by H. Mark Edward
Excerpts:
Book Five
SELF
You must get THERE
from THERE!
H. Mark Edward
The Real Four-Letter Word in Religion
On the world's exploding "Me, Myself, & I" Culture of SELF-worship and which has crept into religion, including Christianity
I think we can all agree that it IS, in fact, not about any of us, but it is all about Jesus Christ. It’s not about your religion, or your church, or your “faith community”, or your—brace yourself—relatively petty “self-person” lives. He did not come to give you an abundant temporal quality of life in the flesh. He came to Give you, first and foremost, an unending abundance of God’s Eternal Zoe Life. And THIS is how God Agape-Loves you and I, it is what the Quality of that Godly Love is, and it is His Love which we are Commanded to Love others with. But it cannot be your temporal, human "phileo" love; it must be His within you, and then out of you. To Receive this blessing, we must each ASK Him for it.
For there is no respect of
persons with God.
Romans 2:11
On the unwitting exaltation of the temporal self which occurs with any and all efforts to please God through temporal religious traditions:
...all efforts to “fix” one's dead "self" is a de facto act of rejecting God’s “Way” of Fixing an individual, and thus inserts the “supreme self” of the individual above God (not a wise thing to do, as Lucifer discovered after it was too late). God is drawing our attention to this heretical failing among church leaders can be seen in the recent obsession in the popular culture with zombie and "walking dead" themes. That is how God views those believers trapped in the temporal dialectic "fixes" of religion.
,,,God's Revealed Wisdom teaches us that vanity is a two-faced master that both educes and crushes our hopes.
On the critical importance of a precise understanding of the term "name"; referring to the sum total Identity of something or someone; in this case, the "NAME" of Jesus
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” opines Juliet in Shakespeares' Romeo and Juliet. The intrinsic truth of love is far greater than the subjective meaning of either Juliet’s or Romeo’s family names. Shakespeare was proclaiming that the profound human emotional experience we call “love” surely existed long before Romeo and Juliet’s fleeting family names and petty prejudices and, because love will long survive their names, love should then be considered to be superior to any temporal constructs of mere men. This includes all religious traditions!
On the unwitting "evil alliance" between Satan and temporal religious traditions: where placing all focus on Jesus' "perfect" behavior and contrasting it with that of believers brings them further into the bondage of self-condemnation
...in all religious traditional dogma, the focus is only how Christ was/is Sinless, but believers are told that they are in comparison hopelessly sinful. Therefore everything the believer does will by contrast to Jesus represent a type of failure; which of course both leads to, and reinforces, one’s self-condemnation.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Romans 8:2
On the thematic statement "You can't get THERE from here... You must get THERE from THERE!
In short, you cannot find or extract Light from darkness, you can only find and appropriate Light from the Light. This teaching series will show every reader precisely how to escape all failed "Bridge to Nowhere" traditions of religion and find the Light that is THERE. Again, this is a solemn Promise to the readers.
Chapters & Topics Covered:
FOREWORD (Repeated in all Books)
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Me, Myself & I: God is no respecter of persons; Romans 2:11
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Precision in Defining "Persons" and "Personality" The Nature of "Persons"--The True and the "anti-true" of Reality Here is Wisdom: The grave error of religion: trying to "fix" the anti-self personality
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Vanity Christianity: The Temporal, self-ish Pursuit in all "Popular" Christianity
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Man's Triune Nature: Freud's Ego, Id, & Superego Ludwig Feuerbach, Atheist's Philosophy; Men Create God to Model Their Own Ideal Self
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Vanity & The Vain "supreme self" Study Help; Book of Ecclesiastes
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Your "Identity": What do you draw yours from? He Must Increase - I must Decrease John 3:30 . What's in a "Name"? That is, IDENTITY In the Temporal: Starting with The Human Face
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Knowing and Knowledge--The "I AM" Name of God . Religion's Co-opting God's Redemptive Work in Christ
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Self-Consciousness & Self-condemnation = Self Worship; Condemnation: The Powerful tool of Both Satan and Religion .Religious Error No. 1,549 -- Satan is "before God" accusing us The Cult of Condemnation that is all religious exercise EPILOGUE (Repeated in all Books)