Lula posts:

Yes, I understand self-importance in this same way.

But what I shall like to get back to is what you said about self-importance and Christ.



In the first examples from Eve with the self-importance sin of pride and on down, I note these are all sins that people commit in one degree or another. Christ was sinless and so that's why I cannot put Christ and self-importance and self-concern together.

The short of it is Self-importance is true of sinners, but never of Christ.

Here you are using "self" again.....whereas I see it as about sin.

Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are replete about the Mosaic Laws regulating Divine worship. God prescribed to Moses what sacrifices were to be offered, together with the manner of offering them and the times they were to be offered. Some of the sacrifices were bloody and some were unbloody. The bloody was goats, sheep, and oxen without blemish.

The unbloody was flour, fruits, oil and wine. When the thing offered was wholly consumed on the altar, it was called a holocaust or whole burnt offereing and was the highest act of adoration. When only the fat was burned it was called either a sacrifice for thanksgiving or a sacrifice of expiation for sins committed....also called a sin-offering or simply a sin.

For the bloody sacrifice, he who offered the sacrifice laid his hand on the head of the victim, while the priest killed it and poured the blood on the altar or sprinkled the people with it. So, here, the most important part of the sacrifice was the pouring of the blood for by the shedding of the blood the life of the victim was offered.

(YOu can see how this is similiar to Christ shedding His blood for the life of the world.)

The holocaust was every morning and evening a 1-year old lamb was offered as a perpetual sacrifice.

Now, the important part is that in conjunction with these sacrifices there was an obligatory confession of sins in which the offender confessed his sin to the priest.

On the day of expiation, kept 5 days before the Feast of tabernacles, after the High Priest returns from the Holy of Holies, he took another goat and laid his hands on its head, confessed the sins of the whole people, and then drove the goat away in the wilderness laden with the people's sins...here they lost in the infinitude of God's mercy.

The significance of the Old testament sacrifices is that they are types of the most holy and world redeeming Christ. The bloody sacrifices were typical of His bloody sacrifice on the Cross, the unbloody sacrifice were typical of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and the meat offering of Holy Communion. All the sacrifices of the Old law found fulfillment in the sacrifices of our Lord becasue ---1st...He was the real Sacrifice and 2nd...it had infinite efficacy to blot out all sin and win grace for all men.

It was a real sacrifice for Christ was truly man and took the sins of His brethren upon Him. It had infinite efficacybecasue Christ is also true God and so able to make infinite satisfaction to the divine justice. The Sacrifice of Christ was a true holocaust because He shed all of His blood and was consumed by the fire of infinite love in honor of His heavenly Father. It was a sin-offering in the highest sense of the word becasue it reconciled heaven to earth and brought peace to the world. Since our Lord offered Himself as a Sacrifice, the typical sacrifices of the OLd Law have lost all efficacy and all legitimate existence.

No. The sacrifices of Abraham and Moses came before the sacrifice of Jesus, as did the first sacrifice of Abel and Cain. You can't change a time line or history simply because you or Paul or anyone else wishes to do so. Jesus showed the hebrew nation the true meaning behind the sacrifices that were made prior to his coming. The animal sacrifice was not given in rememberance of Jesus. It was done in rememberance of God and his covenant with them, and what they needed to do in order to be one with God. One can not do something in rememberance of one that hasn't existed yet and sacrifice was given in rememberance. Jesus became the living sacrifice, the living human example of what sacrifice is really meant to be and to accomplish. He was the fulfillment of that promise of self sacrifice.

You'd be better off looking to God for the answers than to Paul, or any of the apostles. They were only sent out into the world to testify as witnesses to the life of Jesus and what he did, his explanation of it, and the result of the leaving behind of self, which is a new life. Not to reinterpret God's word or change the history of the Hebrew nation. God needs no one to reinterpret his words. Nor does Jesus since his words did not contradict Gods. Jesus said that he came not to destroy, or change the law, but to uphold it. Paul decided he'd change it (if you can't destroy the messengers destroy the message, or at least rearrange it if you can't erase it.) And you only have Pauls word for it when he says he spoke with God. There were no witnesses to the event. Jesus had witnesses, the apostles, and his disciples and Paul of Tarsus was not one of them. The only thing that is trustworthy in the new testament is the apostles verbatim quotes of what Jesus said and the events that took place. Not the letters to the churches, or their interpretations of his words or Gods. Jesus said that God dwells within every man. If you take his word on this to be truth, and I do, than it is simply a matter of asking God and listening for the answer. And if for some reason you can't wait for the answer, or don't believe that he will speak to you and instead go to the bible for it, go to the gospels or the old testament. Not to the others. They are man's interpretations and words, not the words of either God or Jesus.

In the first examples from Eve with the self-importance sin of pride and on down, I note these are all sins that people commit in one degree or another. Christ was sinless and so that's why I cannot put Christ and self-importance and self-concern together.

The short of it is Self-importance is true of sinners, but never of Christ.

You are correct in saying that the Christ was never sinless, but Jesus was. Jesus did not become the Christ until after his death, and resurrection.

 

So, this is the voice of prophecy.  Prophets were meditators who took themselves into stillness, opened themselves to the universe and listened. Their prophecy is their attempt to put into words their experience.  Of course these words will be a natural reflection of their culture and times. It is up to us, contemporary readers, to understand their message as a finger pointing to something larger than ourselves.

 

Be well.

Again, check history...it supports Sacred Scripture. At the moment of Christ's death there was a darkening of the sun all over the earth from the 6th to the 9th hour, (something like an eclipse maybe) and then, the veil of the Temple was split in the middle.

Yes, Judaism continues to this day, but not the Judaism of Abraham, Moses, etc...that's become the religion of St.Peter, St.Paul and all the other Apostles and their successors who followed Christ and all His teachings.

Without a Temple, burnt offerings, no priesthood, and no Sanhedrin or ruling body, the Judaism that continues today by in large is the one that arose at Jabne from the school of Jochanan ben Zakkai and Hillel. All they had was a book and out of the book a new Judaism was created. The role of the Rabbi was to comment on the book, the commentary was known as the Midrash or collectivily as the Talmud which is the basis of the new Jewish religion.

We know that that time forward that Jewish life would be between the School of Hillel and the cause of political messianism after the model of Eleasar the Zealot and the School of Shammai.

So, Judaism today seems to flow from 2 bodies of law.

the veil of the Temple was split in the middle.

Who saw this event?

The temple of THE I AM, is not a place, it exists within all men, it can not be destroyed. It can be ignored but not destroyed except by THE I AM. And once THE I AM destroys it there is no longer a physical life or an ever lasting spirit. Judaism still exists whether there is an actual building standing or not, or whether sacrifice is still practiced or not. Christians should keep in mind that their religion has changed greatly over time as well. Does that mean that christianity no longer exists?

Yes, Judaism continues to this day, but not the Judaism of Abraham, Moses, etc...that's become the religion of St.Peter, St.Paul and all the other Apostles and their successors who followed Christ and all His teachings

Says who? Paul of Tarsus? And what or who may I ask gave him that right other than himself? It's become the religion of St. Peter? He was a hebrew, he remained a Hebrew even though he was an apostle. And what may I ask do the christians sacrifice? Not themselves, and not animals or grain etc. either. For one to simply say that it's become their religion does not make it so. The hebrews, and that includes Abraham and Moses, never worshipped their prophets, they maintained a strict worship of God alone. Jesus was a prophet, a man who through example showed to the hebrew nation, the true meaning of sacrifice and fulfilled the promise of God to the hebrew nation and in doing so he became more. Only the christians worship something other than god.

Good Morning Lula,

If I am in a box the box is the universe and all its myriad incarnations. I do not deny Jesus.  I do not deny your faith's point of view.  I do not deny Allah or Mohammed or Lao Tzu. All are aspects of the whole and the whole itself.

As to Christ's messiahship, I encourage you to believe he was so. For me, he did not fulfill the prophecy.  The world has not changed, still there is war, famine, greed.

The messianic message, in my view, is a message that speaks to an inner transformation: a letting go of self, self interest, and dualism. Its about awakening.

Once one is "awake" then everything changes. We realize our true nature as completely interdependent beings having no separate self.  We realize our thoughts, concepts, ideas, are just thoughts, concepts, and ideas. They are empty of any independent existence. Hell isn't hell, its just what we call it; heaven isn't heaven, its just what we call it.  Even the cup I sip my tea from is not a cup, its just what we call a cup. Infinity is us.

Be well.

 

Come on, Lula, it wasn't Jesus' death, it was the destruction of the Temple that forced the working out of rabbinic Judaism. Still, Judaism, at its core, remained the same, pure monotheism.

 

 

No worries, Lula. One cannot use reason to get it.

Be well.

And I encourage you to keep searching..and if in some way Christ reveals Himself to you, harden not your heart.

One does not need Christ to know the truth. If you as you so often say "love christ" then why do you not do as he himself did and said, and accept the truth that god lives within all men? That the power to find god also lives within and with God all things are possible, even the finding of God. No man needs another to find God. There was no one to show Abraham, or Moses, there was no Jesus, no apostles, no one but God.

Sodaiho speaks the truth. Reason can not find it. Reason belongs to the self, and the self belongs here and can go no further than here.

Lula posts:

Nightshades posts: #288

Hello Nightshades,

First, the piquant and provocative nature of discussing Judaism and Christianity is a given. Not conception of history, but history itself, accords that supernatural Jewish religion from the days of Abraham came to an end when the earthly mission of the Messias had been fulfilled. So when I claim that Hebraic Judaism was displaced by Christianity, I can assure you that it's never been about one-up-man-ship as you seem to be suggesting, rather it's always a matter of getting to the truth.

Once again, the world has only had one religion of God's making and that was Hebraic Judaism and it contained Christianity. In Hebraic Judaism, the only religion in the days before Christ, there was the Promise, Christ, and the family of David from which Christ was to come and did come. Judaism contained a priesthood of Aaron and Mosaic sacrifices, in pre Christian times, that the OLd Testament said would be displaced, as it has been, by a priesthood without genealogy, and a "clean oblation" in place of the bloody oblations of Old. Therefore, Catholics hold their religion, with its Christ-instituted priesthood and sacrifice (the Holy Mass), to be Judaism full-blossomed.





In saying this, you fall into the category of the people today who take these changes for granted.

Christ changed the world by establishing Christianity. The Christian belongs to 3 distinct societies, domestic, civil and religious, each one answering to to particular needs of man and all instituted by Almighty God.

Now go back and think about the condition of the lives of men, women and children who lived from the time of Adam until the establishment of Christianity. Ah, pretty bad.
In general, women and children had no rights whatsoever and treated as chattel. Slavery was common as was polygamy and divorce. The wealthy did no manual labor and if you were poor you might as well be dead. There was no such thing as property rights or social justice, charitable institutions, hospitals, orphanages, and so forth.

Christ redeemed mankind not only spiritually, but He is our Temperol Benefactor as well. Christianity is truly unique in that it brought about new ideas of human rights, defended private property, elevated workmen and gave dignity to manual work, etc.