August 2, 2005

4:04 PM I am confused by whom I am addressing in the Muslim camp. I guess I am trying to get some ammunition for Brother Jarvis. I.e., to the Muslim on the street.

There is a single choice in life that all men must make in order to prepare them for the life to come. A single profound choice. Will you be one of a band that is working together for a common good, or will you be a loner who forsakes the band?

The band that I am talking about is the human race, all humans. In this life we either pledge allegiance to the band to stick together and to help each other, or else to cut our natural and instinctive ties and go it alone, i.e., where we no longer help each other, but rather use each other.

That is the difference that everyone must choose who intends to prepare himself for the life to come. Either you stay with the band and work within the band, or else you go it alone and the band becomes merely an additional resource for personal advantage. The prophet Jesus spoke of the former as the “good shepherd” and the latter as the “hirelings” whose who allegiance is to their pay.

Now according to my understanding of my sources regarding Islam I see a go-it-alone and others-be-damned approach to things. And this is the hireling. And I can assure you that God has no interest in having hirelings about him. They are merely product who will do anything for a buck (= paradise).

The choice then is to follow in the footsteps of the good shepherd or in the footsteps of a teaching where it is all up to the individual alone, and the others be damned.

We need to establish this point. We will take two pillars of Islam and focus on them. We will consider bowing and giving. These two pillars mean simply this, if you don’t do them then it is hell for sure; if you do do them, then, assuming all else is ok, there is a good chance that you will target paradise. Therefore the Muslim, who is in pursuit of the buck, does not make any distinction between the inane bowing and the moral giving. And it is a matter of indifference to the Muslim whether he gives the money to the poor or burns it up in a sacrifice, it is merely a ticket which is necessary (but not sufficient) to get him out of hell. And so we see that the Muslim, when he gives to the poor, only looks like it is a person concerned about others while actually, in his heart, he is indifferent and is merely engaged in a business transaction with Allah which could produce great personal gain. He has sold his soul as a hireling, those who are unfit to approach the seat of Abba.

Thus in his crowded mosques the Muslim is quite alone and disjointed from everyone else, and it is always only a group and not a community (even though they enjoy using the term).

The only community of humans is the Christian community, for there the supreme guide is the Christ love, the three loves of Christ: neighbor (as self), fellow Christian and God.

I think now the Muslim needs to consider very carefully following a faith which calls upon him to go it entirely alone, or to look at a faith where all people are working together for the good of all people.

Now we might introduce the doubts about the incredible Muslim tale by the even more incredible Joseph Smith.

Now we must finally give the true story of Jesus so that the Muslim can see that he is missing the boat and has made an unwise choice.

This is the actual make up of things. There is a moral physics in existence and it is of this sort, like attracts like and unlike repels unlike.

First of all we must understand the difference between the good shepherd and the hireling. It is a difference of heart and where the good shepherd actually cares about each of the sheep and the hireling who simply does not care about the sheep, but only his pay. The interior of the heart is so shaped by these two dispositions. A follower of Jesus has the heart of the good shepherd and these people, at the resurrection, will gravitate to those who are kindred in spirit. Those who are hirelings are unlike those who are good shepherds and thus they are kept apart. But each hireling is also unlike all the other hirelings (each exalting a different self), and so avoids not only the good shepherd spirit but also all other spirits.

Now even though it is inexplicable we know that the human naturally is evil and will put his own self above the common good. It is natural to him. This is exemplified in the continuing selfishness of the Muslim in going after pay. He was willing to do evil before the “pay increase” of Allah and will now do whatever it is that Allah pays him to do, and it simply doesn’t matter what it is and indeed he will be reward for doing anyway what he sincerely believes is the will of Allah.

Therefore the Muslim, along with countless others, is in danger of dying with the heart of a hireling and will have to fend for himself in the afterlife. For he cannot approach the table of God since he is unlike in heart. He will not even want to do that, but seek out desperately others who think that he is the most wonderful of all and the most put upon by fate; and of course he will find none, and so will have to settle without the company of any human. This is properly called hell. Utter isolation, and it is precisely this that the Muslim is presently caught up in.

The table is God is for those of the spirit of Christ,, where all are equally important, and some even more so (fellow Christians,, fellow shepherds, friends).

This information was revealed to us through Jesus and the certification of this message is given to us in our own understanding of good and evil as just expressed above in terms of the heart, for we know (Genesis 3:22) the difference ourselves.

Now to the necessity of the death of Jesus. The point is for the Holy Spirit to enter into the hearts of men. But they must love each other and prefer each other over themselves, and the disciples steadfastly refused to that in their actions even though they were so sure that they were doing just as Jesus said. They always remained hirelings and in pursuit of their own gain, “lording it over others like the gentile kings were wont to do.” He died then in order to show them what this love is that is called discipleship so that they would finally understand, and then he was resurrected from the dead in order for them to realize that he was not kidding when he told them of the coming of this Holy Spirit. They then did experience the new birth at Pentecost. For they finally had come to love and prefer each other.

This new birth then is the evidence of the authenticity of the Christian story. The sinner enters into the Christian faith in order to avoid hell, just as the Muslim convert does with the Islamic faith, but then the difference is enormous. In the Christian faith there is an actual transformation which is experienced (given sufficient time) where it become progressively easier to comply with the law of love. These people then are fit for tabling with the Lord High God, Jesus’ Abba, for they are no longer hirelings in pursuit of personal gain, but rather children of the King and welcomed at his table, along with all of that spirit.


4:46 PM Actually the question is this: is God such that he wants a free man (able to make his own decisions independently of self interest) who chooses a good heart, or a slave (not able to act independently of self interest) and who remains with the heart and disposition of the hireling. Jesus (according to the Christian scriptures) calls the free man and the Koran calls the slave.

The world must eventually choose between these two great sets of mind and the choice, when universal, will be unbreakable and eternal, either freedom or slavery. The Christian will make it universal through examples of love and thus a free choice, and the Muslim will make it universal through the destruction of those who want to remain free.

Perhaps we should ask the Muslim: if you could create a world, would you create a Muslim world or a Christian world? Would you rather live in a world where each sells out the other for personal gain, or would you rather live in a world where people want to cooperate for their common gain?

I think we ought to say something about the atonement, how Jesus died for the justification of the human species, and where each individual, in his conversion, dies to sin and takes on, only in life, the punishment of that sin in terms of the new obstacles that honestly now lays upon him. This is called bearing the cross and the Christian does it without grumbling, even though now he is already in communion with God through Christ (and shouldn’t suffer any ill). The Christian bears his cross of woes as Jesus also did, only the Christian, unlike Jesus, has no reason for complaint for the weight, for some of it is the evil that he, in his earlier, pre-new-birth life was rightfully due.

The trinity is nice and entails the play between the left and right hands.