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The Voice of Christ and the 33 000 sects of Christianity

Posted on 30 June 2017, 8:42

Theologians and philosophers sometimes produce long and complex arguments when they attempt to prove something to be true. The 33,000 sects of Christianity show the fruits of all this.

Stephen will have none of such arguments.

In the previous blog Stephen says, . [The truth is that]” we are here alive, able to move, communicate and reproduce. This is truth. The sun shines daily over all the earth. This is truth. The rain brings us the essential water for the growth of plants. This is truth and cannot be denied. Truth is a fond embrace, love, compassion, the wanting of good for all people, the healing of the sick in mind and body… one could go on and on. “ [Love is truth.]

In 1 John 4:8 we read: (7) Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. (8) Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  (9) This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him

Stephen. Only the truth can have no contradictions; what is untrue will have contradictions and must then be disregarded.

Think of chemistry: unless a combination of elements has the desired result in a test, then that combination is unsuccessful. If in an experiment the combination of elements proved to be wrong would you then attempt to separate out the elements and use the same elements again to find out which of those elements are false or would you discard it and start the experiment again? The tendency is always to say that because there is some good in it that good should be taken out of the experiment and used. That in itself is wasted effort.
….
Our thoughts can create for us happiness or unhappiness. They can often guide us to words, signs and interpretations that do not come from the Father, but which serve as confirmation as to how we think and feel ourselves.

Often our thoughts and feelings [seem to be] confirmed in many ways at a later date [but] in the light of truth are contradicted.

Of course, you must respond to what you feel, but it is better to say, “Now I feel happy; I feel content and at peace with myself so what I do, what I perceive, what I am at this moment, is what I ought to be.”

Never say when unhappiness is with you, “This is how I should not be.” For to recognize that which in truth you are not, is to create a self that is untrue.” 

[Yes, there has been a Communicator other than Stephen, namely Jesus Christ. Several times I have heard this Voice, plainly other and greater than Stephen. Each time I am filled with awe and the strong sense of the numinous.  I am not moved to question this Voice, only to listen.]

The Voice of Christ: Sic Ecclesia Spiritus Sanctus .[“Thus in the church is the Holy Spirit”]  I say to you this, that before all could dwell in the one house, there must be complete trust in the Father of that house. For even you, who were close to me, loved in a different manner. Never do we see the complete trust in the Father, even though the books and the teachings that we have had show us only this: that each of us, though we love, restrict our love at some point or other. So recognise this in your fellows and in your selves that your trust is limited, and your trust and love will manifest in diverse manners. Expect no more of others than you would of yourselves.

This is why you live in these separate houses. Complete trust and the knowledge would enable you to dwell together. This is what we must learn. This is what you must teach. That you are here, and that all are here, and loved and cared for, is the proof that is shown to you. All must learn to trust, on that proof. This is all I have ever said and those that were before me have ever said. It must keep being said.

The voice of Christ ceased.  Then…

Stephen: Jesus once asked, “Why me?” The Christ or the connecting source from God has come to many as it will come to all of you. Be not awed by this. Jesus was the same as you all or the man who now walks along this roadway; he also has the qualities to be used by the Christ. Jesus was the perfect tool. At that time there was only need for one; now it needs many.

[Christ then was the Spirit that was in Jesus.  The word “Christ” is related to “chrism” and means “Anointed”, “Anointed with Spirit”.  Jesus was thus Anointed with Spirit/Christ.  In the next passage, Molly asks about Jesus Christ, while Stephen in his answer refers only to the Christ. The spirit of the historical Jesus, in perfect union, is taken up into the Christ. Christ is the outworking of the will of the Father.

This next passage is the key, and is crucial to Stephen’s teaching about the Christ.

“There never was a time when our Lord Jesus was not the Christ, nor any imaged creation of the Father not the Christ.

In the next blog, I shall continue quoting the words of Stephen. Stephen’s words often sound simply provocative. But we need to keep in mind that “Christ” for Stephen is the creative “Word” spoken of in the first verse of the Gospel according to St John.  The Word is what “images”, “thinks into becoming” physical reality.  The “Word”is like Plato’s Ideal Forms, of David Bohm’s Implicate Order producing the “Explicate Order” known to the physical senses.

For Stephen, All That Is is imaged by the Father, is in his image.  Stephen’s picture in some ways is profoundly deterministic.  He echoes Julian of Norwich’s “all things are well, and all manner of things are well”, a statement with which we could reasonably recoil. But from the point of view of eternity, there might be a different picture.

Let us see what our minds can do with all these contradictions.

Michael Cocks edits the journal, The Ground of Faith.
Afterlife Teaching From Stephen the Martyr by Michael Cocks is published by White Crow Books and available from Amazon and other bookstores.

Michael on Skeptico.

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For more on Stephen go to thegroundoffaith.net/issues/2017-02

 


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