People, the crowning glory of God's creation can be eaisly deceived as to what is truth..
People
are made with a thinking ability that is channeled through their
brain in this earth realm and allows us to relate to the natural
earthly realm. One thing we need to understand...though the brain is
an amazing work of ingenuity...it is not our thinking ability. It is
the avenue through which our thinking ability works in this earthly
realm we live in.
Man's
thinking ability resides in their spirit. But the natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know
them, because they are spiritually discerned (1 Cor.
2:14).
Within
this earth suit in which we live in this earth realm environment God
has blessed us with many intrinsic functional abilities to make our
stay productive, profitable and enjoyable. How we use these abilities
determines the quality of our existence in living life.
Though the environment into which people are born is a huge factor in determining the quality of their existence but, it is not the greatest determining factor. The greatest determining factor is not something we are born into...it is something we are born with.
Though all the God given functional instruments help with our quality of life to one degree or another, none has a greater potential to be used for the bondage of or the freedom for people, than the "mind".
Now the question arises; Is the mind and the brain one and the same thing?
If it were there would be an insurmountable problem with the belief that we continue to live in a different realm after we pass through death's door into the spiritual realm. Why? Well...we know that at our death our brain function ceases to exist and the brain itself returns to the dust of the earth with the rest of our physical parts and ceases to exist. However, if we believe the bible, a person's thinking ability is still active and functional as recorded in the bible of many who have passed from this earthly realm. Thus the brain is not our thinking ability
Therefore, the brain is only the avenue through which our ability to think (the mind) works through in our earth realm living. On this earth the amount of active brain function, the environment we were born into, the brain when it comes to the things we we allow to pass through our eye-gate and ear-gate will determine the things we believe and do.
When people with brain dysfunction pass from this earth realm their thinking ability is set free from the imprisonment of the brain and their mind is no longer controlled by their brain function and they are set free to think again. That is why there is nobody with thinking hindrances beyond this earthly realm.
The mind has the ability to easily accept what is taught, inadvertently, whether it be truth of lies. If it is taught lies as truth, it accepts lies as truth and sets up a barrier to the real truth That is why the scripture tells us to "guard our mind" and to "renew our mind" for that determines who will control us. Notice it tells US PERSONALLY...to do it. That is why we are to be thinkers and seekers of truth independent of the religious system we may be in. Religious lies are as much lies as any lies are, no matter how religiously cloaked they are.
Our problem is that a lot of us have allowed our minds to be influenced by political and religious hogwash ideologies, rituals and practices to the point where our minds are taken captive by these entities and controls our thinking, acting and doing. We have allowed ourselves to be taken captive and imprisoned by a force that restricts our ability to effect God's plan by His Community of the Redeemed to influence the Community of Humanity because instead of God influencing our thoughts and actions, the religious system is doing so because it has captivated our minds and deceived us into believing that God is doing it. Such is the deception of religion!
“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.” Eckhart Tolle
We need to set our minds free from the deceptive and destructive controlling influence of religion. When we no longer accept what we are told as truth without validating that it is truth, we are set free to think for ourselves and we begin to see more clearly the deception that binds us and experience more fully the thinker we really are to help us see that the truth we think we know may not be the truth we need to know.
To accept untruth as truth even if it is religious truth, is to condemn what is truly truth by condemning the truth of God.
Such is the bondage of religious lies!
You say and I quote:
ReplyDeleteWhen people with brain dysfunction pass from this earth realm their thinking ability is set free from the imprisonment of the brain and their mind is no longer controlled by their brain function and they are set free to think again. That is why there is nobody with thinking hindrances beyond this earthly realm.
The greatest deception that a person can have is to be deceived into thinking that once this life is finished that is the end of it. In many of Christ sermons He tried to dispel that deception.
Without going into a lot of quotes I will just mention that Christ gave the parable of Rich man and Lazarus. In this parable Christ proved that a man thinks after he is finished with this life.
The rich man remembered that he had 5 brothers and didn`t want them to come to this place of torment.(Luke 16:28) He got a vision of lost souls but it was too late. I might add if every preacher today had the same kind of vision that the rich man had where he wanted someone to go and warn his brothers what a difference it would make today. Christ had that same kind of vision when He warned about hell.
Who is responsible for this deception? I am convinced that it is those preachers in our apostate denominations and many modern day grace preachers.
Here is what one modern day grace preacher says in his book and I quote word for word.
Those opposed to the modern grace message sometimes claim that we who preach it have left hell out of the gospel. They are correct. Hell is bad news; the gospel is good news. By definition, there can be no bad news in the good news.
Here is what Christ said in Mark 9
43 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:
44 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
Who will you believe Paul Ellis or Christ.
So lets set our minds free from deception and believe what Christ has said.
Hubert, you must be working to many hours, you need to take a break to refresh spirituality.
DeleteFor you to insinuate that I believe that man's thinking ability ceases at death is an assumption that the brain is man's thinking ability. Brain damage causes people's thinking ability from being able to process the reality of earthly living. Because people have some brain disability it may result in Alzheimers, neurological disease,or some other degenerative brain disease that they will be free from at the death of their body.
Hubert try to understand what you read without being influenced by your over absorption of finding fault with and judging what you read because of your self-righteous attitude and your self appointed religious cop status. You need to let the Father heart of God influence your thinking instead of the religious fables of men.
You are right, man does not lose his ability to think at death, but he does not take his brain to the life hereafter, that goes back to dust as does the rest of his body.
Regarding Paul Eillis, I find that much more of His thoughts are more in line with Father God's than I find yours are...Then again you do not share your thoughts in writing, instead like a vulture, you pick apart other people's writings and search the internet to find something to discredit it.
Man you have been a believer long enough now to be a teacher who points people to God...use your facebook page to teach what you believe, is it that you do not know enough truth to write about?
For your info I had Paul`s book in my hands and quoted from it. I just finished reading it. He has a lot of good things to say about grace that we can learn from but it includes a lot off error mixed in with grace message which waters down it`s effect.
ReplyDeleteSo I have to do as Paul tells me to do in 1 Thes.
21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
So that's what I have done. Proved it by Scriptures, accepted what is good and rejected the rest.
I know there are never cut and dry answers to any of these things as they all revolve around opinion and interpretation but I've always struggled with Jesus' parables on hell (or the trash pit they call Gehenna) as to whether they should be interpreted as figurative illustrations for our current life, warnings for the afterlife, or both. For example, I wonder what Tolle would have to say about "their worm dieth not". Would he suggest that if we remain in our thoughts that the fire of our torture will not go out? In 2 Peter 17 - 22, Peter talks about becoming entangled in the world after knowing Jesus as like a dog returning to it's vomit. Would this be a return from an enlightened state (or at least a willingness to pursue enlightenment) to a preoccupation with our egos?
ReplyDeleteJesus himself goes to the extreme of suggesting that we cut off limbs and pluck out eyes to avoid hell. Would Jesus literally suggest for example that if someone were fascinated with porn or is allured by the visual appeal of riches that he should pluck out his own eye to extinguish the temptation to sin? If he is only speaking figuratively about maiming and plucking then why would be speak literally about hell in the same context?
I would like to hear your opinions as well as those of any famous theologians or authors you might suggest.