You Become What You Love

Someone directed me to an article about Popes Benedict and Francis. I looked it over. Popes are not really within my areas of interest. I see them as distractions, outside the will of God.

It reminded me of one of the major problems with denominations that exalt human beings: they discourage the rest of us from connecting with God directly.

God never wanted us to have popes and special people called “saints.” That’s not how the kingdom of heaven works. It’s not a system with lots of levels, like the military. In God’s kingdom, there is God, and then down one level, there is you. That’s how it’s supposed to work. The Bible calls us his children, not his grandchildren.

In the Bible, the Greek word translated “saint” just means “person who belongs to God.” It doesn’t mean you can pull rabbits out of a hat or turn water into Pepsi.

I used to go to Trinity Church in Miami, and then I attended a place called New Dawn. Both were screwed up. They exalted preachers above everyone else. They gave people the ideas that preachers were closer to God than they were, and that this was okay. It’s not okay. It’s not even a little bit okay.

Many preachers want to be worshiped. They want to be little gods to their flocks. They have teams of people who screen them from the masses. They keep their distance, except when they pop out to act for the cameras and convince people to send money or give them obedience.

At the churches I went to, “submission to authority” was the excuse. A centurion told Jesus he was a man under authority, so somehow, preachers turned that into a basis for Kommandant status. Preachers turn themselves into emperors. Criticize the emperor, and he tells the flock to ostracize you. He says God will curse you, although the real curse is being under a little man with delusions of grandeur. He stands in front of the people and says, “Touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm,” with no understanding of the word “anointed.”

The big cheese at Trinity had secret meetings about me when I left. When someone reported my Facebook account and got it canceled, the pastor at New Dawn put up a status that said, “God don’t like ugly.” I am completely serious. These characters questioned other people about me behind my back, as if merely knowing me were treason.

One preacher approached a friend of mine in the church parking lot and started yelling at him about me, waving his fingers in his face. My friend threatened to defend himself with a beating. Someone who was afraid the cops would get involved called me about it and asked if I could help.

When Moses was in charge of the Hebrews, some men prophesied without informing him first. Joshua, fancying himself the hall monitor of the Hebrew people, ran to Moses to tattle. Here’s the story, from Numbers 11:

But two men had remained in the camp: the name of one was Eldad, and the name of the other Medad. And the Spirit rested upon them. Now they were among those listed, but who had not gone out to the tabernacle; yet they prophesied in the camp. And a young man ran and told Moses, and said, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”

So Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, one of his choice men, answered and said, “Moses my lord, forbid them!”

Then Moses said to him, “Are you zealous for my sake? Oh, that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!”

Now we know he was prophesying about the baptism with the Holy Spirit, which most Christians will never receive. They don’t ask for it, or they think they already have it.

Look what Moses said. “Is your zeal for me, or for God?” That says it all.

Here is what Paul said about worshiping preachers:

Now I say this, that each of you says, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Apollos,” or “I am of Cephas,” or “I am of Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, lest anyone should say that I had baptized in my own name.

When a church tells you popes, “saints,” or priests have something you can’t have, they lie to you and keep you defeated. They put you to sleep so you don’t reach your potential. They convince you it’s okay to do as you please all week, as long as you show up on Sunday, like a pair of dirty underwear headed for the washing machine. You don’t have to be good; the priests do that for you.

Every one of us is supposed to be dedicated to God, and every one of us is supposed to have victory in life.

If Popes were truly anointed, they wouldn’t be wrong all the time, and Francis definitely wouldn’t be a leftist. A leftist Christian is like a Nazi Jew. The left has always tried to kill us off and blot out God’s name. The Soviets used to teach kids to pray to Stalin.

As for the “saints,” they’re just replacements for the pantheist “gods.” “You don’t want to pray to Zeus any more? Fine. Now you can pray to St. Francis. Anyone but Jehovah.”

Any time you worship anyone or anything other than the Lord, you are worshiping Satan. That’s why Jesus is so intolerant. Anyone you pray to is an object of worship. The “saints” don’t answer prayers. If you pray to a saint and get an answer, it came from someone else.

Because I’ve been sitting around reading books by Greeks and Romans, I now realize pantheism is a bigger problem than I thought it was. I thought the Greeks and Romans had one set of “gods,” and the Egyptians and other heathens had different ones. That’s not true. The Greek pantheon came from Egypt. The names were different, but the basic pantheon was fundamentally the same. The Egyptians had temples dedicated to Greek spirits. The spirits rebellious Jews worshiped were the same spirits.

I haven’t checked, but I’ll bet the spirits Hindus worship are connected to Greek pantheism.

It appears that it’s wrong to think that there are lots of different pantheist religions. For the most part, it’s one religion with different names.

Rejection of pantheism has always been considered bigoted and extreme. The devil doesn’t mind if you worship Zeus, Krishna, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Elvis, and Gitche Manitou. You can even worship Jesus right along with them; lots of idolaters claim to revere Jesus. What Satan hates is the exclusion of the defeated fake gods. If you worship the Jewish God alone, you are a troublemaker.

The devil has millions of people worshiping Mary. Pagans conflate her with Venus. She must be appalled.

Anyway, I do not think the pope is a helpful influence. And that was probably three times as true during the years when there were three rival popes. If you can’t know God personally, and you have to rely on a man in Italy to tell you about him, you must be doing something wrong.

I now see the world as a porous, hollow sphere filled with filth. That may not be physically correct, but it’s spiritually right. Hell is beneath us. Our job is to keep it there, and to bring the ways of heaven down to earth. Instead, we pull hell up to the surface. It soaks through, as though the earth were a ball of cloth surrounding a lump of bloody pus. We are pulling it to the surface, like John D. Rockefeller pumping oil. Almost literally, we are raising hell.

We rejected God, so now we are becoming like the inhabitants of hell; we are striving to emulate the losers of the universe. We dress like convicts, who are the biggest losers in society. We love their shaved heads, chin beards, and tattoos. Our speech is so filthy it’s almost nauseating. We are in love with sexual perversion. We love pride and cruelty. We’re supposed to make God our father and come to resemble him, but the way things stand, Satan is our father, and we grow more like him every day.

We lower ourselves toward hell by following spirits. The only way to lift ourselves up is to follow the Spirit of God. We’re not interested. God isn’t cool.

Churches make it worse by teaching us we’re not God’s children. We’re more like his fans, sitting in the back row of the upper deck of a stadium, as far from him as a U2 fan is from Bono. We don’t expect him to go home with us.

Things are going to get worse. Look after yourself. The sooner you change your mind, the more you will accomplish during your remaining time.