It's a dark and gloomy day here in Central New Jersey.  What better time to immerse oneself into music of one kind or another.  I've been perusing my favorite artists on Youtube while wishing MTV still played videos.  Or better yet, VH1 which focused on soft rock and golden oldies.  Now all you can find on these channels is "reality TV" which is so far from reality it should be called "imagination TV" or "you can't possibly believe this shit TV".  But that's another blog entirely.

As the rain falls in sheets outside my window I crave the sultry sounds of such artists as Amy Winehouse, Joss Stone, and Paloma Faith.  Their voices spill over me like warm caramel on cold ice cream.  Winehouse's duet "Body and Soul" done with Tony Bennett is fantastic and an all-time favorite.  I almost wish Bennett wouldn't sing so much so I could listen to Winehouse's smokey sounds.  Faith's "Let Your Love Walk In" is another good one.  Though her voice is still young and has yet to reach the truly dark, sultry tones of her contemporaries, she is on the right path.  Now, Joss Stone brings to mind the soul music of the 60's and 70's, and her voice just oozes sex.  But no one can beat Adele with her vocalization that bends and cracks around her songs, the words that flow together and meld into such an erotic sound.  Her "Skyfall" brings goosebumps to my skin and makes my senses hunger for more.  These women, so young, yet their voices so mature, so sizzling, so torrid.  Yes, it's a nice way to spend a rainy Tuesday afternoon.

God's Changing Vision - Conclusion

Today, many fundamental obstacles stand in the way of understanding and believing in God. Not only that, but those same fundamental beliefs prevent the three major religions under the guise of the “same God” from living peacefully with one another due to the different beliefs in their chosen faith. To compound the equation, with the advancement scientific discoveries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, atheism and agnosticism have risen leaving some questioning the existence of God as well as wondering if another prophet will come to reiterate belief and faith. This makes me ponder the idea of another coming. Since we have grown mentally, is it not time for the arrival of another savior who is on the same intellectual plane, who can explain more fully the universe and our reason for being in it? Following the previous paths taken, many small gods evolving into one god as well as the prophets or teachers of one god taking so many forms in order influence the masses, one can only concludes that the world is ripe for a new age of enlightenment. This is the perfect opportunity for God to reemerge and let his presence be known again, to reintroduce himself in a new and yet unconventional manner, to convert the nonbelievers. For those paths that were previously laid are now lost in the rubble of selfishness and intolerance, not only of one another but of the universe as a whole. With all the different religions involved in all the violence, against one another and within their own denominations, where wars are started and fought in His holy name, is it not time for a resurrection of faith without the Armageddon. Or does the Armageddon not actually mean the death of the world but the death of the sinful ways of life and the resurrection of the core of understanding; where those nonbelievers are not sent to the bowels of Hades but rather given a vision in the New Coming? For example, today, the common God has taken his three strongest religions, all equally important and worthy of man’s belief, put them in His holiest place on earth, and given them a test. Unfortunately, we are failing that test miserably. And because we are failing, are we not ripe for another lesson given by a new teacher?

God's Changing Vision Part 7

Pagan Arabs were not the only inhabitants of Mecca and the surrounding areas. Christians and Jews lived in close proximity and many Arabs of the day converted to one of these faiths. Sometimes entire nomadic groups turned (Katsh, [1954] 1980). This caused Arabs of the area to feel “an acute sense of inferiority: it seemed as though God had left the Arabs out of his divine plan.”[1] Also, this was one of the last remaining bastions that had not completely converted to monotheism so there was an expectancy of an Arab prophet (Armstrong, The History of God, 1994).

Somewhere around 610, an Arab merchant in the city of Mecca had an experience similar to those of hundreds of years before. And though the man had never had the opportunity to read the Bible, his visions were uncannily similar to Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In his dream an angel told him to recite the words of God. When Mohammad refused the angel hugged the man so tightly that Mohammad could barely breathe. When the angel made the request again, Mohammad still refused to capitulate. It was after the third request that he found the first words of a new scripture which was to become The Holy Qur’an.

[1] Armstrong, Muhammad, 45-46[99

God's Changing Vision Part 6

Another transformation of God occurred around 30BCE. “When Philo was illustrating his Platonized Judaism in Alexandria and Hillel and Shammai were debating in Jerusalem, a young, charismatic healer was starting his own career in the north of Palestine.” [1]

At this time Jews were extremely devout monotheists who expected the Messiah to be an ordinary man. Forty years after his death is when the first full account of the life of Jesus was written down by Mark. In it, he presented Jesus as a perfectly normal man from a family that included brothers and sisters. Angels did not sing over his crib and his infancy and adolescence was not remarkable in any way. It was not until he was baptized by John the Baptist that it was proclaimed he was the son of God.

“No sooner had he come out of the water than he saw the heavens torn
apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice came
from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; my favor rests upon you.’”[2]

It was not until after his death that his followers deemed Jesus divine. He spread “faith” and the promise of salvation. With forgiveness came strength that allowed them to see their frail, mortal lives transformed into something stronger and bigger. The powers of God were present and active in the world of the Messianic Kingdom. And this teaching was so powerful that his followers could not abandon it after his death.

It was Paul who traveled to Turkey and Greece. He believed it was his mission to convert the non-Jews into members of the New Israel. Ultimately this New Israel, inspired by the life, death and resurrection, would become a Gentile faith that would evolve its own distinctive conception of God, belief, and faith.[3] By 235 it had become one of the most important religions of the Roman Empire; so important that Emperor Constantine himself converted in 312 and legalized the religion the following year. For the next 300 years it continued to grow and proper spreading across continents. Developments through the Synod in Nicaea under the rule of Constantine became doctrine. The Holy Trinity and the books of the Holy Bible were decided upon and devoutly followed as well as argued about for generations through today.

[1] Armstrong, The History of God, 1994, pg. 79
[2] Mark 1:18, 11
[3] Armstrong, The History of God, 1994, pg. 80

God's Changing Vision Part 5

With this widespread enlightenment came a new understanding of the “all-powerful”. Though each deity of the time was different, their variances combined to give rise to one higher being and that being was Yahweh. This merging is a major factor in the possibility of the in-depth, rational understanding of this new god and the place He had in the extended history of what began in this area of the world, the Cradle of Civilization (Smith, [1990] 2002).

But with this new god came new rules and Yahweh was a very strict and vengeful, if not wrathful God. He demanded his followers comply with his wishes or burn in damnation and hellfire for eternity. This was usually following his wrath on earth which may have been plague, famine or flood. But, he also promised paradise, a heaven free of the ugliness that was known in society at that time. The only stipulation was to follow the rules set forth by Him.

God's Changing Vision Part 4

Soon the idea of many gods was eclipsed by the rebirth of monotheism. Previously, this was tried during the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaton’s reign. He was considered an innovator by most standards but his enlightenment only lasted his lifetime. Upon his death polytheism was accepted once more. And monotheism did not come into being again until around 742 BCE when, some believe, a member of the Judean family had a vision of Yahweh in the temple which King Solomon had built in Jerusalem. Whether these are actual facts or theories is still fodder for debate but there can be no arguing that a single god found his way into mankind at approximately this date.

And, it is believed, this new Yahweh of the Axial Age was not just a tribal deity who was biased toward one or another tribe. Instead, this new god was for his glory and could no longer be confined to the Promised Land but rather spread across the east. From southern Italy to China, this rapid alteration happened and was recorded in the writings of Confucius, Zoroaster Mahavira, the authors of Hindu, Pythagoras, Lao-Tzu, Buddah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel (Stark, 2007).

God's Changing Vision Part 3

The history of religion begins with the history of man. Through archeology we have found that there were idols and symbols that were worshiped and glorified. Some were magic and some were religious. They coexisted with one another (and continue to do so today in some “religions”). These symbols and idols ruled daily life for the primitive nomadic man and briefly continued into the life of the agrarian man.

With the understanding of life’s cycles, the idols became less impactful whilst the gods grew more powerful. It was soon understood that a symbol of a corn cob was a very small piece of the puzzle that was agriculture; therefore there must be a god that looks after the whole rather than the piece. Though little is actually known of these people and it is more speculation from the findings than certainty, we do know that for thousands of years burial sites included these grave images. One conclusion is that these images are the discovery of gods in primitive societies (Stark, 2007).

The belief in these gods either began simultaneously or spread like fire throughout the kingdoms making that time period, named the Axial Age[i], the first age of enlightenment. Careful studies of the humans of this era have given rise to the fact that they needed to give divinity to common place things: e.g. fire in the hearth became Agni; thunder, lightning and rain was Mithra; the creator of the world was Dyas Piter; just to name a few (Armstrong, The Great Transformation , 2006). And these gods needed to be appeased or fed in order for prosperity to occur or be maintained.

[i] The Axial Age is a term developed by Carl Jaspers, a German philosopher, and pertains to the similar thinking that simultaneously spread through India, China and the Occident.

God's Changing Vision Part 2

One might venture to say that most people believe in God or a god of some kind. This appears to have been the case throughout the history of human beings. But with the birth of the sciences and the growth of scientific intellect, there are many who reject these very spiritual ideas and feel the existence of God is a delusion. One such person is the author Richard Dawkins who defines the “God Hypothesis” as the existence of a super-human, super-natural intelligence that designed the universe and everything in it. He goes on to counter that belief with his own theory that any creative intelligence comes into being only as the “end product of much involved and extended process of gradual evolution”[1]. He feels that seeing and trying to understand the reason for life and man’s existence in it are what initially created the concept of the “all-powerful being” (Dawkins, 2006).

Rodney Stark, a professor of social sciences at Baylor University feels that Dawkins and his ilk (atheists) claim that religion and the belief in God are survival tactics. They feel that faith is ambiguous and obstructs man’s natural power to reason. Stark argues that it is the human’s capacity to reason that allows man to understand and appreciate more about the truth of God than was comprehended in earlier times (Stark, 2007). Harold E. Lurier and others cited the teachings of the German Philosopher, Rudolf Otto, in A History of the Religions of the World. Otto coined the term “Numinosum” in his book Das Heilige (The Idea of the Holy). This is loosely defined as the intense, ingrained feeling of knowing that there is something powerful that cannot be seen. And this “It” led to the varying beliefs in deities, the supernatural, the sacred, the holy, and the transcendent (Lurier, 2002).

[1] Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006, pg 31