seemed and still does, like the best version of God which empowers my Universal reconciliation mindset and I thought it will empower everyone else too...

But if this is the case I'm going to ask a few questions of my own:

How can I trust the "Good father" who engineered sin and death and planted it as an attractive tree smack in the middle of the garden?
What's the point of being redeemed, if God is the author of Evil in the first place?
And how can I be sure there is universal reconciliation if half of God's heart is FOR evil since He created it?

I don't buy this defensive position to a version of scripture that darkens God simply because a man-made code says it ought to be so.
Speaking of the Code, has the guy who made it taken under consideration any one book from the so-called "apocryphal" books which complete the message of God?
And since we are trusting in imperfect man's ability to discern truth via mathematics, we might as well believe every mathematical explanation of creation even Darwinian evolution and the big bang and the multiverse. Cause math surely proves those to...

That code to me seems more like pagan mysticism trying to get into truth, just like numerology, astrology, reincarnation and so many nightmarish lies of the devil.

Universal reconciliation makes much more sense from the perspective that God did not authored any evil whatsoever. And that the first creatures are responsible for this evil rather than the Father who "loves" his creation but plant's cancer right smack in the middle of it.
Why the reliance on a man-made code, when Love Wins Always is more than enough to just get the message.
God used evil to highlight His goodness. He did not plant cancer in the middle of His creation and said to a bunch of babies basically, don't touch the fire (but babies always do) so, no i won't defend a scripture that darkens God.

(Suffering from ADHD and anxiety surely does benefit in the effort to discern evil from good)

Meaning to add this: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Is%20the%20Bible%20infallible.htm
Here someone highlights some serious points about the inerrancy of scripture.


Quotation from this link which garners interest:
But consider the second chapter of Revelation, in which Jesus is speaking directly to the seven churches. In verse 18, Jesus begins speaking to the church at Thyatira, and as the passage continues he says that he will murder the children of a woman who has been committing adultery and eating foods offered to idols. If Jesus did what he said he would do, that would make him a murderer. If he didn't do what he said he would do, that would make him a liar. In either case, he would not be perfect, as the Christian religion claims. If Jesus is perfect, the Bible cannot be infallible, due to this passage which portrays him as a monster who murders children for their mother's sins. And there is another problem with this passage because Saint Paul said that he could eat foods offered to idols, and in the gospels, Jesus taught that what a person eats does not defile the person. So why is Jesus suddenly using the eating of foods offered to idols as a reason to murder a woman's children?
This passage has Jesus saying that he will judge Christians by their works, even to the point of murdering their children, when elsewhere in the Bible Christians are instructed to believe in grace, to forgive unconditionally, and to love even their enemies. Since Jesus spoke strongly against hypocrisy on numerous occasions, how can he escape coming off as a hypocrite here? I believe this passage indicates that either (1) Jesus was a murderer, or (2) Jesus was a liar, or (3) someone was pretending to speak for Jesus. In any case the Bible is not infallible unless it is "perfection" to murder children for something their mother did.

Now, on to the verses about slavery and sex slavery. Most of these commandments have been directly attributed to Moses, the Bible's great lawgiver, and the first and greatest of the Hebrew prophets. The Bible claims that Moses spoke to God and received commandments directly from him. But if a wise, just, loving God spoke to Moses, how can the Bible attribute such evil, unjust commandments to Moses? The answer may be quite simple: perhaps Moses didn't originate the evil verses attributed to him. If you read the Bible's own account of the "new" book of Moses "discovered" by the Levite priests during the reign of the child-king Josiah (2 Kings 22), it seems obvious that this "new book of Moses" was a forgery, as the priests immediately went on a killing spree, slaughtering the priests of other sects, and even digging up the bones of dead priests, to desecrate them. The "new" book of Moses "discovered" by these murderous priests was probably the horrendous book of Deuteronomy, which commands all sorts of evil actions, such as stoning children to death, and also constantly commands the Israelites to "share" the fruit of their labor with the Levites, who then didn't have to work to make a living. In other words, it was a scam.

So having all this under consideration, how is it that a code decides what is morally right and not Love?
I wonder, hasn't this spirit that wants to change things already did the work with the present and commonly accepted canon of scripture?

Therefore i rest my case in that God is TRULY and WHOLLY LOVE, and never authored any shade of evil and that whatever code defends the integrity of scripture, if not LOVE based, it ain't gonna pass for truth.
Love begets Truth! Christ's sacrifice alone makes more sense from a loving God's position who did not think of creating evil than from a "power and tradition makes right" position

:cloud9: I have no idea why you are labeling my post as "aggressive", whatever that means, as I was just stating some facts. To touch on some of your points here, Universalism does not enable the believer to do away with whatever they don't understand in context, it's not so weak it can't be can't stand on it's own without manipulating or eradicating whole swaths of scripture to accommodate it. Taken in context with the whole, it's a very cohesive all encompassing tenet that stands up to scrutiny just fine. It also doesn't require every snippet of correction in there to be removed in order to stand, or the denigrating the authorship and origin of texts.

I'll take one example you brought up, and that is stoning children. As you probably know, the Jews are fanatical about keeping records; if they weren't we would have no texts to read. There is NOT ONE recorded case of parents stoning to death a rebellious disrespectful child. Do you not think it likely that God who knows the heart of men, knew that no parent would do so, even if it was only to save face, and He only wanted to communicate in the most severe terms how grievous an offense He views it as? Now when He says He will do it, you have to realize that to "stone" someone also means to stone with the scriptures, which are as stones, just as prayers are as fiery coals upon the head. Do you really think fiery coals are put upon the heads literally?

When they came to stone the woman caught in adultery, He didn't prevent it because His Father didn't order it to be done, He prevented it because they attempted to judge her UNlawfully. According to the Torah, she was to brought to the priest by her husband and at least 2 witnesses and have the test for adultery administered to her, which if she was guilty, meant her belly would swell and her thigh would rot. That it was not done accordingly was obvious, because if it had been she wouldn't have been able to run ANYWHERE, much less from an angry mob, which should have also grabbed the man for judgment, but clearly didn't.  He didn't say,"Oh, it's ok, I don't judge you", He said, "Go and sin no more lest a worse thing come upon you." And even with this, He was wanting the husband to love enough not to subject her to such a thing. The whole of the Torah was Him wanting them to learn the finer points of it, ie. mercy, grace, love, wisdom by provoking the sin nature to rise up against them (Paul = at war with what is in his members).

Universalism in some quarters is being used like greasy grace, anything goes because He'll forgive you, forgetting that grace is for when you mess up TRYING, not for when you don't bother to try (should sin abound that grace abounds all the more? God forbid). A man that does not discipline his child HATES his child, we are told. Is man more righteous than God? Now that doesn't mean He's going to cast His creation into a man made idea of hell, but He most definitely has corrective measures established that we trigger ourselves with our own disobedience, that are for the perfecting of the saints.

As for the statistics, they are many MILLIONS to one probability on the ELS codes. I find that hugely compelling, in conjunction with knowing how they prepared the texts. They knew how many characters should be on each leaf and they counted them multiple times. I think it's a given that men could not construct something so mathematically perfect pre-computers. If they found that one was off, they destroyed the leaf and buried it so it could never be used. They were master proofreaders. My  :2c: Blessings....

[Shadrak-Daniel]

 :iagree:

Thank you for such a graceful response and have to apologise that I lashed out, it wasn't my intention at all. As I'm struggling with anxiety more often than not I will find myself misinterpreting a message based on a state of mind that is triggered by life circumstances. I pray this doesn't repeat.

I love the information you provided.

But I'm still left with questions as to the nature of God if He indeed did plant the tree of knowledge in the middle of the garden and made it attractive... Knowing He's Love how is it that He engineered this poison? Any thoughts?

[darryl]

I do not understand this aggressive position from which I'm being talked to

its sad if u feel that way...I wouldn't be aggressive to you for speaking honestly what you feel / believe....I try not to be too dogmatic n have an open mind but even if i vehemently disagreed with your position i hope i would not act 'aggressively' toward you.

[darryl]

I have read most of the apocrypha, plus the Book of Jasher and Book of Enoch - well, I should say I try to read Enoch, but just can't get into it.  I avoid most Gnostic literature, but have read the Gospel of Thomas.

Granted, it's been decades since I read them all, but I didn't then feel that any of them save possibly Maccabees, had any value at all, and were at best, just regurgitating what was already said in the established canon.so here's the thing; we already know from ELS codes that the Torah is perfect, not one letter can be off or the codes are jacked, and it states that HE put the 2 trees there, so I don't think that can be abrogated by anything written anywhere else. It's common knowledge that many so called books were written, because they have great monetary value, so forgeries abounded. In addition to that, even in the disciple's days, the Gnostics were giving them fits trying to inject their own form of righteousness into the walks of the new converts. This spirit is still alive and well and trying to distort things even today.

Additionally, the natural always reflects spiritual truths, as does the Tabernacle of Moses, which Heb. 9 tells us is the pattern of heavenly or spiritual things, because it came forth from the Spirit, and so the 2 trees are the same as the 2 pieces of furniture in the MIDST of the Tabernacle; we are His tabernacle. The gold candlestick is representative of the new Spirit of redeemed man with Christ as His head (lit servant candle in the middle), and the table of showbread is representative of the unredeemed heart/soul of man upon whom after spirit redemption, the Torah/Word  becomes gradually quickened as it is written upon his heart. This "tree" has a serpent in it, just as death (it is the ministration of death, it brought death of the flesh to the hearer) has a stinger, and that stinger is sin. This is why it said we were dead in sins and trespasses; both of those are contrary to the requirements of the Torah. No evil angel had any part in the "construction" of man, but once "constructed" the adversary planted tares while Adam slept (God put him to sleep but you cannot find where He woke him up until you read, "Arise and shine.....", because Christ is what raises the dead. Blessings...

I do not understand this aggressive position from which I'm being talked to from I did not intend to provoke anyone as this seemed and still does, like the best version of God which empowers my Universal reconciliation mindset and I thought it will empower everyone else too...

But if this is the case I'm going to ask a few questions of my own:

How can I trust the "Good father" who engineered sin and death and planted it as an attractive tree smack in the middle of the garden?
What's the point of being redeemed, if God is the author of Evil in the first place?
And how can I be sure there is universal reconciliation if half of God's heart is FOR evil since He created it?

I don't buy this defensive position to a version of scripture that darkens God simply because a man-made code says it ought to be so.
Speaking of the Code, has the guy who made it taken under consideration any one book from the so-called "apocryphal" books which complete the message of God?
And since we are trusting in imperfect man's ability to discern truth via mathematics, we might as well believe every mathematical explanation of creation even Darwinian evolution and the big bang and the multiverse. Cause math surely proves those to...

That code to me seems more like pagan mysticism trying to get into truth, just like numerology, astrology, reincarnation and so many nightmarish lies of the devil.

Universal reconciliation makes much more sense from the perspective that God did not authored any evil whatsoever. And that the first creatures are responsible for this evil rather than the Father who "loves" his creation but plant's cancer right smack in the middle of it.
Why the reliance on a man-made code, when Love Wins Always is more than enough to just get the message.
God used evil to highlight His goodness. He did not plant cancer in the middle of His creation and said to a bunch of babies basically, don't touch the fire (but babies always do) so, no i won't defend a scripture that darkens God.

(Suffering from ADHD and anxiety surely does benefit in the effort to discern evil from good)

Meaning to add this: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Is%20the%20Bible%20infallible.htm
Here someone highlights some serious points about the inerrancy of scripture.


Quotation from this link which garners interest:
But consider the second chapter of Revelation, in which Jesus is speaking directly to the seven churches. In verse 18, Jesus begins speaking to the church at Thyatira, and as the passage continues he says that he will murder the children of a woman who has been committing adultery and eating foods offered to idols. If Jesus did what he said he would do, that would make him a murderer. If he didn't do what he said he would do, that would make him a liar. In either case, he would not be perfect, as the Christian religion claims. If Jesus is perfect, the Bible cannot be infallible, due to this passage which portrays him as a monster who murders children for their mother's sins. And there is another problem with this passage because Saint Paul said that he could eat foods offered to idols, and in the gospels, Jesus taught that what a person eats does not defile the person. So why is Jesus suddenly using the eating of foods offered to idols as a reason to murder a woman's children?
This passage has Jesus saying that he will judge Christians by their works, even to the point of murdering their children, when elsewhere in the Bible Christians are instructed to believe in grace, to forgive unconditionally, and to love even their enemies. Since Jesus spoke strongly against hypocrisy on numerous occasions, how can he escape coming off as a hypocrite here? I believe this passage indicates that either (1) Jesus was a murderer, or (2) Jesus was a liar, or (3) someone was pretending to speak for Jesus. In any case the Bible is not infallible unless it is "perfection" to murder children for something their mother did.

Now, on to the verses about slavery and sex slavery. Most of these commandments have been directly attributed to Moses, the Bible's great lawgiver, and the first and greatest of the Hebrew prophets. The Bible claims that Moses spoke to God and received commandments directly from him. But if a wise, just, loving God spoke to Moses, how can the Bible attribute such evil, unjust commandments to Moses? The answer may be quite simple: perhaps Moses didn't originate the evil verses attributed to him. If you read the Bible's own account of the "new" book of Moses "discovered" by the Levite priests during the reign of the child-king Josiah (2 Kings 22), it seems obvious that this "new book of Moses" was a forgery, as the priests immediately went on a killing spree, slaughtering the priests of other sects, and even digging up the bones of dead priests, to desecrate them. The "new" book of Moses "discovered" by these murderous priests was probably the horrendous book of Deuteronomy, which commands all sorts of evil actions, such as stoning children to death, and also constantly commands the Israelites to "share" the fruit of their labor with the Levites, who then didn't have to work to make a living. In other words, it was a scam.

So having all this under consideration, how is it that a code decides what is morally right and not Love?
I wonder, hasn't this spirit that wants to change things already did the work with the present and commonly accepted canon of scripture?

Therefore i rest my case in that God is TRULY and WHOLLY LOVE, and never authored any shade of evil and that whatever code defends the integrity of scripture, if not LOVE based, it ain't gonna pass for truth.
Love begets Truth! Christ's sacrifice alone makes more sense from a loving God's position who did not think of creating evil than from a "power and tradition makes right" position

I dont believe God 'created' evil because evil has no existence in and of itself after all its not a sentient being or a 'force'...whether God created the situation that led to acts of evil is another question...He seems to have allowed it for His good purposes....only He knows why He allows acts of evil ..I do know when the desire to commit evil is done away with acts of evil will be no more

[darryl]

I have read most of the apocrypha, plus the Book of Jasher and Book of Enoch - well, I should say I try to read Enoch, but just can't get into it.  I avoid most Gnostic literature, but have read the Gospel of Thomas.

Granted, it's been decades since I read them all, but I didn't then feel that any of them save possibly Maccabees, had any value at all, and were at best, just regurgitating what was already said in the established canon.so here's the thing; we already know from ELS codes that the Torah is perfect, not one letter can be off or the codes are jacked, and it states that HE put the 2 trees there, so I don't think that can be abrogated by anything written anywhere else. It's common knowledge that many so called books were written, because they have great monetary value, so forgeries abounded. In addition to that, even in the disciple's days, the Gnostics were giving them fits trying to inject their own form of righteousness into the walks of the new converts. This spirit is still alive and well and trying to distort things even today.

Additionally, the natural always reflects spiritual truths, as does the Tabernacle of Moses, which Heb. 9 tells us is the pattern of heavenly or spiritual things, because it came forth from the Spirit, and so the 2 trees are the same as the 2 pieces of furniture in the MIDST of the Tabernacle; we are His tabernacle. The gold candlestick is representative of the new Spirit of redeemed man with Christ as His head (lit servant candle in the middle), and the table of showbread is representative of the unredeemed heart/soul of man upon whom after spirit redemption, the Torah/Word  becomes gradually quickened as it is written upon his heart. This "tree" has a serpent in it, just as death (it is the ministration of death, it brought death of the flesh to the hearer) has a stinger, and that stinger is sin. This is why it said we were dead in sins and trespasses; both of those are contrary to the requirements of the Torah. No evil angel had any part in the "construction" of man, but once "constructed" the adversary planted tares while Adam slept (God put him to sleep but you cannot find where He woke him up until you read, "Arise and shine.....", because Christ is what raises the dead. Blessings...

I do not understand this aggressive position from which I'm being talked to from I did not intend to provoke anyone as this seemed and still does, like the best version of God which empowers my Universal reconciliation mindset and I thought it will empower everyone else too...

But if this is the case I'm going to ask a few questions of my own:

How can I trust the "Good father" who engineered sin and death and planted it as an attractive tree smack in the middle of the garden?
What's the point of being redeemed, if God is the author of Evil in the first place?
And how can I be sure there is universal reconciliation if half of God's heart is FOR evil since He created it?

I don't buy this defensive position to a version of scripture that darkens God simply because a man-made code says it ought to be so.
Speaking of the Code, has the guy who made it taken under consideration any one book from the so-called "apocryphal" books which complete the message of God?
And since we are trusting in imperfect man's ability to discern truth via mathematics, we might as well believe every mathematical explanation of creation even Darwinian evolution and the big bang and the multiverse. Cause math surely proves those to...

That code to me seems more like pagan mysticism trying to get into truth, just like numerology, astrology, reincarnation and so many nightmarish lies of the devil.

Universal reconciliation makes much more sense from the perspective that God did not authored any evil whatsoever. And that the first creatures are responsible for this evil rather than the Father who "loves" his creation but plant's cancer right smack in the middle of it.
Why the reliance on a man-made code, when Love Wins Always is more than enough to just get the message.
God used evil to highlight His goodness. He did not plant cancer in the middle of His creation and said to a bunch of babies basically, don't touch the fire (but babies always do) so, no i won't defend a scripture that darkens God.

(Suffering from ADHD and anxiety surely does benefit in the effort to discern evil from good)

Meaning to add this: http://www.thehypertexts.com/Is%20the%20Bible%20infallible.htm
Here someone highlights some serious points about the inerrancy of scripture.


Quotation from this link which garners interest:
But consider the second chapter of Revelation, in which Jesus is speaking directly to the seven churches. In verse 18, Jesus begins speaking to the church at Thyatira, and as the passage continues he says that he will murder the children of a woman who has been committing adultery and eating foods offered to idols. If Jesus did what he said he would do, that would make him a murderer. If he didn't do what he said he would do, that would make him a liar. In either case, he would not be perfect, as the Christian religion claims. If Jesus is perfect, the Bible cannot be infallible, due to this passage which portrays him as a monster who murders children for their mother's sins. And there is another problem with this passage because Saint Paul said that he could eat foods offered to idols, and in the gospels, Jesus taught that what a person eats does not defile the person. So why is Jesus suddenly using the eating of foods offered to idols as a reason to murder a woman's children?
This passage has Jesus saying that he will judge Christians by their works, even to the point of murdering their children, when elsewhere in the Bible Christians are instructed to believe in grace, to forgive unconditionally, and to love even their enemies. Since Jesus spoke strongly against hypocrisy on numerous occasions, how can he escape coming off as a hypocrite here? I believe this passage indicates that either (1) Jesus was a murderer, or (2) Jesus was a liar, or (3) someone was pretending to speak for Jesus. In any case the Bible is not infallible unless it is "perfection" to murder children for something their mother did.

Now, on to the verses about slavery and sex slavery. Most of these commandments have been directly attributed to Moses, the Bible's great lawgiver, and the first and greatest of the Hebrew prophets. The Bible claims that Moses spoke to God and received commandments directly from him. But if a wise, just, loving God spoke to Moses, how can the Bible attribute such evil, unjust commandments to Moses? The answer may be quite simple: perhaps Moses didn't originate the evil verses attributed to him. If you read the Bible's own account of the "new" book of Moses "discovered" by the Levite priests during the reign of the child-king Josiah (2 Kings 22), it seems obvious that this "new book of Moses" was a forgery, as the priests immediately went on a killing spree, slaughtering the priests of other sects, and even digging up the bones of dead priests, to desecrate them. The "new" book of Moses "discovered" by these murderous priests was probably the horrendous book of Deuteronomy, which commands all sorts of evil actions, such as stoning children to death, and also constantly commands the Israelites to "share" the fruit of their labor with the Levites, who then didn't have to work to make a living. In other words, it was a scam.

So having all this under consideration, how is it that a code decides what is morally right and not Love?
I wonder, hasn't this spirit that wants to change things already did the work with the present and commonly accepted canon of scripture?

Therefore i rest my case in that God is TRULY and WHOLLY LOVE, and never authored any shade of evil and that whatever code defends the integrity of scripture, if not LOVE based, it ain't gonna pass for truth.
Love begets Truth! Christ's sacrifice alone makes more sense from a loving God's position who did not think of creating evil than from a "power and tradition makes right" position

this life is temporary and very short compared to eternity. God has allowed evil acts here but in light of eternity we will make sense of them.I have fath and hope that this is so...that suffering will be turned to ultimate Good.

[Shadrak-Daniel]

I remember now what made me fortify and take this decisive belief in the apocryphal version of Genesis, where the evil angels corrupted man and it wasn't God the one who planted the Tree of Knowledge.

It is the scripture from the book of James, and all the other reassuring scriptures, that slowly carried me into Christian Universalism: James 1:13

When under trial, let no one say: "I am being tried by God." For with evil things God cannot be tried, nor does He himself try anyone.

Having this and many a set of scriptures in mind, where Jesus and The Father oppose the very notion of them being the original cause of anything evil, having God create the very means by which the human's soul ought to experience death and make it attractive and seemingly tasty almost inviting the man to sin, under the excuse: "it is the original test of obedience" is very much unlike God to do something like this, it is nowhere in the whole of the Bible that God has the necessary kind of deceitful character to produce this source of evil, being that the tree of knowledge is evil - poisonous to the human's soul.

Also, the notion that the ends justify the means is no defence for the creation of unjustified evil, there's no argument in scripture where the tree of knowledge is viewed as a good creation. It is a source of deceit, death and pain. "for in the day you will eat of it you will surely die!".
The reason I said unjustified evil, is because if you don't consider the alternative versions of scripture, then it does appear that God had no good reason to invite His perfect original and innocent children to sin. Simply due to Choice, which is not a Loving thing to do.
Creating evil as a means to correct some other evil, sure, that is very much revealed in scripture as one of the means by which correction is achieved, but to originate a source of evil, this contradicts God's Nature, it doesn't click with the rest of ABBA's character.
Therefore it is not in God's Nature as Love to create the means by which evil ought to manifest in a perfectly good original creation.

PS: Also in order to act evil or corrupt creation, there is no need to have a fruit or a tree or any tool, be the medium via which this is accomplished, it is already an ability we possess, with whatever limited freedom of choice, we were embued with at creation, just like the Angels (or whatever). There's no need to have a corrupting agent created by God, other than our own wills. This onto itself is good because our ability to chose is indeed a perfect creation. but the tree that acts as an agent of corruption, does not seem like any such justified cause.

[jabcat]

I'd encourge us - myself included as I've done it - to be sure we're not "looking for a better deal".  I.e., not really liking the feel of the logos "piercing to divide soul and spirit, joints and marrow", so coming up with interpretations within the canon, or also looking outside the canon, for something that feels more soothing to our flesh.

I think it's hard enough to "rightly cut the scripture" and come to settled and sound interpretations.  But the inherent dangers in not doing so is why TM is so adamant about searching 'within' the scriptures, accurately translated and Holy Spirit revealed.   :dsunny:

[Shadrak-Daniel]

Yes, fair point, the fact of the matter is that I was already changing my mind having to consider that this alternative version of Genesis, came much later than the original... and it came by a dubious character who does not seem to be related to any of the fathers of the faith.

This might throw me into a big dilemma again but that's life...

[jabcat]

I hear you on the dilemma.  I think I live in an almost constant dilemma.  It's hard.  I do find peace and comfort in the bottom line promises and Presence, but still have many of the questions that cause disturbance.  So again, I hear you.  It seems to come back to trust, humbling ourselves before Him, understanding what we're able/as He reveals, but still finding a place of He knows best and His goodness will bring about His will of everything reconciled - which is GOOD.   :dsunny:

[Shadrak-Daniel]

For a certainty, I was just praying today, specifically about this issue, and He revealed to me, that how do I know for sure that The Tree of Knowledge was an evil creation and didn't have another purpose within existence alongside the tree of life?
One that obviously didn't get to be revealed because Adam and Eve did not wait for future revelation, as He would have revealed further mysteries of creation even to the uncorrupt version of humanity as He does to the present one...  :cloud9:

Well, I can only swallow all my accusations I throw at Him almost on a constant basis... I pray this habit stops in Jesus Name (but challenges of life won't make it easier to be sure) :sigh: :Pray: :sigh:

[jabcat]

 :grouppray:

[Cardinal]

:grouppray:

:cloud9: I encourage everyone to study the Tabernacle design, which He used as a perfect witness along with the Creation, to His true Word. Heb. 9 tells us it's the pattern of heavenly and so, spiritual things, if we are to compare natural with spiritual, doesn't it make sense He gave us that pattern for a reason? I have personally found that there is NOTHING you cannot fit in the understanding of what each compartment and it's furnishings represent. It's truly stunning, and because they didn't realize what secrets it held in plain sight, they didn't tamper with it. Blessings on your journey...

[Andrew]

Hi Cardinal

How does the Tabernacle teach universalism?