Ancient wisdom says that there are three phases
in every man's development towards perfection.

The first one is physical,
enjoying life through our senses,
our physical strength and abilities.

The second one is mental,
directing our minds to studies and logic,
developing knowledge and understanding

The third one is spiritual,
redefining ourselves, discovering in the process
our ultimate destiny and our unity with all there is

* * *

Author's Note

My thanks and gratitude go to RAO, whom I would like to know better, to my companion Lani, who put up with my "moods", and to Annie who lend me her editing experience.
All or parts of this book may be freely copied for non-commercial purpose, as long as a proper reference is made to it, and nothing is taken out of context or changed in any way.

                                                     *  *  *

Foreword

The way this book was written was startling.
The poems emerged first. Suddenly, I would feel compelled to go to my computer and write them down, one at a time. Then appeared the rest of the book, chapter by chapter, in five sessions.
Then rested for a couple of years. I knew it would be published one day when the time was right, and in an appropriate way. In the meantime, I worked on a sequel, which I called "The New Man", and although it didn’t flow the same way, I never the less added it as a second Part. 
So I hardly feel responsible for what I have written here, and it took me several years to quite understand myself what was meant.
There is no intention to hurt anyone's feelings or beliefs. The only purpose for this book is to provoke thought, and to stimulate a fresh perception of ourselves as human beings.

May you enjoy what you will read, and God bless you.

Rudolf Niehaus

News from the Kingdom of Heaven

Part I

or The Hidden Bride

Return to Eden

The moment we step through the curtain of matter
into life, as we wished for, to learn and to grow,
we forget where we came from, or where we are headed;
We cannot remember. Was it above? Was it below?

The ruse of the snake got us caught one day
to believe that we too could make things run,
now surely we have to, always and ever,
to earn our living, and get things done.

Innocence and faith is what we have lost
in gaining the knowledge of "Good and Evil",
the way back to Eden is perilous and long,
it sure is not easy to give up the devil.

But somehow, it seems, we all do remember
the times we were happy, being all in one,
and so we must die now, and learn to surrender,
regain our innocence, and then it's done.

* * *

Chapter I

Twenty centuries ago, a carpenter's son put aside his tools one day, embraced his parents and set out for the rocky and shadeless roads of Palestine. On the wayside under a tree, in villages, in temples and synagogues, he would gather people to listen to what he had to say. "Repent," he urged them, "for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand... Love your neighbor as yourself... Do good to those who hate and persecute you... and love your enemies. The suffering, the blind and the sick he encountered, he healed them in the name of his father, God.
The miracles he thus performed attracted ever greater crowds. Many of his fellow men believed him to be the Messiah the prophets had announced for so long. Some even wanted to make him their King.
The leaders of his time, the Scribes, Pharisees, High Priests and other religious authorities grew extremely upset over this man wandering around the country and performing miracles everywhere.
For certain, they had been expecting a Messiah too, but none of his kind. They longed for a mighty King to come and take charge of their problems and destiny. Someone, for instance, who would put an end to their sufferings and hardship inflicted by those arrogant Romans that occupied their country. No, they had no consideration for an unknown carpenter's son coming from nowhere, having nothing to show for but his absurd message of some preposterous kingdom of love, forgiveness and eternal life. They simply didn't want to hear about it.
Even more, this strange man and his foolish teachings were a threat to their God-given order and undisputed leadership. This man, in fact, was outright dangerous. He had to be stopped, and fast. They decided to have him killed.

The Romans in their power and glory couldn't care less about any religious quarrels among Jews. However, there was the possibility of a divided and restless populace growing into an uprising revolt, and this was a very serious matter. Dealing with it in their usual way, Pontius Pilate, then Roman Governor of Judea and Palestine, ordered the man crucified.
So, one afternoon, just out of town, at a place named Golgotha, meaning the 'hill of the skull', the carpenter's son died, tortured and nailed to a wooden cross. Above his head, on a shapeless board, someone had written four letters: "INRI", the initials for "Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judeorum", Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews

Today, twenty long and eventful centuries later, nearly one and a half billion people on earth affirm to believe in his message of a Heavenly Kingdom, Christians.
In countless churches, and under various denominations around the globe, they worship him as their Lord and Savior, and pray for his Kingdom to come. I am one of them, but I also have a real problem with it.
My problem is that I cannot see any betterment in all those Christians who have lived through the ages. They all professed to believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior, and they worshiped him as their Lord, but were they better people than Non-Christians? Were they more loving, more forgiving, or more caring than those "heathens" they tried to convert to Christianity. Did those Christians do what Jesus told us to do.
No, they did not!
Christian Nations conquered the continents, enslaved, killed, and oppressed the natives they found living there. "Kill them all," a prince of the Catholic Church ordered his Soldiers, "God will recognize His own and sort them out." The reason was that nobody could remember anymore who had been baptized and so had become a human being, while those who had refused to become Christians still were considered animals and therefore could be slain as such.

Terrible, isn't it? But what about us today? Are we more loving and forgiving than those Christians in the past? Are we more understanding and compassionate than a Jew, a Moslem, a Buddhist or even an Atheist? Are we more forgiving and helping each other more than those we want to save from the devil? Again, unfortunately, the answer is quite obvious: "We are not!

• Christian Nations exploit the resources of this world without any other concern than to realize huge profits and to satisfy their own needs.

• Christian Nations live in abundance, letting millions of people, all over the world, year by year, starve to death and live in extreme poverty.

• Christian Nations, even in our modern times, have made unconditional war against each other, killing millions of people, leaving untold destruction, hunger and misery in their path.

• Christian Nations have rounded up and systematically exterminated millions of their fellow men who were different by race or religion. And, finally,

• Christian Nations have developed and even used modern means of total destruction, killing a hundred thousand of their fellow men in a blink of an eye.

"You are the salt of the earth," Jesus said. But are we Christians today the salt of the earth? I do not think so.
Jesus must have foreseen this for He continued, "but if the salt has lost it's flavor, wherewith shall it be salted?" Good question! In answering it, we are forced to admit that we Christians, who are supposed to be this salt of the earth, have lost our flavor long since.
I believe that twenty centuries of sincerely praying to the Lord, of sincerely trying to observe His teachings and commandments should have brought this world His peace.
I believe that one and a half billion Christians who live in this world today should be able to bring about better societies than those we all suffer through now.
I believe that one fourth of all mankind should be able to establish this Kingdom of Heaven at least somewhere here on earth. As Jesus said already 2000 years ago that it was at hand, what are Christians still waiting for?

• Because, now as then, His gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven is considered impractical and unrealistic for our common way of life.

• Because, now as then, His gospel is perceived contrary and subversive to all our existing values, laws, order, interests and leadership.

• Because, now as then, we associate His gospel with dreamers and fools only; with losers who cannot deal with "real life"

Thus, the message of a Kingdom of Heaven which Jesus brought us still continues to hang on the cross where it was nailed to twenty centuries ago. His last words, therefore, still remain also addressed to us, "Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do."

• Because, as then, we love our good neighbors only. As then, we are ready to kill our enemies whoever we believe they are, and for whatever reason we may think is right and justified.

• Because, as then, we continue to judge others relentlessly in our own righteousness, and so easily overlook our own failures and shortcomings.

• Because, as then, we cherish money and our own creations more than any spiritual principle, "the bread you know not of"', or even than life itself, except, for sure, when it comes to our own.

Although nothing apparently has really and dramatically changed in our ways of life since Jesus Christ walked the earth, there is something, however, all Christians and their respective churches have done very well in the past, and they still do so today.
They have devoted themselves to lifelong studies; have given His Gospel form and structure; teaching a meaning that is based upon grammar and words. His Kingdom of Heaven they have assigned to an out of time and place existence which seems to suit everyone's individual interests just fine, needless to say. They have placed it somewhere they are sure never to reach it, in Heaven, thus forgetting or ignoring that it is within each of us, as Jesus said.
In the same process they have declared themselves helpless sinners, having been born in sin and forced to live in sin without hope, except for God's grace only, some day, somewhere...
They also have convinced themselves that it will need as much as the Lord's personal intervention and physical appearance here on earth to establish His reign, and that nothing else will do. That He will do it for us, and soon, and that He will do it without any effort or pain for us, so that we may continue standing around praising Him.
In accepting all this, Christians are looking pretty good in their self-made beliefs. They all are clearly off the hook. Once saved by a church, they all are going straight to Heaven now. They do not need to do anything at all anymore, except to wait and praise the Lord. In the meantime and until He comes, they can go about their life and their affairs as usual, making sure that nothing will happen to them and, especially, that nothing will change their lives while they are here in this world.
As life does go on and on, there may be some surprise ahead for many of us Christians, I am afraid.
"Repent," Jesus urged again and again. In no way did He only mean that we should feel sorry or sad about what we did in the past. No, what He really meant was: Realize what you are doing and CHANGE! Change your values! Change your purpose! In doing so you will change your life!
He said: "Follow me! I am the way! I am the example! Make my values your values!. Pick up your cross as I did mine!"
Never ever did He tell us to have a good time now that He had saved us, or to make a lot of money and live comfortably until He would return and rescue us from our evil world. Remember the story of the clever girls and the stupid ones awaiting the bridegroom with their lamps?
He also didn't say that it would be enough to go to church on Sundays and praise Him as our Savior. To the contrary, He warned us in saying: "Not everyone who says Lord, Lord will go into the Kingdom, but the one who does the will of the Father." Isn't this all clear enough? Isn't this precise? Can there be any way around it?
But let's not despair. Although Christians do not seem to have progressed much over the two thousand years of their journey to the Kingdom of Heaven, there is still great hope. It appears that His Kingdom is finally coming now, and that it is coming like a thief in the night, as it was said it would.
Amazingly, though, most Christians who so fervently pray for it to come, are not even realizing yet that it is coming, and that it is coming fast, faster than ever before. Obviously, something is happening to people all over the world, to "heathens" and Christians alike. Something which may suggest that mankind is getting prepared now for the change which is proclaimed to come about one day.
For never ever before have so many come to realize that there is more to a human being than just flesh, blood and bones, and a more or less effective mind.
Never before in the past have so many questioned themselves who they are, why they are here, and what they are living for on this earth. Never ever before have so many searched for their spiritual identity.
We can observe a major shift in consciousness taking place everywhere, all over the world. It seems that the end of mankind to live in darkness and blindness about itself finally approaches. The process of a general spiritual awakening of the masses has begun now, and will inexorably continue growing and expanding.
Moreover, and exactly as two thousand years ago, most of our modern time Pharisees, Priests, Scribes and experts in holy scriptures do not like what is happening now either. Every fundamental change is frightening. It threatens old established power structures and old familiar beliefs and values.
It is no surprise then that these modern Pharisees, Priests and Scribes will do all they can to ensure that the blind continues to lead the blind, and that both remain in darkness.

* * *

Religious Fundamentalists maintain that God created the world and everything on it in just six days, and then rested on the seventh. Some experts in sacred scriptures even still believe that all this happened only some four thousand years ago. Some others still stubbornly claim that the earth is flat, and that it is the God-appointed center of the whole universe. Their unwavering beliefs are such that no physical evidence can change their mind.
They do not want to know! They do not want to see their small world change into something they are not ready yet nor willing to understand. You may give those Christians a free ticket for a flight around the world, and they wouldn't take it. It suits them perfectly well to think the earth is flat.
However, God gave us a mind for us to use and try to understand His creation and His ways. Not all at once, this is impossible. No, slowly, as we live and grow. I, for instance, have been wondering all my life long what God has been doing ever before and after He created our world in six days and then rested on the seventh. This gives us a single short week only of all the eternity I was told He exists.
Some people now may say that what God does in His own spare time is none of my business. I, however, prefer to think God wants me to understand what He is doing and how He does it, so I may learn from it.
Then, on the other side, fiercely opposed to all ideas about a single creative power, there are the BIG BANG people, modern scientists. These sagacious men and women have put a tremendous effort into scanning the universe during endless nights. Patiently and with great care they catalogued and mapped some of the millions and billions of stars and some of the millions and billions of galaxies. In doing this, they discovered also that there had to be even more stars and even more galaxies which they were unable yet to find. Agonizingly, they went into deep thought about it.
As nobody, not even God, could be so powerful as to create all this, it had to be something which had created itself. Thus they came to the unavoidable conclusion that all had started with a BIG BANG. After this initial BIG BANG, the universe, our planet and life on earth simply became what it is now today through an evolutionary process of selection of the fittest for survival. Their famous theory of evolution.
Reasonable and thoughtful as this theory may be, it doesn't satisfy me either because these men and women of science conveniently fail to specify who or what set off this initial BIG BANG. They also very suitably forget to tell us who or what set up those laws which make this fantastic evolution possible. Besides, they further have failed so far to explain the sudden changes and jumps we can observe in the evolutionary process of life on earth.

So, one day, wanting to know what really did happen, I decided to simply disregard any established hierarchy of self-proclaimed leadership in science or religion and to talk to God directly. I found Him where most people do not look for Him, within me. As it was a Sunday, it was His day off and He had time to listen to my little problem.
He listened and seemed very pleased actually that someone should have come to Him for simple advice only. More often He is used to being blamed for something He didn't do, or tearfully implored to solve a problem He didn't create. So He shut off the TV worship channel and talked to me.
"Listen, Son," He said with infinite love and patience, "don't be misled. It's easy enough to understand. You see, you live in a world confined by time and space. I do not ! I created your world. Therefore, I am beyond its boundaries. For Me, there is no time nor space. There is no past, no present or future, no beginning and no end. All is now, at this very moment, at the same time." He paused to let this idea sink in. Seeing that I was still confused, He continued....
"Well, to give you a more comprehensible picture, consider that a thousand of your years are not a second for Me. In this way you may realize that my days do not have twenty four hours, but millions and billions of years. It also may be of some help to you, if you think of six steps rather than six days."
He then gave me an indulgent smile and added, "besides, son, I didn't rest on the seventh day because I was tired from my six days of hard work. I had it written, so you may rest from your extensive labors and intense efforts at least once a week, and try to think about how you fit into all this."
With His words still ringing in my mind I read Genesis again. Now it did make sense in any way I looked at it. I marveled at the gigantic size and proportions of this undertaking. I also discerned each new day God intervened in His creative work to introduce something new, which then took millions and millions of years to grow into what He had visioned it to be.
Then, on the sixth day, after billions of years of creating stars and galaxies, our world, plants and animals, He created man. In His own image He created him, it says, and with a free will and his own mind; and He set him over all He had made.
Man was rather pleased at first, and he had good reason to be, because with the image of God always present in his mind and heart life was paradise. But, gradually, man became conscious of his own mind and his free will. After that, what else could have been expected than big trouble.
What had begun to aggravate man in becoming self-aware was that God had withheld something important from him. Even worse, God had forbidden him to find out about it by punishment of death.
So he was ready and all ears when someone came along one day who seemed to know all about it and assured him that he wouldn't die at all. To the contrary, he was promised, man would become like God Himself, because he would gain the precious knowledge of Good and Evil.
It's obvious, and God should have known that man could never resist such temptation. He had to find out what it was God wouldn't allow him to experience, and he tried. Boom, suddenly he not only knew, but he got more than he had bargained for. He found himself confined now to this world of Good and Evil, this world of duality, this world of opposites, our world.
The snake had been right. He didn't die. He was still alive. However, what God had said would happen, also did. He did die spiritually. His natural awareness of being the son of God, of living in oneness with God and through God's grace and power only, died. God's likeness and image in his consciousness went out like a light bulb, covered by layers of matter.
Man now found out that there seemed to be God and... someone else. Someone different, separate, someone having to make decisions on his own instead of living in the flux of God. At first man was very scared, but as his ego grew and got stronger, he gradually forgot about the Kingdom of Heaven. Man began to enjoy living in the flesh.
However, God's eternal image did not die. It cannot die. It merely was erased from man's consciousness. Sooner or later, as God's creation is perfect and remains perfect within His eternal now, His image will pierce the hiding clouds again. Some day it will hit our consciousness like a lightening stroke and without warning.
It is the day we meet our soul !

* * *

A well-known European surgeon of the early 20^th century once remarked laughing that in all the human bodies he had cut open or dissected he never had found the slightest trace of a human soul. Scientifically, he then declared, a soul does not exist in the human body.
I take it he wanted to make a joke as, indeed, this is an aberrant way to look for God's image. It's like trying to find out with a knife if you have sugar in your coffee. What it clearly shows, however, is that to whatever length we may argue to the contrary, we all still identify ourselves as physical beings mostly. To define a person we describe him how he looks, what he does, and mainly what he owns.
Spiritual life is something which we will worry about later. Spiritual life begins for us only once we are dead. So, in a way, we charge our whole life to some kind of spiritual "Visa/Master Card" with, evidently, no earnest intentions to ever pay while we are alive here on earth. In the meantime, we quietly and furtively live our days away without much thought, counting upon the Lord's unlimited credit line of grace and forgiveness in Heaven, later.
He surely will forgive us, there is no doubt. He will understand and forgive us at least "seventy times seven" every single day, for that is what He asks us to do, and He sure cannot do less Himself. However, there is something I do not expect Him to do, and that is for Him to remodel the laws of creation and evolution He set up on the sixth day with the purpose to bring forth man in His own image.
It may, indeed, be very convenient for us to believe that man was created perfect but then failed. And, as we do not want to feel guilty about something we don't remember having done, we point to Adam and Eve as the bad guys who did it. But what do you think was this famous apple Eve took a bite from and then gave it to Adam? It certainly was not an apple, that's for sure. So what was it?
Well, I don't know it for certain either, but try with me to follow my boundless imagination trailing along on this subject.

Adam and Eve are in Paradise in their pure spiritual condition, vibrantly alive. All around them are wild beasts and gentle ones, obviously all enjoying life. Now, as Eve looks around and sees the beautiful flowers in the meadows, the trees in the forests and the birds in the sky, she finds that she cannot really sense and experience what the plants and animals seem to feel and experience. The whole beautiful nature surrounding them somehow escapes them at the same time. Adam and Eve are not living in the flesh yet like we do now.
So one day Eve says to Adam, "I really do wonder sometimes what it would be like to live in a physical body like animals do. How it tastes what they eat, and especially what they feel when they rub each other or mate? Look how happy they all seem to be. I think I would give anything, if only I could experience what they feel for just a minute to see what it's like.
"Don't be silly, woman," Adam must have grumbled. "You know we are not allowed to do that."
But Eve couldn't get her mind off this idea of experiencing the physical dimension of this life she saw all around her. So she kept on working on him and one day decided to try it out. When Adam saw that she had made up her mind, what else could he do than take a bite too? They Both slowed the vibration of their spirit body to adjust to the much lower vibrations of the physical world, to the dimension of our world.
And there they were, stuck here. No wonder God couldn't find them at first. When He finally did discover them down here in our world all miserable and afraid, hiding their nudity with leaves, He was very upset. So he told Adam that he had to work now for a living and that Eve had to bear her children in pain; that they were to stay where they had chosen to be until they would have enough of it to crawl back home on their knees.
You may remember here the story Jesus told of the son who took his inheritance and then went out and spent it all. When hardship finally brought him to realize that he would be better off as a servant in his fathers house, than separated from him in this cruel world, he returned home.
We are involved here in a similar way. Somehow we have made this choice to live on this physical plane.
Most Christians, however, believe that they came to conscious life when they were born here on earth. In a way God just made them to live here for a couple of years to try them out and see how they were doing, and then place them forever after in Heaven or hell according to their performance. To reassure themselves that they will not finish in hell like all the "heathens" do, Christians also believe that Jesus Christ washed all our sins away when He died on the cross, and so call Him their Savior.
I believe most of this too. However, it is this self-rewarding conclusion that all is done by Jesus dying on the cross for us that bothers me. It would be far too easy for us. I expect it to be a little more demanding of us and more time consuming as God's ways are more elaborate and subtle.
As in nature around us, I do observe an evolutionary process within myself. I can evaluate this process by my own growing awareness of what God added to His creation on the sixth day when He created man, "consciousness". His consciousness within me.
I firmly believe that we live in this world to develop, or even redevelop, our awareness of God's ever present and life-spending consciousness being within us.
I believe that we must overcome our self-inflicted separation from God and learn again to live in harmony and oneness by, through and with Him.
Granted, this is not an easy task as it involves doing all those things we do not like to do, and everything seems to be running against our common sense. Like when we were children, we were told to grow up. Now, in order to grow up spiritually, we are told to become like children again, and that otherwise we cannot reach the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is no wonder then if we find all kind of excuses and justifications to get around it, feeding our monstrous ego and struggling through life ruled by the laws of cause and effect.
The effect is what we experience and see around us: war, crime, hunger, loneliness, isolation, illness, despair, and pain. The cause of this suffering is that we do not live up yet towards our destiny.
We do not understand yet that we are not of this world but only living in this world. That our real home is in the spiritual world and not in this physical one we experience right now.
This spiritual world cannot be found or proved by physical means and ways. We only can grow into this different world, and we can not understand it in our present condition.
Once man was attracted to the physical world without knowing or caring what would happen. Now, on his return to Eden, man is asked to grow and go into the spiritual world within the same frame of ignorance.
Man, in eating of the forbidden fruit, wanted to acquire the knowledge of Good and Evil. To do so he had to experience the physical plane of being. He had to experience our world of duality. For a time he now incorporates both worlds, one consciously, the other unconsciously. Man on earth is both a physical and a spiritual being.
This is the reason why, alternatively, we are "dying" in one world or dimension to be "born" into the other, time and again without end, until our consciousness will have risen to a point of oneness with God again. Till we too, like Jesus, having learned to dominate the attractiveness and master the principles of this physical world, will be reborn in spirit and oneness with God.

* * *

Why..?

Why are we here, we wonder, what are we living for?
Is there some kind of God we do not know?
And if there is, what does He do for us?
Is He amazed and laughs, or simply lets us go?

God gave us all, but we don't understand
what living here is all about.
We work, and strive, and brood and mourn,
Always are lonely, always complain aloud:

Why do I have to go through this?
Why can I never do what's right?
Why do my problems never end?
When will I ever see the light?

It's all in us, the Good as is the Wrong,
the life we live, we've chosen in advance.
We must accept it now and learn and grow,
instead of waiting for another chance.

Our heart and soul are part of us,
they want to show us what is right.
Both were alive before we even came,
but we don't listen, we prefer to fight

One day, I'm sure, we all will understand
that nothing here is worthwhile having,
that we are only on this earth
to find the truth, and go on living.

* * *

Chapter II

"Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done," Christians have prayed for two thousand years without ceasing. But did His Kingdom come?
Every now and then some experts in holy scriptures of the day concluded and proclaimed that the events mentioned in the Bible announcing the return of Jesus the Christ were given; that His coming now was imminent. So it is again today at the change of another millennium.
One day we shall know for sure, but, as for right now I am wondering and even compelled to question what kind of Christ everybody expects to return?
Are we like those Pharisees of His time that we look out for a man of our own kind? Maybe someone who will run for President of our country, the United Nations, or the New World Order everybody refers to these days?
Do we expect Christ our Lord and Savior to respect and acknowledge our own ancestral constitutional laws and institutions? Or, to the contrary, do we think that He will come and establish His Kingdom in any way He sees fit?
Whatever our ideas are about His coming, let's consider once what most Christians and their spiritual leaders believe will happen one day soon now.
Jesus Christ, the son of God, will descend from Heaven "in person", and in all His might and glory. To make sure history will not repeat itself this time, He will bring with Him an army of powerful angels. While everybody in the world is still in shock, He will put matters straight, right away.
The first thing He will do, we are told, is to get hold of Satan, the Antichrist. He will destroy His work and bind him for a thousand years. Great, but the Antichrist hasn't shown up yet, has he? And without him nothing will happen, because this guy has to materialize first here somewhere so Christ can get His hands on him. As we haven't seen him yet, he either must be hiding out somewhere real good, or we are looking for the wrong kind of guy.
Then there are those other experts who have studied the Bible long enough to believe they are entitled to an exclusive and complete understanding. They have concluded that the Antichrist will suddenly make himself known one day and take over the whole world in a heart beat. To rule over us and make us do what he wants he will establish one world government and one church only. This having been accomplished, Jesus is scheduled to hasten to our rescue, get this devil off our back, and send him to where he belongs, to hell. After this, Christ will then establish His Kingdom and invite all those who were saved in time to get in there and take their promised seats.
So the saved and righteous ones, all those who went to church regularly, at least once or twice a week, the Catholics, the Lutherans, the Baptists, The Methodists, the Pentecostal and all the others too numerous to mention, all those lucky ones will be sitting together somewhere in Christ's Kingdom. Will there also be separate seats provided for each church, in alphabetical order or according to membership or age?
Well, I'm not given the knowledge of what will be, nor are the angels in this particular matter as the Bible tells us. Quiet as a thief in the night will He come, it is said, unexpected and in the dark. So we better be watchful, as He suggested, and keep an open mind about His coming.
Nevertheless, I do have an idea about His advent, but which is rather unlike the official one. I came to realize that God's ways are often very different from what I expected them to be. His ways are more imaginative, usually overwhelming in their simplicity, and always they contain a brilliant, new idea, a perfect logic and a far-sighted strategy.
To get rid of this simple-minded theory of Jesus descending from heaven with His army of angels to rescue us from the devil, we should ask ourselves what would happen if He really did so, right now, this very minute. Let's imagine the situation.
Somehow, maybe on TV, everybody would see Him at the same time all over the world as He descends from Heaven with His angels in all His might and glory. The sight of it is so spectacular and overwhelming that virtually everybody, instantly, would realize this is it ! Its' Him ! He has come!
And then what? Would His personal appearance here on earth change anything? Would it be enough to change the world and every human being in his heart? Would His coming change anything at all?

• Would all criminals. locked up or in high places, known or unknown, suddenly now become responsible, loving, caring and forgiving people.
  Would all the power mongers in the world be it in politics or industry now immediately realize what they are and then graciously hand over their power to Jesus?

• Would every Government Agency, every Corporation, Institution or Organization now at once stop laboring for its own interest and benefit only, and begin to work for the common good of the people?

• Would the sick and afflicted now be instantaneously healed from their diseases, and would our medical industry accept to be pushed out of business?

• Would all the rich of the world now throw away their money and possessions like a red-hot iron bar? Would they be willing to give up the power, security and luxury this money provided for them, because they now understand that where our treasure is there is our heart?

• Would every single man and woman on earth, or at least those who prayed for His Kingdom to come for so long now, finally start to love and forgive each other "seventy times seven" every single day?

Fortunately, there's no need to bring up the matter of loving our enemies, as there will be no enemies left after Jesus has dealt with them. Hallelujah, because we still may claim that we might have done just that one day.
No further comment ! Even the son of God would have a hard time to run this kind of program that we have dreamed up for Him. Therefore, this cannot be ! It has to be different.
I think, the reason we have such a hard time imagining any other scenario than this fairy tale may be that the part we ourselves probably will be playing in His coming is very uncomfortable for us indeed. It concerns our relationship to the Antichrist, the one who has to show up first before anything will happen.
Once again then, where in the world is this elusive and predestined Antichrist? Where does this devil hide out, and who is he? Can we find him somewhere?
We know that he also is called the great deceiver, and he's so good at it that we may be forgiven for not recognizing him and his works. But there is an easy way to bring this ugly monster out into the light in comparing his characteristics to those of Christ. By nature and the laws of our world they are opposites and go like this

CHRIST                                         Antichrist

LOVE ............................................hate
FORGIVENESS...........................revenge, getting even
TRUTH.......................................... lies, deception, error
FAITH...........................................  fear, doubt, skepticism
TRUST.......................................... suspicion, distrust
HUMILITY....................................   pride, egotism
UNDERSTANDING..................... ignorance, intolerance
APPRECIATION.......................... contempt, disdain
GENEROSITY.............................. selfishness, greed
OPTIMISM...................................  pessimism
ENCOURAGEMENT...................criticism, blame
PATIENCE....................................impatience
HELPING...................................... competition, rivalry
CARING........................................ indifference
ABUNDANCE.............................. poverty, deficiency
SPIRITUAL................................... materialistic, mundane
HEALTH....................................... sickness, disease
LIGHT...........................................  darkness
LIFE ETERNAL............................ temporal life

Well, does anything sound familiar?
Do you know many Christians who are loving, caring, forgiving. encouraging, helping, spiritual and believe in eternal life? I mean really. The few which live among us we most often call losers, fools or even worse.
I think we all are much more familiar with the qualities or anti-qualities of the Antichrist such as competition, rivalry, revenge, criticism, egotism, fear, pessimism, materialism, greed, lies, impatience, carelessness, and so on and on.
Some of those characteristics of the Antichrist we even have turned into desirable qualities, like competition and greed, and have based our whole economic system and our physical welfare upon them.
Shouldn't this not ring a bell? Doesn't this lead us right to him or are we blind and do not want to see?
Do we not realize that the Antichrist is here already, right now? That he is in our hearts and minds, and that daily we allow him to run our lives with his thoughts and emotions? That he has set up his reign precisely where Christ intends to build His Kingdom, right within us, in our hearts and minds? So, whenever Christ decides one day to come and destroy the Antichrist, this is where He will begin, within us, in our hearts and minds.
The overcoming of the Antichrist will not happen in some foreign and faraway country, where Christ and the Antichrist will meet face to face for a final shoot-out. It will happen within us, in our hearts and minds. We ourselves will be the battlefield. The inevitably resulting wars and destructions, wherever they will take place, will only be the physical expression of the real war which is spiritual.
It is time we let go of our traditional way of thinking. We have to abandon our habit of considering things always from our physical point of view only. We will have to begin to see our life on earth also with our spiritual eyes. We have to wake up spiritually and repent.
"Repent!" John the Baptist cried when he announced the arrival of Christ. "Repent," Jesus urged, "for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." What they both meant was change! Change your ways of life if you want to wake up from spiritual death and really exist. Change your thoughts and emotions if you want peace and harmony in your life. Change your values if you want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, which is not a place somewhere in Heaven, but is living within you.
In short, change the attitudes and emotions of the Antichrist within you of fear, competition, greed, selfishness, contempt, revenge, etc. into those of Christ: Faith, Trust, Love, Helping each other, Understanding, Tolerance, Generosity and Forgiveness.
"I am the way," Jesus said. "Listen to me ! I tell you what to do: Love your neighbor as yourself ! Do good to those who hate and persecute you ! Love your enemies!"
"Are you joking? In this world? This is impossible!" Christians agree with one single voice. We cannot love serial killers and monsters like Hitler, Stalin or Sadam Hussein.
Nobody can expect from anyone who gets beaten up in some dark alley to ask the brute to keep on beating, just because Jesus said that "we should turn the other cheek".
A criminal belongs locked up behind bars. Nobody, not even God, can want us to reward a thief in giving him another TV or car, or the amount of money he stole from us in order "to walk the extra mile" or to "give our cloak also". This is crazy! This isn't real!. This is foolishness! Nobody knows anyway why Jesus said this, and who knows what He really meant?
And still, you can turn and twist it around as you want, the meaning is clear. This is the state of mind and heart we need to acquire to be saved and enter His Kingdom. This for the simple reason that in the Kingdom of Heaven there is no you and me, mine and yours, I'm right and you're wrong. There's only us! We all are offsprings of the same source. We all are laboring through the same hardships of our physical world back to our common origin.
So we are stuck! We are stuck between what we have learned to trust and consider as real, the appearances of our physical world, and what Jesus said is real, the Kingdom of Heaven, the spiritual world.
This conflict represents the battle between Christ and the Antichrist and, what's more, it is up to us to do the fighting. Yes, us, because there comes a time for everyone of us, when we will have to chose. When we will have to become a soldier for Christ and take on the cause of His coming Kingdom wherever it may be. Obviously this is not an easy task.
To get ready and accept this challenge, we first need to become fully aware of who we really are. We need to rediscover our immaculate spiritual Self, God's image within us. To repent, to change, means to overcome and dominate all that ties us to our physical world, so we may be reborn to our spiritual identity and life.
Unfortunately, we have been told for so long now that we are helpless sinners, basically unworthy of God's love, doomed for hell since birth if not saved by one church or another, that we really have come to believe it. This cannot be true. This is man's idea of himself, but not God's idea of man.
God made man in his own perfect image and to His own likeness, and he didn't mean any physical resemblance. No, God is Spirit and so are we! Never ever has He said that He had changed His mind about this. To the contrary, in Jesus, He sent His son Christ to our world to remind us of what kind of man He had in mind.
If, then, we do not find any resemblance with God's image within us or other fellow humans, it may be that we haven't looked hard enough, or not in the right way. Perhaps, we have looked at bodies and not at beings and, believe me, there's a big difference. Every body contains God's spirit! Every body is the temple of the living God!
In moving along on our spiritual journey from the bondage of our physicality (the flesh) to our spiritual freedom we must realize and acknowledge that all human beings are on the same journey. Some may have gone further than others. Some may have only just started. But we all are on our way and nobody here on earth can say he has made it yet. If he had, he wouldn't be here now.
We, therefore, need to reprogram our minds and see ourselves and each other as what we really are: human beings, created to God's perfect image, on our way to become just that, the perfect image of God.
This is crucial. because of what we think of ourselves and each other is our departure line for now. If we persist in thinking that we are unworthy and helpless sinners, then that's precisely what we will be and remain. If, to the contrary, we believe that God's perfect image and likeness is already hidden within us as our hidden bride, then we will become eager to try and bring forth His image.
And again, here is where Christ's fight against the Antichrist starts and becomes our own fight. Nobody else can and will do it for us. To become invulnerable we need to remind us constantly of the two commandments Christ gave us, because they include all others.
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and love and treat your neighbor as you want to be loved and treated yourself."
So armed, we may begin to look out for some common ideas of the Antichrist and begin resisting and discarding them. As we have entered a spiritual battlefield, we must begin within ourselves, within our own heart and mind. We can not change other people. They will have to take care of themselves trying to do the same.

The first, but most important fight we have to win, is the conflict between "having" and "being". We have to express the understanding that whoever we may be in this world, we are not different in any way, not more or less important, or more or less worthy than any other man or woman. Without exception, we all are absolutely identical in our spiritual essence and final destiny.
The differences we have established between us are of no consequences. They are made for this world, not for the Kingdom of Heaven. Our material world is a world of "having" while the Kingdom of Heaven is a world of "being".
We must acknowledge the fact that the Kingdom of Heaven is not some place we will go to one day, have a seat at the right of somebody, or where we can reserve a mansion for our personal use. In the Kingdom of Heaven nobody has anything, everyone is.
God defined Himself as "I am". So we do not get anything, but must become. We all must become what we already are without realizing it, Christ, God's perfect image.
There are many interesting parables Jesus told His followers, and us, which become even more revealing when receiving some updated application.

• Though Christ said that it would be easier for a camel to go through the "eye of a needle" (name of the small door in the big city gate) than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, rich is what we all want to be.
  This proves that we do not have our mind set on the spiritual world yet. It means that, contrary to what Jesus advised us to do, we still prefer to collect and load up treasures and pleasures in this world rather than the other.

• Though Christ said that the meek, the humble, the modest will inherit the earth, nobody believes it, and nobody wants to be humble. To the contrary, everybody wants to be powerful and respected by others and admires people who are.
  What this proves again is that we are not working for our spiritual development and future yet when we put all our efforts and spend most of our time on our careers, businesses and other power trips.

• Though Christ said that the peacemakers are blessed, and that they shall be called God's children, it is fighting for our rights and opinions we are mostly concerned with. In doing so, we deny the omnipresence of God who runs the whole universe in perfect order and harmony and without any help from us. Instead, we express the belief that our world is an exception, and that we can fool around with it as we please; that God isn't supposed to be in charge here.

• Though it was Christ who said that we shouldn't worry for tomorrow, for tomorrow would take care of itself, this idea seems to be absolute foolishness to us. We constantly worry for our children, for our friends and for our and their future. We long for security, establish pension plans for old age, make savings for hard times to come and take insurance policies for eventual misfortunes. We have to plan ourselves and make absolutely sure that nothing bad will happen to us.
  If we do believe we need all this, and that God's foresight has not or will not take care of us in the best possible way, then we surely do need all of it. There can be no doubt, because our life unfolds according to our beliefs.

• Though it was Christ who said that we should not judge, as we would be judged in return according to our own values of judgment; that unless we were not more righteous than the law-abiding Pharisees we would not enter the Kingdom of Heaven, not only do we judge everyone on everything according to what we understand and think is right, we most often condemn.
  How pretentious! Do we know in any way what goes on in other people's lives? Do we know their problems, their fears, their needs, their despair, their loneliness, their pain, their health, their relationships, their remorse, hopes and aspirations? Or, do we have any idea of why we all go through unpleasant experiences in our life. Maybe it's the only or best way for us to learn."

No, what is asked of us is forgiveness, understanding, compassion, patience and tolerance; certainly not the high-flying feeling of being better than others. Righteous Pharisees already stood in their temples with this feeling in their heart two thousand years ago. There's nothing new to that and, in us continuing to do so, Jesus simply wasted His time and His pain.
What would be new and refreshing in our rigid and starchy Christian world today would be that we would not judge others anymore, period ! That we would gladly help those who need help, trying at the same time to understand what their real problems are. And I mean real help, not only prayers and good advice, but the kind of help we would like to receive ourselves if we were in their situation. Yes, that would be something new in our Christian world.
So we have to change our ideas about this Kingdom we have been praying for all our lives. The notion that it is a place somewhere above our heads where we may go to once we are dead does lead into a dead end. The only way we will gain access to it is to realize it within us. God's grace will help us to see the truth, but the effort remains with us to express this truth in our daily life.
This requires an absolute faith in God, a kind of knowing trust in His omnipresence, His omniscience, His omnipotence and, especially, in His unconditional Love. It requires us to recognize His presence as the source of life within us and within each of our fellow men.
We are not separate from God but part of Him, as He is part of us. Can a leaf revolt against the tree and say it doesn't need it's life-spending sap anymore; that it wants to be blue instead of green now and live it's own way? What do you think would happen to it?
So what better way is there to develop faith than to hand over the direction of our life to the one who has it anyway, to God? However, beware, for we cannot do this halfway! We would be better off not doing it at all as faith implies all or nothing.
There is much more, but we all know the passages which seem unreasonable for our common way of life here in our day-to-day world. They most probably will remain so till the day comes something happens, an event nobody can explain. It is a personal experience no words can describe. Every word suddenly becomes hollow, meaningless.

It is the inconceivable experience of being reborn.

* * *

From the Gospel we learn that one has to be reborn to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. To get this tricky and mind challenging statement under control, most Christian churches have conceived of a ritual or sacramental ceremony which, mysteriously, gets us reborn and so entitles us to the Kingdom of Heaven. Well, though these rituals and ceremonies may help, they certainly are not what it's all about.
Being reborn is not an act of our own mind or our will. Neither can it be brought about by anybody here on earth, be it the Pope himself or Billy Graham.
No, being reborn is a very personal, transcendental experience of oneness with God and the universe which happens to God's plan and grace.
Being reborn is what happened to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Being reborn is what happened to Saul on the road to Damascus transforming him into Paul. Being reborn means that the spiritual man within us, Christ, the son of God is revealed to our consciousness.
In the same manner the spiritual man died in Adam the moment "he ate from the forbidden fruit", the moment he experienced our physical world of duality and Good and Evil, so is this spiritual man now reborn and raised from "death" in our consciousness the moment we experience the spiritual world again.
When this happens, we do know it, even if we do not see fire and light all around us as apparently Moses and Paul did. The experience of being reborn is so overwhelming that it changes us in an instant. It gives us a new perception of our human condition and sets new priorities and values, and thus it changes our environment and our lives completely. It is like loading up a different computer program.

Unfortunately, being reborn doesn't turn us instantly into perfect saints, neither does it automatically qualify us for the Kingdom of Heaven. What it does is that it opens our inner eyes and ears. It opens our consciousness and, in the process, it changes our values and our priorities.
Now we really see, and now we truthfully hear. Now we do understand why we have to love our neighbor as ourselves and even have to love our enemies or those who mistreat us.
We now realize that this is the only way there is, because our neighbor is us, and so is our enemy. There's not us and our neighbor, or our enemy. There's only us! We are all one! So I am you, and you are him, and she is me.
The Bible says we are all one in Christ. This is reality with a big "R" ! We all are one, because Christ, the hidden Bride, is in all and every one of us. At the level of the Kingdom of Heaven we all are one.
Therefore. whatever we do to someone else, we do it to ourselves! It doesn't matter in any way if we know or accept this truth or not. As my friend Jeff always quotes: "that's the way it is," and then he laughs.
In being reborn, we receive a new and fundamentally different perspective of our life and the universe we live in. Our consciousness is stretched to include everything there is. For a moment we become whatever we can think of.
This experience leaves us as confused and helpless as we were when we came into this world physically. Nothing in our society has prepared us for this, and nothing this world has to offer will make it any easier for us to live according to our new spiritual awareness. To the contrary, we will often be laughed at and mostly be taken for fools and losers.
We have to learn everything anew which is a very slow and painful process. From this moment on there is absolutely no chance anymore in getting away with something we so easily did in the past, because nobody knew about it. because everybody did it, or because it was just a common business practice, or simply because it was legal though unprincipled.
There is a different criterion now against which we will measure our actions and activities. After a while, we will not even try anymore to do anything at all that does not fit into our new frame of consciousness and knowledge. We have come to realize that it would only hurt us to do so.
We have learned and now understand that to sin is not merely to do something that God has forbidden, but that we harm ourselves each time we sin, and that we prevent Christ, God's image within us, to unfold.
We now know that there is no revengeful God sitting somewhere up there on His throne in Heaven, keeping record of our sins, getting angry and upset about us now and then, saying "Ah, he did it again. Let Me teach this guy a lesson." No, we now understand that we are not punished for our sins but by our sins.
We now understand perfectly well that we do it all to ourselves; that there is no other to blame, no God, no wife or husband, no unfriendly people or bad circumstances. We are and always were in absolute control of our lives, free to do whatever we want. As a consequence we have to take full responsibility for all that we are and for every situation in our life as a result of everything we did or failed to do.
And what about the devil in all this? Didn't the devil make us do it? Sure, if you need another scapegoat the devil comes in handy. But you are forgetting again that God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent and that there cannot be anyone else who has power besides Him. Not even a little bit.
The devil is the prince, the nature or the ways of this world. This force has power over us only as long as we give our attention and thought to it. Only if we submit to it's nature and spirit and believe in it's values does it reach us in our physical reality.
In unveiling our spiritual image of God, in putting ourselves under the spiritual laws and power of God, this devil loses contact in the same measure as we lose contact with the ways of this world. That is what we have to learn by faith.
We also have to learn something else. That having faith doesn't just mean to believe. Paul says, "faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen." In other words, faith is a substance out of which things are created. Faith is a spiritual building stone we must learn to rightfully use in our life.
So, if before this all-changing experience of being reborn we lived according to the laws, customs, habits and values of the world we live in, we now will have to learn to live according to the laws and values of the spiritual world. In the beginning we may try to compromise till we find out that spiritual laws incorporate an automatic, quantum based enforcement mechanism.
This conversion will take time, many years, many lives. The daily dying of the old man and the growing of the new man, Jesus spoke of, will often leave us in pain and agony.
Then why do it at all, if it's that painful? Because, in the end, one cannot do differently. From the moment of the experience of being reborn there is no other choice anymore except for a conscious spiritual suicide. Our own conscious decision to stay in hell, to hang on to this physical world though we now know there is a spiritual world. This the one sin we will not be forgiven until we have learned our lesson.

How could it be different?

* * *

The Way to the Stars..

Show me the way to the stars, my friend,
where Heaven is near and vast is the sky,
where people are joyful, friendly and happy,
and no one wants what is mine.

Show me the way to the stars, my friend,
where being, not having, is the rule of life,
where no one suffers and all are content,
and burdens not heavy, but ever so light.

Show me the way to the stars, my friend,
that I may dream of a better life,
where freedom is king, and love his companion,
and all of us are alike.

The stars are far and useless the dream,
happiness lies hidden in us,
to learn what we have to, to live and to grow,
is all we are here for, and all that we must.

* * *

Chapter III

"God doesn't play dice with the universe," was professed through a great man who was known to us as Albert Einstein.
No, God does not play dice with His creation. Only man can imagine and believe He does. The words chance or luck do not exist in God's vocabulary. His planning is without fault; the becoming is perfect, and it cannot be different because God's consciousness, as the only creative and sustaining power in the universe, is omnipresent. His energy is present everywhere and there is no place where He is not.
God's consciousness, as the only fundamental and formative force in the universe, is omniscient. Nothing occurs without Him being aware of it.
God's consciousness, as the only self-originating and self-sustaining power is omnipotent. He is in absolute control and there is no other power besides Him.
In short, God is all there is, and all there is, is part of God.

Once we really have awakened to knowing this truth, instead of having it simply memorized in our mind, we will have to leave our all to familiar Sunday School.
Once we truly begin to grasp some of His omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent nature, then we cannot believe anymore that such a God would let us poor and spiritually unaware creatures gamble away our eternal life.
It will become an all-out nonsense for us to even consider that this all-powerful and infinite God could be so mean as to let us bereft creatures decide, once and for all, within the frame of our complete ignorance and the few years we live here on earth, if we wanted to go to Heaven or hell for all eternity. This nightmarish idea of being punished for all eternity is even more ludicrous as we do not know anything yet about hell or Heaven or eternity.
We cannot believe anymore that God would withhold His unconditional love, understanding and forgiveness from anyone for all eternity just because he drank too much and too often, wasn’t saved by the right church, or had sex with someone he wasn't supposed to have it with. If He did so, my love for my dog would be greater than His.
But he said so? Yes. He did indeed, and we better keep His commandments for our own good. However, we also should try to understand and think about why He gave us these commandments.
When you tell a young child not to touch fire, you simply will explain that it will get burned if it does so and that it hurts. Later, most probably after having been burned once or twice, the child knows that fire hurts and won't touch it anymore. It's the same with God's commandments. Once we have learned why God gave us His commandments, that they are meant to protect us, then it is much easier to obey them.
However, most Christians today still live in spiritual childhood. Their tendency is to reduce to their own scale of limited understanding what they cannot comprehend or imagine. Many still believe that God sits on His throne high up there somewhere in the sky, surrounded by His angel servants, keeping record of our sins in a big book for the final judgment day, or immediate punishment if we are lucky.
In principle, there's nothing wrong with this picturesque image. Everybody is absolutely free to believe in whatever he or she wants to, and especially in what they feel comfortable with.
What is definitely wrong, however, is the fact that righteous Christians and their respective churches threaten us with eternal hellfire and condemness, if we do not take for granted their various self-made doctrines and customs, grown out of their own misguided interest and limited human nature.
Instead of emphasizing and proclaiming the good news of our eternal life and God's unconditional love, His compassionate understanding and tender forgiveness, and in demonstrating the teachings of Christ in their own lives and activities, most Christians and their respective churches still try to scare their neighbors into Heaven in threatening them with a one-way ticket to hell.
Maybe, there still are people on this earth who need this kind of treatment in order to progress on their spiritual path. Or, maybe, this is what these Christians need themselves to continue their own journey. However, we are assured by Christ's own words, He did not come into this world to judge and condemn, but to save. To save us from what? To save us from our own limited understanding and erroneous conclusions.
So, step by step we will have to grow out of our ludicrous and simple-minded view of a God who rewards or punishes us according to our behavior. We have to give up those obsolete ideas which have no other purpose than to protect our inherited, manmade values, doctrines and religious institutions.
There are certain stages in our spiritual growth as there are in our mental and physical development. There is a spiritual childhood, a period of adolescence and maturity. When I was a child I thought and acted like a child, but now, for many of us, the spiritual Kindergarten times are over and serious learning and also teaching has begun.
There are more and more men and women who think that the medieval times have passed; that the methods of preaching hell to get people into Heaven not only are outdated and have failed, but are truly unnecessary.
They certainly are without any sense for the Kingdom of Heaven, though they may have some justification for the kingdom of this world, where most churches still seem to have their deeper roots.
I was twenty years old when I first openly revolted against the rigid belief structure of the church I grew up with, the Catholic Church. This church or any other doesn't really matter. Christian churches all express the same idea. For Catholics you have to be a Catholic to go to Heaven. For a Baptist, Methodist and all the others, you better be a Baptist, Methodist etc. to make sure you will be saved from hell.
Each one of them favors its own flock. One can narrow it all down to this: by whatever church you may be "saved", for the others you still may be on your way to hell.
And what do they all say about Heaven and hell? Absolutely nothing except that Heaven is a beautiful place and that hell is awfully dreadful; that in Heaven you sit in God's presence for all eternity, praising Him with His angels and all those people who go to church on Sundays, while in hell you gnash your teeth in bad company, roasting over an everlasting Barbecue.
Couldn't at least some of our churches after two thousand years of studying the Bible have come up with something more meaningful and helpful than that, their actual way of preaching about sin and hell? I believe so, and I also presume that they surely would have done so, or would do so at least now, if only they would see it to their financial advantage and power.
Please do not get the impression now that I want to deny the existence of hell. I cannot, I have been through there myself. Neither do I want to say that evil does not exist. I have seen it and have recognized it as such, and sometimes it can be even beautiful.
However, evil has no power "per se". It cannot have power by itself, for God is the only power there is. Therefore, someone else has to give power to evil so it can exist, and the one who does that is us. We give power to evil in using and abusing God's power within us in the process.
We allow evil to get hold of our thoughts and emotions. In so doing we demonstrate that there is another power in our life other than God's power within us. That is the reason why Jesus told us not to resist evil. To let it go. To not give a meaning or existence to it. And so it is also with hell which doesn't exist unless we create it for ourselves.
Growing up spiritually is like climbing a mountain. The higher we rise, the more our horizon expands, and the more we are able to see and discern. What we have left behind, down in the valley, is still there and remains part of all there is.
What has changed, however, is our perspective. Now we realize that there is much more than we ever thought there was. We also realize that there would be even more to discover if only we could climb higher. And one day we will, when we have grown enough to be able to do so. Then we shall see things in a different way again.

There have been countless Christians through the ages who advanced spiritually to a point they must have been close to the Kingdom of Heaven. These men and women have tried to teach us the truth they experienced, but never ever anyone of those righteous Christian leaders seems to have listened. It looks like they all were much too busy fighting the devil and scare people into Heaven, and so did the devil's work.
Now as ever, our churches show interest in their own existence and development mainly. Conspicuously they have placed themselves between God and us, dispensing God's favors and wrath according to their will, declaring us all doomed unless we join and support them and so get saved.
What a terrible power they have taken over our minds and our thoughts.
I refuse! I do not want their revengeful God. I do not want to be in their austere and lifeless Heaven, sitting around with them dressed in their robes of righteousness, surrounded by their dispirited angels. Nevertheless I wouldn't be amazed at all if, for a while at least, they all might get exactly what they preached and taught others. In this way they may experience the truth.
And so I challenge their manmade god who needs to keep us small and miserable; who threatens us with eternal hell so he may get some attention and be worshipped.
I challenge their impotent god which they have created to their own likeness and who seems so frail and trivial that each new scientific discovery seems to threaten his rightful place and existence.
And I am not afraid of their god either because Christ is within me to guide me, as He is within you to guide you, and all other human beings on earth, saved or not by any church.
No, the God I worship is different and by far. The God I worship with all my heart, with all my mind, and with all my soul is the God who creates, sustains and is the whole universe and me within it. This God is so overwhelming, so full of power, and so full of everything I would like to be one day that I am stunned and in awe before Him.
No, I do not need to be ordered or threatened to worship Him. I have to. I simply cannot not worship Him. This is the one God I love and freely and entirely submit my life to.
And I know, one day, my conscious soul again will flyyyy... and be freee... within God's Kingdom. I will roam through God's universe. I will see it all, the stars, the galaxies, other dimensions... and all this without a ticket from NASA or the Pope.
I will understand the physical laws and forces which hold it together. And, what is even more, I will experience the spiritual laws and principles which make this creation possible. I will be with the source of all life and all there is, as Adam was, and I will marvel over it's inconceivable splendor.
Didn't God say, "son, all I have is yours"? So I hold Him to His word and claim it, but... Yes, there is a but. I also realize that I will have to merit it. I will have to grow strong enough in spirit and knowledge to assume the powers it confers. I will have to grow out of my voracious caterpillar habits to become the beautiful butterfly He has planned me to be one day.
I realize, and we all do, that we are still a long way from perfection. Old encrusted ways, learned or inherited beliefs and customs hold us back. The importance, however, is to get started on this long journey ahead and to keep the spiritual man alive and healthy. As we advance on the narrow path, we will grow and get stronger and, finally, shed the old man we once were.
Still, there is a world around us, a world we live in, a world we have to deal and cope with. In short, we are not on heavenly ground yet. So where can we turn to for guidance? Where can we get support? Where can we find someone to lead us and tell us what to do.
From this point on, unfortunately, we are on our own. There's no one else who can help us anymore except Christ within us. Christ our hidden bride has revealed itself as our light in the dark. "I am with you son. I shall never abandon or forsake you. Even if you make your bed in hell, I will be there with you." And through hell is where we all will be going, for a while at least.

* * *

Many of our Bible experts warn us today that Christians may soon be persecuted as we approach the end of our times. The Bible tells us about it and so it will happen. But how?
How can this be? How can this take place when the nations who are in control of the affairs of this world today are Christian Nations? There seems to be a shocking contradiction.
The experts have felt this too, and so they have come up with a "deus ex machina", some kind of "god or devil out of the box", like the ancient Greeks used to end an inextricable theater play. For us it's the Antichrist again, who will show up one day and make things unbearable for Christians.
They expect some man, or why not a woman for that matter. to declare himself or herself to be the Antichrist, take over the whole world and persecute the righteous.
As Christian Nations are holding worldwide control of resources and supply, and even have put on their money: "In God we trust", one would think that the Antichrist then will rise to power somewhere else. Maybe in some Middle-East country or in one of those undeveloped nations we call the Third World. Is this likely to happen? I do not think so.
What remains then is that at some time Christians will fight Christians, like "good" Christians combating "bad" Christians. Here we may have come across an idea with some truth to it.
But then again, only minorities get persecuted and oppressed, never the majority. Those in majority give out the rules which everybody else then has to follow and to obey. Therefore, something else still has to change in our actual Christian society before the majority of Christians can oppress and persecute other Christians.
The most reliable way to attract anger and resentment in our Christian world today is to criticize it. Instantly one becomes an agent of the devil, an Anarchist, a Communist, a terrorist or just all of it. With certainty one will be branded as an outcast and a danger to society and the world order in general.
But sincere Christians could do much more than criticizing and denouncing what they do not like in our materialistic society and its way of life. They could one day, for instance, abandon the actually prevailing general hypocrisy and mold their day-to-day life to the teachings of Christ. They could ask themselves, for example, each time they have a critical decision to make or something important to do: "What would Jesus decide or do if He were in my shoes.
We can hardly imagine what would happen if many Christians started just doing that. We cannot foresee or envision the disastrous results this sudden change would have for our established, money driven societies.
If Christians, for instance, would begin helping each other in their daily chores and freely share everything they own as did the early Christians; if Christians would not rely anymore upon anyone else for help than God's and their own efforts; if they would take matters into their own hands to help each other in the spirit of a good neighbor, it would be the end of our money gobbling Provider-State and it's enslaving Welfare System.
If Christians would suddenly begin to love their neighbors as they were advised they should; if they would forgive each other "seventy times seven" every day, and so stay out of court; if they would count on God's justice only and not on our own laws made to purpose and corrupted with special interests, this would be the end of our Justice and Law Enforcement Industry.
If Christians suddenly would turn to a simpler life style, not to waste their time and lives anymore for the futilities of this world; if they would begin to appreciate more their personal life and so gain their freedom from financial enslavement for social status; if they did, it simply would ruin our economy which is based upon an artificial but permanent notion of "never enough and not enough for all".
If Christians suddenly embraced the idea that life here on earth is meant to be an experience, some kind of school we attend to learn; that we are conscious spiritual beings and that there is nothing to defend than life itself and the freedom for it to unfold. And there is nothing else to defend. Certainly not any material possessions which, most of the time, do belong to other people than those who die for defending them. This would be the end of our Military Establishment and Power.
If Christians would now start loving God with all their heart, with all their mind and with all their soul, to become free and independent in the awareness that God is the essence and the fullness of our life. If they did, there would be no place left for power mongers of all shades and denominations in church, business or government. They would have to look for other shores.
If Christians finally would understand and express their conviction like the early Christians did in proclaiming that our Kingdom is not of this physical world but is the spiritual one to come, this would be as terrifying for our actual leaders as it was for the Emperor Nero in ancient Rome..

What a horrible nightmare Christ's Gospel must have been for those in power two thousand years ago. No wonder they persecuted and killed everyone who adhered and spread these ideas.
What a nightmare this idea must become for those in power today if there were a hint of a chance that a large number of Christians might eventually start just doing this.
There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that all Christians and Non-Christians who will step out of the system and repent, change their lives as Jesus urged us to do, will suffer persecution and oppression by our established Churches and Governments alike.
That all those Christians and Non-Christians who take the narrow gate and the spiritual path leading to the Kingdom of Heaven will be in deep trouble in this world. And this is what Jesus predicted. This is what will come about and happen at the end of our times.
But what does it mean, "at the end of our times"? Does it mean that God will destroy our earth and us with it? Well, maybe it does. On the other hand, we are on the best way already to do it anyhow, and God could just wait and watch us doing it ourselves.
No, what will come to an end is our way of life. Our kind of society which, solely based upon survival, fear, greed, competition, intolerance, hate, revenge and ignorance which all represent the traits of the Antichrist, has no future anymore. It will come to an end as predicted, if we like it or not, or how hard those in power will hang on to defend it.
Promised to replace it is the Kingdom of Heaven, the spiritual society, a society based upon different values, Christ's values.
This new society will take into account our spiritual essence, our higher destiny, our eternal life, and our communion and oneness with everything else on earth and in the whole universe.
This new society will be based upon the knowledge that every man and woman is a becoming Christ, a human being made in the spiritual image and likeness of God on its evolutionary progress to express God's power, knowledge and glory.
This is what our churches have voluntarily failed to transmit. Instead, they have taught and trained us to worship, to submit, to endure for the benefit of a few, to accept their own authority as the only one, and their doctrines as absolute.
Over centuries, they have degraded themselves in serving the nature of this world we call evil, and have nurtured our irresponsibility. They have kept us in darkness and the feeling of guilt to maintain their power and to assure the power of their institutions and their survival.
However and Hallelujah, all signs now show that the time may have come finally in the evolutionary process of man, where Christ, the spiritual essence within is awakening us from the dead and gradually takes over our lives and destiny. Christ is coming and in doing so is pointing us towards our real destiny which is nothing less than to become the sons of God.

* * *

Theater..

Why do we never realize
that having more and more is not enough,
that life is not a market place,
but is a theater instead, where we should laugh.

It does not matter much which role  we act,
all characters are needed for the play,
it matters though how good we are,
and whether we can hold the stage.

For, one day, the curtains falls,
when play and life come to an end,
and mostly then, too late, we learn,
what our life on earth was meant.

* * *

Chapter IV

If you have followed me patiently this far, I am quite sure that you are still willing to go on and ascend with me to another level of understanding.
What I mean is that everything is important in our life and, at the same time, nothing really matters. It is purely a question of perspective. It all depends upon how we see ourselves.
Some philosophers in their wisdom have gone even further in declaring that our whole world is an illusion. Strangely enough, I find this to be true, but when I tried one day to convince my friend Charles of it, he simply knocked me out. When I came back to my senses and complained, he told me laughing that it hadn't been real, that I had simply experienced an illusion. My friend Charles sure had made his point but that didn't overturn my conviction.
My life did not begin with my first cry when I was born. Understood, my actual physical life did, but not my conscious life. I was alive and conscious before I was born, and I will continue to be alive and conscious after I leave my body. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind about this.
If it were any other way, our life here on earth would make no sense to me at all. You may feel differently about your own life. That's all right with me too. To my understanding you are only playing a different role in the same play.
For me, God doesn't make mistakes or favors one child over another. How could it possibly be then that some children are born into abundance, while others have very poor parents or face a life of bare survival and physical hardship in some forgotten place in a desert in Africa or Asia.
Why are some children intelligent, while others seem to have no mind at all?
Why does one child seem to get all the suave advantages, while another collects only difficulties? By luck? By chance? By merit? No, by Choice!

We come into this life by choice. We have chosen our life experience which includes the choice of our parents and all the other factors and circumstances in our life.
Hard to believe? You mean, who would be foolish enough to chose a life of worry, fear, pain, hardship and danger? Nearly everyone. Just ask a video store what they lease out most. It will be films about crime, perversion, horror, danger and adventure. That's what people watch most, and that's precisely what they came for to live here on earth also.
And there's an even more astonishing similarity between watching a movie and living our lives. While we are watching a film we forget everything around us, including who we are and where we are.
The same happens in our physical life here on earth. We become so engrossed in the unfolding of our personal drama that we completely forget who we really are and where we come from. Seen in this way, the events and occurrences in our life are an illusion as is a movie. Both only serve to trigger an emotional experience.
And tell me, what else does it mean "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth", if not that whatever we force others to experience, we will have to experience once ourselves? Isn't this the greatest school and adventure there is? Isn't this also perfect justice.
So, whatever our conditions and experiences are in this life, we have chosen them. They are exactly what we wanted them to be in order to learn from them. Never should anybody blame anyone for anything in his or her life. To the contrary, our question should be: "why does this situation or relationship come up in my life? Or why so often? What do I wish or need to learn from it?
Where do these thoughts lead us to? They lead us to the truth of our own and all-out responsibility and choice for everything we experience in our life. They set us free. Free to do whatever we want under our own, undivided and unconditional responsibility.
To emphasize this idea even more, I would like to make another statement of truth: eternity is now! Eternity is not a different period of time or place we will enter once we are dead. No, eternity is here and now, and we are never dead. We all are living our eternal life right now.
Our soul and spirit, our spiritual essence is in the likeness of God and therefore is eternal. Considering this immense truth we should try to stay aware of it at all times in our day-to-day life.
In the same way as space is three-dimensional and not a straight line going on forever and ever, so is eternity not just time going on and on without end. Eternity is the third dimension of time. It is the eternal now in which past, present and future are present all together. Eternity contains our present life like a microscopic small time line. It is God's realm.
But there's still more. Not only are we eternal, we also are infinite beings with infinite possibilities. The fact that we were capable to lower ourselves to our actual physical form of existence just adds to proving it. God, in His unconditional love, let's us choose and do whatever we want, even to die spiritually and separate ourselves from Him momentarily and, naturally, by paying the price in pain and sorrow.
As long as we do not understand this, we are spiritually dead and have to be reborn. When we shall be, this new understanding will take our minds beyond the limits of the flesh, our physical world of survival, and we are on our way back to our father's home.
So there's something basically wrong with our conventional approach to understand the Bible and it's concealed meaning. What is wrong is maintaining our illusion about who we really are, and overstating the importance of our physical experience of time.

God said: "I am "I AM"," meaning that he is all and only is. God does not become, grow or act. He doesn't do anything. He is! Period! He is out and beyond of time and space. He is past, present and future at the same time, everywhere. From God's point of view everything is right now.
Therefore, judgment time for God over us is not one day in the future when we will be dead. It is now, every day, at any moment of our life. We will not be punished or rewarded once and for all eternity but daily or at any moment. In this way we shall grow gradually into expressing His perfect image, while actually living in this particular dimensional world and experiencing eternity as a linear progression of time.
Jesus announced he would be coming back soon. His disciples believed that He would still return during their lifetime and also expected Him to do so physically.
This was 2000 years ago. By now we should have learned that God's vocabulary and the notion of "days", "soon" and "now" are much different than ours. God doesn't have time, He is time. Therefore "now" and "soon" should be understood as an ongoing process. It means that at every moment some of us in this world will awaken to His consciousness, always in the same way and with the same results. As more and more now will do so, our collective consciousness is influenced and will gradually be transformed.
The new and the old, the spiritual and the material world will slowly begin to oppose each other. Old values will clash with new ones and, where there was nothing before, now there is: a new kind of man. Strong in the knowledge of his own eternal being, he will approach matters differently and with a different purpose in mind. Thus he will create a new kind of world, a world governed by a different kind of values, the values of Christ instead of those of the Antichrist.
At first changes will come about in his own private realm, in his family and own personal life. Then others and more of the same destiny will join, clustering into larger groups, forming their own life spheres, slowly impregnating the whole body of society as the salt of the earth.
This is the coming of Christ, and it has started happening right now.
Christ and the Antichrist are not physical human beings but spiritual forces and principles. Christ, laid down at the beginning of time and in His own power. "Initiat erat verbum", it says in the Bible, "in the beginning was the word", meaning God's consciousness, Christ. In opposite to the Christ consciousness is the Antichrist, the nature and laws of cause and effect of this physical dimension by which our collective consciousness has been ruled so far.
Our own beliefs of our human condition to fight or flight for survival have kept us in bondage. "The truth will set you free," Jesus promised, and this is what happens at our awakening from our illusionary vision of our own self and the world we live in.
Contrary to Christ, the Antichrist has no self-originating power. It is like a dollar bill which has no worth at all unless we all accept the value we say it has. If it were different, God would not be God or would have created evil, which cannot be.
Therefore, each time we are confronted with sickness, poverty and crime, we have the Antichrist tempting us to believe that it is our real condition in life, and that we are powerless against it.
To overcome these situations, we must recognize that we are deceived by a physical appearance of our own beliefs. If we change our beliefs, we will change also the outer appearances in our lives of sickness into health, of poverty into abundance or sufficiency, of hideousness into beauty.
So it doesn't matter, really, what our conditions are in our life. What matters, however, very much is that we learn and steadily progress. What matters is our life experience as a whole.
Also connected to this truth is the principle of God's forgiveness that when we have understood and learned through an experience, our wrongdoing is washed away, and only the benefit of our new understanding remains.
As long as we are not conscious of our wrongdoing, we will continue to do so and also continue to have to suffer the painful consequences.

* * *

The day of the Lord.....

Hurry, wife, get the children ready,
we will again be late for church.
We should be first, I read the word,
it's Sunday morning...     it's the day of the Lord.

The car is waiting, the latest model,
impeccably shining from yesterday's wash
The house is neat, the lawn manicured,
one last look around...    it's the day of the Lord.

The church is full and everyone's happy,
How are you doing, the kids look great.
The latest news are given in whispers,
the preacher comes in.. it's the day of the lord.

"We all are sinners," the preacher says,
"our Lord bears heavy on our faults,"
He died on the cross for our sins,
let's pray, my brothers.. it's the day of the Lord.

The basket goes around, the money rolls in,
here, God, I give you plenty,
I give you more when more comes in,
please help me Jesus....it's the day of the Lord.

I need to talk to John after church,
he needs to help me with this bid,
I need this business, God knows how,
he cannot refuse...          it's the day of the Lord.

The righteous sing and listen to the word,
the preacher preaches, there's no discord,
heavenly father, we didn't mean to,
we are so sorry...             it's the day of the Lord.

A man on a bench in front of his house,
caresses his child, his heart full of love,
Heavenly Father, thanks for your blessings,
and this beautiful day...   the day of the Lord.

* * *

Chapter V

I had given these first few chapters to several Christian ministers for them to read and give their comment.
They certainly read it all right, but I am still waiting for their comments. Some found it rather interesting. One even suggested we should come together one day and have a discussion about it. Needless to say, we never had one.
The most thoughtful remark I received was, "I agree, and now what.
"Now what?" this preacher said. Has he never read or understood what Jesus preached? It's absolutely clear and simple once translated into modern language.
It says: "Always consider the spiritual aspect of situations and in whatever you do first, and all the rest will fall into place by itself.
It says: "Do not be concerned so much with what you can acquire in this life, what house you live in or what clothes you wear, but rather be concerned to be prepared for the life to come.
It says: "Love and forgive each other, as I have loved and forgiven you."
It says: "Rather than worshipping me, do what my Father wishes and expects you to do.

When I look at Christians and their churches today, I see some kind of worldwide cult, a vast assembly of worshipers who gather at certain days in certain buildings for a certain time. Once they have finished with their routines of ceremonies and singing, they all go home happy and satisfied with themselves and the world. The day after and until the next scheduled worshipping, they forget everything they have read in the Bible and continue to act like everyone else. Without any remorse or hesitation they join the dance around the golden calf, lying, cheating and deceiving their neighbors for profit or status.
"Hypocrites," Jesus would call them, and certainly not the "salt of the earth". Neither "hot nor cold, but lukewarm" He would say they are, and then turn away not knowing them.
"Woo unto you lawyers," Jesus said, and He didn't address attorneys at law but experts in God's law and the scriptures, "for ye have taken away the key of knowledge. Ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering, ye hindered." (Luke 11:52)
These words Jesus addressed to all those bad guys the Bible calls Lawyers, Pharisees, Scribes and High priests. Aren't we glad that we don't have those guys around anymore? Besides, they sure are all rotting in hell, having killed our sweet Lord in such a cruel way. Well, that's what we may think, but that is not what these men really were.
No, these men were the respected spiritual and even political leaders of their people at the time when Jesus spoke to them. Today, he would have to say: "Shame unto you, Ministers, Evangelists, Reverends, Preachers, Pastors, Bishops, Cardinals, and Popes, because you have taken away the true meaning of the Gospel to please your own goals, and have transformed it to your own use. You refused to follow it yourselves, and those who tried and followed its true meaning you blamed, opposed, ridiculed. oppressed and even killed.".
And, while I am at it, I might as well continue and translate and explain some more of those verses in the Bible nobody seems to be familiar with. At least you never hear any of them in church, such as,
That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter the Kingdom of Heaven." (Matthew 5:20)
We have been taught to believe that Pharisees were a bunch of hypocrites and that it shouldn't be all too difficult to be more righteous than those fellows. Wrong! Pharisees followed the scriptures by the letter, obeying every Jot of the Biblical Law, praying and worshipping God without ceasing. But all this, Jesus declared, is not enough.
In modern words: its not enough to go to church and worship, it needs more. It needs a change of your heart. It needs your unconditional love of God and your fellow man, and without it there's no use going to church at all except as a social event.
At this point comes to my mind Jesus' remark about love. "Loving your parents, or your children, is not the love I'm talking about," He said. "Even the Gentiles", those we would call heathens today or Non-Christians, "love their parents and their children." In other words, all human beings love their parents and children, but to qualify for the Kingdom of Heaven you have to love everyone alike. You have to love your fellow man as you do yourself.
This doesn't mean that we have to accept everything they do or say. What we have to do is to see through the outer appearances and recognize Christ in every human being and love Him.
"Who are my brothers? Who are my sisters?" Jesus asked in return when He was announced that His brothers and sisters had arrived to see Him.
The churches have done away with this question completely in declaring that Jesus had no brothers and sisters, and that the Bible meant friends, cousins and other relatives.
Anyway, what Jesus wanted to express here is that there is something much more important and binding than physical and family ties, the spiritual bond. Within the spiritual family it should make no difference whatsoever if people are related by family ties or not. Like Jesus, we have to love all of our fellow men alike.
Then this one. "What man of you, having hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety nine in the wilderness and goes after that which is lost, until he finds it?" (Luke 15:4)
My question is: How many of our Christian leaders do go after those they consider in their righteousness as lost sheep? Personally, I do not know of any. They all seem to cherish and court the most important and richest members of their flock.
Then also, "No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other. One cannot serve God and money at the same time. (Luke 15:13)
My question to this statement is: "Why are all the churches so immensely rich? Why are they all so much concerned with money when the book they teach from clearly says not to be concerned with it? The Catholic church even owns several Banks in Rome, one of which is called after a Saint, "St. Ambrosias", the other one after the Holy Spirit Itself, the "Banco di Spiritus Sanctus". Does the gospel not apply also to churches as institutions? Or can there be any doubt about what is meant here? But it gets even better:
"So likewise, whoever is not willing to give up all he has, cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:33)
Can you see or imagine any church giving up all they have? Give up their money and their power.
"You justify yourself before men, but God knows your hearts; for that which is highly considered among men, is abomination in the sight of God." (Luke 16:15)
No further comment on this one. Just look around and observe what Christians are concerned with in their lives, or maybe you in yours if you can face the challenge.
Then it says: "Beware of those which give much importance to their physical appearance, who love to be recognized and greeted in public, and who always take the front rows in church, and the best places at festivities." (Luke 20:46)
Do you recognize some of your fellow men? Didn't they read this: "If any man desires to be the first, he should consider himself the last, and servant of all?"" (Mark 9:15)
Mm, can you appreciate the great servants we have in our churches today?
"By their fruits shall you know them." (Matthew 7:20)
Like most church leaders today and in the past, but even more so, there is one who seems never to have heard these verses, judging by what he does. I am talking about the institutionalized Pope in Rome.
As the self-appointed representative of Christ on earth, he rides in a bullet-prove car (the Pope mobile) to see his flock. Is he afraid of going to his own Heaven, the one he tries to threaten everyone into? Did he never read what Jesus said? That we cannot prolong our lives by one Jot, or that who tries to keep his life, looses it.
The Pope is the "first servant" or leader of the richest and most powerful institution in the world. As such, he acts as if Jesus had opened a business in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, of which he is now in charge to run and to perpetuate it on a worldwide scale.
All other churches do more or less the same, except, and to their regret, on a much smaller scale. Years in business count, and the Catholic Church is a millennium and a half older than any other.
But all the same, instead of teaching us the truth which sets us free, they bind their believers and followers into submission to their church through guilt and fear of hell.
And here is precisely where my problem lies. Christians who invite me to their church to worship with them on Sundays think that I am a lost sheep when I decline. Most probably, they even pray in the goodness of their heart that God may save me, one day, before it's too late. But I just can't do it. I cannot bring myself to do it or, when and if I go, I feel completely out of touch singing songs about the precious blood and sweet Jesus our Savior.
And for sure, I am not alone in this. To the contrary, I think that this is the main reason most of us do not attend church. Those who are in it, or those who are their leaders scare us off like the pest when they sweet-talk and try to convert us to what they seem to be: Hypocrites.
No, for me the real church, the church Jesus must have had in mind, are all those men and women, Christians and Non-Christians alike, who aspire and search for spiritual values and base their whole life upon the God-power within us which we call Christ. It is a permanent assembly in Spirit, not a social gathering every Sunday morning.
The real church for me needs no buildings and no money. My church has no name and no place of worship other than our own hearts and minds.
The members of this universal church have no other leader than Christ, the awakening God-power within us. All members have in common the knowledge that white, black, poor, rich or whatever, we all are equal. We all are one!
Every member of this universal church has come to the awareness that we are not of this world. That we only live here in this world for a very short time. That we all are on our individual journey back to our Father's Home.………
The Kingdom of Heaven

* * *

Imagine... Song by John Lennon

Imagine there's no Heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No Hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people,
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries,
It isn't hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
And no religion too,
Imagine all the people,
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer;
But I'm not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one....

Imagine no possessions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people,
sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer;
But I'm not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one....

* * *

 

What's wrong with us…?

When twenty million people die,
for lack of food, lack of supply,
when helpless hands and tearful eyes,
move us a little, but do not make us cry...
There's something wrong with us!

When unborn babies have no right,
and being born is left to chance,
when mothers worry, fathers mourn,
how to survive and get kids grown....
There's something wrong with us!

When our leaders can be bought,
and scandals flourish of greed and lies,
when law and order are being thought,
to control our minds and our lives...
There's something wrong with us!

When all our values come down to money,
for an endless dance around the golden calf,
when prison camps are overflowing,
and teenage children are made criminals...
There's something wrong with us!

When most of our money goes,
to defend a life that is hardly worth living,
when nations are asked to back down and
comply with our needs, instead of us giving...
There's something wrong with us!

When we live on our children's assets,
carelessly destroying their future world,
when rivers, and oceans, and even the heavens,
die of pollution, never to restore...
There's something wrong with us!

When those who have warned us are marked unworthy,
and those who want change are silenced by force,
when records are falsed to keep us in blindness,
it's definitely time that we all should know...
There's something wrong with us!

Don't' tell me now that I am wrong,
or that nothing can be done.
Remember those leaders of the past?
Those men and women who worked for us,
for our future, and our time to last?

Responsibility is what I want to see,
and belief in our human kind.
Sacrifice and heart is what we need,
not winning money by the mind.

So I give a darn if corporations make money,
or Wallstreet files for bankruptcy,
I want a chance for our children and us,
to live as well as it possibly can be.

"Of the people, by the people, for the people",
our founder fathers admiringly said.
Where is this spirit? Where is this aim?
It's just reversed......., in favor of the State.

* * *

This Bible prophecy is simply inconceivable to us. We all know that this can never be. Not in our world, where the strongest, the most ambitious, the most cunning, and the least scrupulous, in short where the fittest for survival is always the most successful. So who are those meek that shall inherit the earth?
According to my thesaurus, the meek are the humble, the modest, the unassuming, the unpretentious, the docile, the gentle and the mild, in short all the bums and losers. And those people will inherit the earth? Never! Not a chance in a million!
But then, please consider that those generally have been the odds for God's work in the past, and if we believe everything else the Bible tells us, then we have to take also this prediction seriously.
We all realize that it is certainly not happening yet, but the question is, are we today any nearer to the fulfillment of this prophecy than mankind was in the past?
Contemplating the daily evidence of physical violence, of greed and competition around us, God only knows. It certainly doesn't look like the meek would be inheriting anything soon or in a near future.
Christians who believe in the Bible apparently don't worry too much about it but sit and wait. Some are feeling hopeful that Jesus will come soon and set things straight, while others are afraid, helpless or indifferent. They all seem to wait for something dramatic to happen, Hollywood style. Obviously, people have a hard time realizing that the struggle against the Antichrist for the Kingdom of Heaven is spiritual and takes place in our hearts and minds.
Therefore, if we sincerely wish the Kingdom of Heaven to come, we need to go within ourselves. Only there can we find ways and means to discover how well hidden and diluted within our social structure and institutions the Antichrist really is. He is so deeply embedded in our culture and personal behavior that we have to become especially watchful, because the nature of this world never ever misses an opportunity to advance it's interests.
Constantly it is dividing us, continually it is deceiving us and is perverting our underlying human nature of honesty, courage, integrity and compassion into self-interest, fear and indifference. Relentlessly it tries to influence and dominate us to strengthen its hold on us. You talk about a busy devil.
So we wonder and complain about violence and crime in our society. We should not, because just showing our children our daily TV program is enough to assure that it will get even worse, and the Antichrist has a ball over our stupidity.
We wonder about the Aids virus. We should not, because as long as promiscuity and irresponsible sexual behavior is considered normal and is depicted as such to our children, it can only get worse.
We wonder about our children not learning anything in school, except about drugs, violence and sex, or how to get pregnant before the age of fifteen. We should not, because it's all our own doing.
We wonder about drugs. We should not, as we do nothing sensible about it, except creating another bureaucracy which, engrossed in its own power, is trying in vain to solve this problem on a low scale, but is spending a big chunk of our money and slowly erodes our constitutional rights.
We wonder about what happened to our leadership. We should not, because our elected representatives only reflect our own desires and attitudes. Every nation has the leaders it deserves.
We wonder about our country as a whole, but we should not, because we lost the spirit of our constitution and have allowed it to be bought off and accommodated to the Antichrist's liking.
We wonder about the gradual destruction of our planet. We should not, because we are the ones who care little, if not at all, in contributing most to our world's pollution.
What we see today is the physical appearance and manifestation of ideas and thoughts of the past. It is the transformation into the physical reality of yesterday's thoughts and plans. We cannot do anything about it now anymore, except put some cream to the bruises and so soothe the hurt. The harm is done.
What is important, however, is that we become aware of our own involvement. We must realize that the Antichrist is not a person but the accumulation and concentration of all the ideas and thoughts of all the people, us included. Here is where we must begin to make a change, and we must start right now! Within ourselves! We do not need to think like everybody else. We can fashion and entertain our own thoughts.
And some still may not understand yet and may ask again, "who is this Antichrist?" They may not recognize him because he is so familiar to us that we overlook him all the time. So how can we identify him in his manifestations in our life, and what does it mean he is the nature of this world?

Jesus pointed out that we are either of this world, or only in this world. If we are of this world, we are of the nature of this world. We are the disciples of the Antichrist. We are deaf and dead to the spiritual side of our being. We will see our life and ourselves as a physical evolution and development only. As most people still are in this stage, our global consciousness is expressed in ways I call the nature of this world, the Antichrist.
In our personal day to day life this comes to light, for instance, each time we make decisions or take actions in preference for a "non-living thing" to the detriment of our neighbor or general human interest and well-being. Like when the stock market prices for companies double, this is considered by our collective understanding as an economic boom. When a minimum wage increase is proposed because people work hard and still can't meet ends, we hear loud and concerted cries of warning about an impending inflation and economic disaster.
But as long as there have been men living together on earth, there has been leadership. This was necessary and good for the survival of mankind.
As long as history of men goes back, this leadership was assumed by two kinds of powers, the physical and the spiritual: the strong and forceful leader of the tribe and the Shaman, the Pharaoh and the High Priest, the State and the Church today.
Although these two powerhouses have fought each other many times over the centuries, neither one of the two could have properly functioned without the other. To lead people in the struggle for survival one had to instill fear in them. Fear of physical punishment for transgressions against the laws of this world, and fear of punishment in the world to come for disobeying the Gods. Fear made everyone obedient. Fear made everybody submit and follow rules, orders, doctrines and beliefs; fear and something else, ignorance.
As long as people are ignorant and fear that they are unable to manage their lives on their own, they are ready and eager to follow a leader. They will do what he orders them to do and believe what he says. As long as people are ignorant, they will not challenge anyone or anything.
Therefore leaders of all times including our own today have always watched out that people would not get too smart or too well informed. Keep them ignorant, but keep them happy.
"Panem et circenses" was the slogan of the godlike Caesars for governing their people in ancient Rome. "Bread and games", with over a hundred and twenty holidays a year to enjoy them.
Today we call it "Public Welfare and Sports and Entertainment", but it's still the same. In reflecting on it, we can easily realize that not much really has changed since the Caesars in Rome ruled the world, except that slaves are now called employees or hired help and are not fed and housed anymore but paid to live somewhere else.
Then Jesus came along two thousand years ago and said that the Kingdom of Heaven was near. After being crucified for saying this, his Gospel found large numbers of followers all over the empire and the Caesars in Rome got worried about their godlike status. Nevertheless, it took those Roman emperors hundreds of years to find out that this new religion couldn't be done away with. So they changed their mind about it and adopted Christianity as their new State Religion. Ever since, both have existed happily ever after, sustaining each other to maintain their power over the people.
Jesus' message of the Kingdom of Heaven has now come to us, structured, dogmatized and selectively translated by centuries of power interests.
More educated, less afraid for our physical day-to-day survival, more open to new ideas, some of us have taken its promise into their hearts. Some part of our society has begun thinking their own thoughts again. Something new is awakening to life.
The idea of a new and different form of society is germinating as a true possibility: The Kingdom of Heaven, the spiritual society shows it's first wary sign of life. Because what else does Kingdom of Heaven or the