eileen fleming

"This is why I tell you: Be in Harmony, If you are out of balance, take inspiration from manifestations of your true nature. Those who have ears let them hear"-Gospel of Mary Magdalene

2,000 years ago, females were not even called as a witness in court, but every July 22, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Orthodox Christians celebrate the feast day of Mary Magdalene, who according to the Gospel of John, was the first witness of the Resurrection appearances of Jesus.

Mary Magdalene disappeared from the canonical Gospels immediately after she reported to the male disciples that she had seen Jesus three days after he had been nailed to and died on a wooden cross; the Roman Empire's way to rid itself of rebels, dissidents, agitators and any other who disturbed the status quo of the Roman Military Occupation.

"For centuries, Mary Magdalene has been misidentified in Western Christian Tradition as an adulteress and repentant prostitute, although nowhere does the New Testament identify her as such…in Eastern Christianity she is referred to as 'Equal to the Apostles'.

"A group of scholars, the most familiar of whom is Elaine Pagels, have suggested that for one early group of Christians Mary Magdalene was a leader of the early Church and maybe even is the unidentified Beloved Disciple, to whom the Fourth Gospel commonly called Gospel of John is ascribed.[1]

Jesus is the first known man to blow apart the societal and religious taboos of speaking with females they were not related to in public and respecting them as equals; one more example of how the male disciples would/could not follow Jesus that closely, for Jesus treated women as fully equal.

To fail to follow what Jesus taught is to be an anti-Christ.

The term "antichrist" only appears five times in the Bible.

However, a cult not based on historical theology has spun an urban legend that seeks Armageddon.
The term "antichrist" never appears in John's Revelation or Daniel, two disparate works of literature written three centuries apart and under very different circumstances, yet a series of pulp fiction and putrid theology espoused in the "Left Behind" series has rendered its adherents in the Body of Christ brain dead, for these books have taken Jesus and left behind everything he was always on about: NONVIOLENT resistance to all evil, love, forgiveness, compassion for all the oppressed and righteous rage for hypocrites and the cold hearted.

Most contemporary Biblical scholars agree that the five canonical verses that mention the "antichrist" were written to attack the Gnostic understanding of who Christ was.

A Gnostic relies on intuition and not on dogma and doctrine. Gnostic's were most certainly free spirits and most all of the writings we have about Gnostics, have been the attacks upon them. That all changed in 1946 with the discovery of the Nag Hamadi Library; and what had been deemed heretical by those in power in the fourth century can now be read in most every language.

Biblical scholars today agree that many books of the Bible were written by others in the name of an apostle, for the quickest way to gain credibility is to trade on another's reputation.

We may never know if the author who coined the term "antichrist" was actually the apostle John who wrote I John and 2 John-the only sources where the term appears.

John also say's:

"As you have heard that the antichrist is coming; even now many have come..."- I John 2:18

"This is how we know who the children of God are not: anyone who does not do right; nor anyone who does not love his brother."-I John 3:10

"If anyone has material possessions and see's his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Let us love with actions and in truth."-I John 3:17

"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. There is no fear in love. Perfect love drives out all fear because fear has to do with punishment." 1 John 4:16,18

The theology promoted in the "Left Behind" fiction is a theology based on fear and punishment. The followers of this heretical theology worship a false god: a punitive father, who seeks obedience, is patriarchal, seeks empire in this world and is blind, deaf and dumb to the fragility of Mother Nature.
Jesus provided the way to liberation from the bondage of the corrupt teachers of The Law and turned the world upside down by teaching that God loved ALL his creatures and creation.

Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is NOT of this world, but that it comes from within and we are to bring it into this reality; and he laid it down as to how in The Sermon on the Mount/The Beatitudes:
About 2,000 years ago, when Christ was about 33, he hiked up a hill and sat down under an olive tree and began to teach the people;

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven."

In other words: it is those who know their own spiritual poverty, their own limitations and sins honestly and trust God loves them in spite of themselves who already live in the Kingdom of God.

How comforted we will all be, when we see, we haven't got a clue, as to the depth and breadth of pure love and mercy of The Divine Mystery of The Universe.

God's name in ancient Aramaic is Abba which means Daddy as much as Mommy and He/She: The Lord has said, "My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not yours." -Isaiah 55:8

Christ proclaimed more: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

The essence of meek is to be patient with ignorance, slow to anger and never hold a grudge. In other words: how comforted you will be when you also know humility; when you know yourself, the good and the bad, for both cut through every human heart.

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be filled."

In other words: how comforted you will be when your greatest desire is to do what "God requires, and he has already told you what that is; BE JUST, BE MERCIFUL and walk humbly with your Lord."-Micah 6:8

"Blessed are the merciful, they will be shown mercy."

In other words: how comforted you will all be when you choose to return only kindness to your 'enemy.'

"For with the measure you measure against another, it will be measured back to you" Christ warns his disciples as he explains the law of karma in Luke 6:27-38.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they see God."

In other words: how comforted you will be when you WAKE UP and see God is already within you, within every man, every woman and every child. The Supreme Being is everywhere, the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. Beyond The Universe -and yet so small; within the heart of every atom.

"Blessed are The Peacemakers: THEY shall be called the children of God."

And what a wonderful world it would be when we all seek peace by pursuing justice; for there can be none without the other.

"Blessed are those who are persecuted because they do what God requires, theirs is The Kingdom of Heaven."

And one fine day the lion will lie down with The Lamb and man will make war no more and that is the Kingdom of God, and God is love and, "Love is not the starving of whole populations. Love is not the bombardment of open cities. Love is not killing......Our manifesto is the Sermon on the Mount, which means that we will try to be peacemakers." -Dorothy Day

Antichrists do not see that all of nature is God's temple, and war the ultimate expression of terrorism which only reaps more terror and more poor, oppressed, refugees, widows, orphans and prisoners.

Today's antichrists take particular scriptural passages literally, and totally neglect those they do not want to see or hear. Such as, Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:28-29, and Luke 12:10 which are simpatico with Gnostic Thomas saying 44:

Jesus said: "Whoever blasphemes against the father will be forgiven, whoever blasphemes against the son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven either on earth or in heaven."

The Holy Spirit/God within- is in all beings and situations-and nothing Jesus ever said or did would condone the sanctioning, bombing, torturing or military occupation of any other.

No religion owns God and no church owns Jesus, who was never a Christian. The term Christian was not even coined until three decades after Jesus walked the earth a social justice radical revolutionary Palestinian devout Jewish road warrior who rose up and challenged the job security of the temple priests and disturbed the status quo of the Roman Occupying Forces in defense of the poor, oppressed, widows, orphans, prisoners and all others enduring under a brutal military occupation.

The antichrists of today, neglect the non-negotiable's that Jesus commanded that his followers must do: LOVE, pray for and forgive ones enemies, to treat all people the way we want to be treated and always remain NONVIOLENT.

Christ dealt compassionately with everyone, but the high priests and hypocrites received his righteous wrath for their cold hearted indifference to the suffering of the people. Compassion, which is sorrow for the suffering of others, is accompanied by the urge to help, and if this attitude is missing within a Christian, then it is the spirit of the antichrist that rules and neo-con ideology is its match made in hell.

USA Background:

During the Bush Administration a series of off-the-record meetings was conducted in the White House regarding policies in the Middle East with leaders of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a political organization that believes supporting Israel's expansionist policies is "a biblical imperative."

The Nation reported that CUFI's pressed White House officials to adopt a more confrontational posture toward Iran, to refuse aid to the Palestinians and give Israel a free hand as it ramped up its military conflict with Hezbollah.

The White House never revealed the names of the officials who met with the CUFI lobbyists who espouse the Armageddon-based foreign-policy views of its founder, John Hagee.

Hagee is a rigid rotund fundamentalist, fire-and-brimstone preacher and a leader of the fastest growing cult in America: Christian Zionism, which is inherently anti-Semitic.

While Jewish Zionism began with the hope that all Jewish people would have a safe and peaceful dwelling place, these corruptors of the gospel Christ preached, adhere to a 200 year old mis-interpretation and mis-reading of disparate scriptures that they weave together to support their fear based doctrine.

Hagee has captivated nearly 18,000 misled Christians at his Cornerstone Church with his take on who the anti-Christ is, and he also hosts a major TV ministry where he explains his views of how the end times will unfold. He blatantly corrupts and denies the message that Christ preached. Hagee, Hal Lindsay and the Left Behinder's are doomsday false 'prophets' who believe that the only way to defeat "Islamist fascists" is with a full-scale military assault.

The cult of 'Christian' Zionism is what the concept of the Anti-Christ is all about; against Christ's teachings, for Jesus promised it is the Peacemakers who are the daughters and sons of God-NOT those that bomb, torture or occupy others.

The heretical theology of Premellenial Dispensation worships a god of Armageddon and not the God of love, forgiveness and compassion that Jesus/AKA The Prince of Peace taught and modeled with his life.

Ardent Christian Zionists desire to convert the Jews to Christianity or they hope to see them left behind to perish in a nuclear holocaust; and that is NOT at all a Christian attitude!

In 1891, Christian fundamentalist and lay-preacher, William Blackstone appealed to President Benjamin Harrison to help establish a Jewish state in Palestine.
Blackstone was a disciple of Dwight L. Moody and they both were influenced by the father of premillenial dispensationalism, John Nelson Darby.

Darby had great success in connecting with the post-Civil War survivors and was able to transmit his new theology into the heartland of America. Despite the horrifying news of Czarist pogroms that could have been the catalyst to establishing a Jewish state before the Holocaust, the fundamentalists moved onto the Scopes Trial and forgot about the Jews for a while.

Fifty years later and after six million Jews [and five million other innocents] were cold bloodedly murdered, and only after the British Mandate ran out, Israel was born.

Many evangelicals interpreted the establishment of Israel to be the fulfillment of -how they understood and interpreted- certain prophetic scriptures. They interpreted the Israeli victory in the 1967 War and the capture of Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and the Golan Heights to be an act of God and not because of Israeli superior military might.

The American Bi-Centennial in 1976 was a watershed year for the religious right. While mainline churches declined evangelical fundamentalist churches became the fastest growing sector of American Christianity. TIME magazine named 1976 as The Year of The Evangelical and suddenly they became a legitimate political and religious force.

"Following the War of 1967, Israel gained an increased portion of USA foreign aid and military budgets, becoming the 'western pillar' of the USA strategic alliance against Soviet incursion into the Middle East...During this period AIPAC and other pro-Israeli lobby agencies began their ascent to power in shaping USA foreign policy. The Roman Catholic Church and mainline Protestant denominations began to develop a more balanced approach to the Middle East, bringing them closer to the international consensus on the Palestinian question. Pro-Israel organizations interpreted this shift as being Anti-Israel and in turn began to court the conservative Christians."-Naim Ateek, Challenging Christian Zionism, pg. 35.

In 1977, when President Carter stated "The Palestinians deserve a right to their homeland" the Christian fundamentalists and Israeli lobby responded with full page ads stating: "The time has come for evangelical Christians to affirm their belief in biblical prophecy and Israel's divine right to the land...and affirm our belief in the Promised Land to the Jewish people." [Ibid]

The Reagan White House hosted a series of seminars from the Israeli lobby and Christian right. This was when Hal Lindsay, Pat Robertson, Jerry Fawell and the Moral majority infiltrated the West Wing.

"Fawell received a Lear Jet from the Israeli government for his personal travel...When Israel bombed the Iraqi nuclear plant in 1981, Prime Minister Begin called Jerry Fawell [ before he called Reagan] to ask him 'to explain to the Christian public the reasons for the bombings.'" [Ibid pg. 37]

In 1996, Netanyahu and Likud ideology dominated Israeli policy and 17 evangelical USA pastors pledged their support of illegal colonies in the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and full support for a Jerusalem under sovereignty of Israel.

The Christian Zionists launched a PR campaign under the banner: "Christians Call for a United Jerusalem."

They ignored the fact that they were in conflict with American policy and the Oslo process as well as a direct attack on Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant unity with the Churches for Middle East Peace that called for a Shared Jerusalem.

"The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty," Hagee wrote many years ago in the Pentecostal magazine Charisma. "Israel and America must confront Iran's nuclear ability and willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. For Israel to wait is to risk committing national suicide."

Christ taught that the only way to resist evil is with good and modeled that one must always work for PEACEFUL resolutions, even to the point of returning violence with compassion and forgiveness, as Jesus did when nailed to a cross for he prayed: "Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing."

However, today's leaders know exactly what they are doing and, "The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership....a leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures." - William Fulbright

The world is tipped on its side heavy with artillery due to a lack of wisdom and the Church also threw it out of their canon, when the Protestant Reformers would/could not accept the Book of Wisdom [Roman Catholics include it in their bible] because it was deemed too Jewish, but perhaps it was just too feminine.

The Book of Wisdom defines wisdom as: a spirit intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, agile, clear, unstained, and certain. Not baneful, but loving the good. Keen, unhampered, beneficent, kind, firm, secure, all-powerful, all-seeing and pervading all spirits.

Wisdom is mobile beyond all motion and SHE penetrates and pervades all things by reason. SHE is the aura of the might of God and a pure effusion of the glory of The Almighty. SHE is the refulgence of eternal Light, a spotless mirror of the power of God. And SHE who is one, can do all things and renews everything, and passing into holy souls from age to age, SHE produces friends of God and prophets.- WISDOM 7:22-8:1

Wisdom has built her house and SHE calls to all; "Come, eat my food and drink my wine and you will live abundant life and walk in the ways of understanding." -Proverbs 9

Wisdom calls; "I have built it; will you come? Do you have eyes to see and ears to hear?

Holy Wisdom, the Feminine Divinity: Hokema,

Who was with The Word from the very beginning,

She is One with Him and He with Her;

Pure Being; One God;

One Creator and One Lover of All the Human Family,

Hokema; Holy Wisdom;, The Feminine Divinity

Same as The Logos: The Word:

"Have you heard The Word is love and The Word is just the way."-John Lennon

The Word is The Christ and before Christ walked the earth a man,

He was already a SHE:

Hokema, Holy Wisdom; the Feminine Divinity

Now, isn't that Good News?

The God Head is One Pure Being;

as much male as female

as much mommy as daddy.

And we are all children of Her Universe;

And **He is the oldest personality because He is the origin of everything;

and everything is born of Him.

He is the supreme controller of the universe,

the maintainer and instructor of humanity.

He is smaller than the smallest.[**Bhagavad-Gita]

He indwells the heart of every atom and

She is beyond the Universe.

Wisdom is calling,

She is rattling your windows and shaking your walls

With some more good news of the

three witnesses,

and three always beats one

and not just that,

I've got a fourth.

Get out your Good Book sisters and brothers and chew on this;

Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:28-29, and Luke 12:10

are simpatico with Gnostic Thomas saying 44:

'Jesus said: "Whoever blasphemes against the father will be forgiven, whoever blasphemes against the son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven either on earth or in heaven."

God is within every sister, brother and all Creation,

Get a clue Christian,

His ways are not your ways and Her thoughts are not your thoughts

Dominion never meant to rape and plunder,

but to nurture, care and love

And if you have not love, you have nothing at all

And on that final day we all will stand naked before The Creator

And we have been warned that there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth

by those who were so sure they were in, because they are the ones left out.

WAKE UP Christian and hear the wind begin to howl:

For every misunderstanding, every condemning thought, every negative vibration, every tear torn from a heart, every time one grabbed and wouldn’t let go, and they only did it because they did not know:

The Divine is within all creation and within all women and men.

And every tiny kindness you have ever done, every gentle word spoken, every time you held your tongue, every positive thought, every smile freely given, every helping hand that opens, helps bring in the kingdom.

And the kingdom comes from above, and it comes from within. Imagine a kingdom of sisterhood of all creatures and all men.

"Soon after I had published the pamphlet "Common Sense" [on Feb. 14, 1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion... The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion."-Tom Paine

Christianity and America were both founded by rebels, revolutionaries and dissidents and not by conservatives or neo-cons.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene

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Eileen Fleming, A Feature Correspondent for The Palestine Telegraph and Arabisto
Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org
Author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory"
Producer "30 Minutes with Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"
--
Only in Solidarity do "we have it in our power to begin the world again."-Tom Paine

http://www.wearewideawake.org/