Journal of April 14, 2005

You want to follow me but you don’t know where I am going and yet you say that you are prepared to go there with me? that you faith in me is so great? that your faith will not falter and you will not leave the path? you cannot know this until you see it in yourselves, and great Peter here, my great Peter, will lead your charge of my followers.

The only hope for the world now is that we spread something new abroad in the world, and it can only work like yeast, in this life and in that life. And so you have to get into my step and then to walk in those steps and others will come to walk in your steps, and then a new spirit is spread abroad in the world. But for you to fulfill my steps, you, unfortunately in the flesh but glory in the spirit, you must then go all the way (except for my beloved here--I spare you that glory, o my love, for I could not bear finally all sorrow). You must go all the way and that means to my death. O I know, you have nosed about and realize that people are actually going to make me their king. But I am already their king, and need no authority from them. I will lead them in the only path possible for redemption, but they will not follow me for it is too gruesome for them, but they will follow you as you go toward your own sacrifice. I know you are sure that I am about to be crowned, but I tell you it will be a crown of thorns. You will all soon see.

Now where I am going to show the world (but actually immediately only in you) the love of God for you, for you seated here with me now, those who know me as I know myself, those who have seen me in my nakedness and shamelessness. The love is for the world, but only you will have the eyes to see the glory of this love, and then it is to you that the world must then turn in order to accept this proffered love and to stop worrying and to take up their cross and follow me.

What counts with us is the spirit, the heart, the fact that we love each other, although you cannot yet imagine the love that I have for you, for I go to show you what love is, it is for your eyes, as for no others, that this vision is given, so that it will be you who will be me to those others, as we pass along and pass forward the love of God for all people.

As a man thinketh in his soul, then so is it. It is that alone, and not what a man does that makes him pleasing to God. It is who he is, and not what he does. If he is good, then good things will ensue, and if evil, then evil. And you yourselves know what is good and still you bicker and come to me to decide for you, but I will not show you what you yourselves already know as the Genesis 3:22 states so plainly. You don’t need to be told what is the will of God, for you know his will already, for you know it is to do good, and you and he knows that you know good and evil as well as he and therefore you have no excuse for what you do. don’t ask me to decide that which you already know. There are gentiles (Paul now also speaking in my conception of Jesus) who are naturally good, who are so attuned to their fellow man that they want to help and to give assistance. They have a spirit which is holy and which prompts them and to which they respond. What counts in being a follower of mind is three fold. You are to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Are you willing to do that? You are to love a fellow disciple more than self? Do you really think you are prepared to do that. And then most of all you are love the God who made you and made you in a unique mold and did so because he loves you and whose greatest delight is to be allowed to do that by having people who are willing to help him.

And so don’t tell people that they have to say this or that when they want to become a follower and be assured of my love (through you testimony), but tell them to do this and that and to expect a new spirit to engulf them. Then tell them that spirit is my spirit and that is exactly what they are expect and then to realize indeed that God does in fact love them, for he is remaking them in his own image. And then they will tell others what God has done for them and is doing for them.

It is not what you say about this belief or that belief. That is not important. Nor is it important as to what you put into you mouth or into your ear or anything else, nor what you wear nor the language you use. What is important is that out of you comes always good things, for you will then be in good spirit, once he comes to you, and you are not yet ready. You must understand. It is not eating with the left or right hand that makes any difference, but entirely on how it is interpreted in the various groups of people you will encounter. Let customs remain as they are, but instill a love of God in all things, e.g., perhaps using your left hand to clean your body, and keeping the right hand clean for ceremonies of honor and respect, and this and that sign. Spread like yeast. Each one affecting one, even as I am affecting you, and so you will affect others.

Look, what really counts now is not me, but you. You are going to remain in the world after I am gone. You are going to have to understand what I mean by the cross in order to see what you yourselves will become for others on my behalf. Rest assured that I shall suffer with each you and will do so first and will continue to do so for your sake

7:32 PM There is so much to say.

Regarding Judas. This is suggested to me. Judas is a criminal whom Jesus has asked to follow him. Judas is taken by the miracles and realizes this man could take over the government and even throw the gentiles out. And Judas naturally, as a thief, would want to be there to reap what great benefits he could. And so when Jesus sets Judas free by saying that he would not use his miracle powers anymore and would just let the events unfold as planned (by God), Judas realizes that Jesus has rejected his chance to be king and will be killed. And so, true to his colors, he figures, like every good criminal, what his best chance was and he settled on betrayal and 30 pieces of silver. The criminal was invited and the criminal refused to change.

But the disciples had also not changed, and inn their shock at the turn of events they deserted the Lord and left him to stand alone. Indeed he had told them to be satisfied with him and to let the others go. But they did not follow all the way, and most deserted and one stood there with his mother. They honestly expected him to be crowned king and establish his great realm, for they never could really believe that he would be killed, for that would make the whole thing senseless, that he was meaningless and another voice crying in the wilderness.

They could not understand that he had to die in order to bring them to the ultimate sacrifice which they would be expected to make as his disciples. He was asking them to do what he did and for the sake of others just as he was doing this for their sakes, to show the extent of the love that he had for each of them and for all people through them. If he had not gone to the death then he would have negated the demand that was placed on him to show his disciples the extent of what God is willing to do for their sake, if they would only believe. He was to die for the sake of mankind, in order to show them the extent of this love and to invite them to join their heavenly father in the spread of this love, even to the extent of showing them in their own persons this love of God.

By dying for them they would then understand this love and would be then prepared to receive the Holy Spirit which goes also to that extent in love, namely in the crucifixion. If he had stopped then he would have shown a limit to the love of God. God showed a limit in the rescue of Isaac. God rescued Isaac and would rescue all people. But the only way this rescue can be effected among free and willful beings would be to show that there is no limited to God’s love not only for Isaac but for all people.

So Jesus must show the limitlessness of God’s love and attention, and that means an actual death; anything else would have fallen short of the mark, and that God will not do. Jesus could not ask that others carry a cross all the way to death unless he also had been ready to do that and that in this case calls for the actual fact.

Every one who follows Jesus must have the expectation of a possible death for the sake of his calling, and this is impossible unless Jesus himself has died. The way of the cross leads to personal and individual Calvary and if someone is not actually killed in the course of life for the sake of Christ and his gospel of hope and joy then that is just the way that things happened to have worked out, for the Calvary must be our expectation.

I have some slight expectation of being killed by some religious fanatic due to some of the things that I have said. I have to accept this both as a Christian and then also as an American. No one can be afraid about what he says, but only about what he does (intelligently and rationally understood). I hate to think that those about me might be in danger and am thankful that the danger is likely small, for I am not well known.

Now if you are going to redeem the world, then what else can you do but die? If the world were good and made up of good spirits, then there would be no reason to redeem it and thus no reason to for for it. But the world is possessed of an evil spirit, and so in order that the spirit of redemption might work, it is necessary that we go to Calvary in our determination to the three loves.

7:53 PM Thought. Loving God, in a practical sense, means that we are to love our enemies.

Then we would have: love neighbor as self, Christian more than self, and enemy absolutely.

????

8:01 PM So then, Jesus has to show his disciples what will be expected of them and all his followers, and cannot simply talk about it (for they don’t believe him). It is only to those to whom the Holy Spirit will come. They have to know what this love entails.

But then they finally in the last analysis, no matter what happens, they are never to be afraid, for I will see you again. I shall die, but I shall appear to you again.

Again you shake your heads and smile and say that I just don’t realize how much popular support I have, and when I tell you that my kingdom is not of this world, but is a realm that is within each person. Those who love as I do (the three loves) they are my friends and I lay down my life for you in order that you might finally understand what we are really about and put aside your strife and your royal gentile games and receive my Spirit, the Holy Spirit.

I have always had the Holy Spirit and I want to share Him with you that you might become like me even as I have become like you. You can only receive this Holy Spirit when you are willing to die for each other, and you are not yet even willing to die for me, for you will all desert me. But again, do not be afraid. Do not ever again ever fear anything. That is my final word. I know that I go to my death for I know that regardless of the crowds it is necessary that I die and so I know that I shall die, and it shall be for you, my beloved disciples, my children, my younger brothers, my other self. so that you in turn my proclaim me both in your words and your deeds, for what I do you will also have to do for my sake.

8:08 PM Now then, with regard to the atonement we shall think in this wise. In order to be a friend of Christ we must be willing to die, and this is conveyed by the death of Jesus, the one man who had no reason to die, no deserving of any punishment. Now we are in pursuit of Calvary and so we we die daily to our self and we live for the kingdom. This daily dying is part and parcel of the way of the cross. And we undertake it for the sake of Christ. And so even though infused with the Holy Spirit and new creatures in Christ we still stuff and we do not complain and even count that as the just deserts of the old person we used to be, but who now is dead and cannot suffer this punishment, and so we take on these ills as though they were punishments for the old man, for not for us, for we are now new in Christ and are not due any punishment. And so Jesus does once and for all in his person for the sake of all of us precisely that which each Christian does in taking his cross daily and the ills accruing from that, while a just punishment for the old man, is accepted by the new man as merely the weight of the cross, just as Jesus did.

The cross is heavy, but Jesus did it with you and by dying himself enabled you to understand and receive the Holy Spirit and now do in your own (in faith) perfected bodies for the ills that await you, just as Jesus did, as no longer our own, but has having been borne by Jesus.

?????

In a word for the Muslims: Jesus died in order that the Holy Spirit might enter in upon the hearts of sinful and self serving men. Even the criminals are welcomed to receive this Holy Spirit. The point of Jesus was not to convey the commands of God, for this was already known by all people in Genesis 3:22, but merely to reveal within each a yearning for a better life than money. the kingdom is within. God wants you to love each other as he loves you. This is all he wants. You don’t need laws and regulations, except merely as expression of some general rational agreement or as indication of experience, e.g., driving on the right side of a road.

We don’t need Jesus telling us to do this or that, for we already know that. We need him to tell us how we can do this or that, for we falter in faith, just as Abraham did. And for this we need the Holy Spirit (even those gentiles of Paul who are naturally good, for then they already possess that spirit).

8:23 PM The point relative to the Muslims: we don’t need God to tell us what we should do, for we know what we should do and that is to cooperate with each other to make a better world. We can actually make a better world if people would cooperate with each other. And so the Christian (of Paul and suggested in the gospel accounts) is able to live in any culture, in any condition, and to serve Christ by carrying his cross in that condition and at that moment of time.

8:26 PM Glory to God.

9:11 PM Thinking the limits with Mohammed. The Moon can sway back and froth within limits, not no more, and must gradually go from here to there is a spiral path. It minds its manners and it stays within the limits. Willingly, we are told by Mohammed.

Now what are the limits regarding the animals? not to kill more than you can eat at once and to have sex only with the opposite sex and not to eat any but certain food, unless you are sick, or something like that.

I wonder?

The slave will have his limits. He must stop what he is doing at this and that hour and bow to Mecca. He must give a certain amount to the poor (which morally is no different here than taking some paper money and burning it as a sacrifice). He must no marry more than four wives at once and must not beat them more than a little. He must treat a Muslim with a certain respect, etc., etc. Within these limits you, like the animals, can do what you want to.

9:24 PM I think the burning of the money may be an excellent way of trying to convey Kant’s thinking with regard to Islam being an “extortionist” religion. The Muslim must bow down and he must give to the poor. This is the only way of avoiding hell, and even it may be iffy in terms of adequacy to this purpose, and so there is no morality in it at all, and the effect would be the same if we were told to give so much money to people named Smith or to burn paper money, not to enrich God inn any way, which would be absurd, but simply in order that we suffer in a certain way and to a certain degree in order to avoid a lot more suffering later. Take it or leave it, but suffer you will. He is called benevolent because he doesn’t require more than such and such an amount or percent.

If you don’t do this, you go to hell; if you do it (and of course sincerely) and don’t screw up too much (going beyond limits) then you will get paradise, although what you get in that paradise can vary depending on whether you do the recommended things. So you can have the joy of a revenger here on earth, but you will definitely be better off if you defer that joy and settle instead of a joy that Allah himself devises for those who comply with his recommendations and control themselves while here on earth.

Nothing more really need be said. The Muslim is prepared to do anything that is called for by Allah (as sincerely understood) and indeed immediately and certainly without the least question, especially not about right and wrong, for what Allah calls for is right, ipso facto, and what he forbids is wrong. The Muslim is faced with these clear signs in the Koran as evidence of this truth. He sees the regularity of the heavens and the limits on the animals and now learns of the limits placed on him, which he will do one way or the other, willingly or unwillingly, either pain now, or pain later, much greater pain later. He is told clearly, by means of clear signs, of the specific limits set upon his slaves by the Lord Allah. he is really quite benevolent and it is even possible to love him for not applying additional burdens and requirements.