'Signs and wonders' - is it Kundalini?

You know, the one Church in the NT that was famed for speaking in tongues was the one in Corinth - and Paul wrote to them to say that tongues was no big deal, and that they should work on showing more love?
We ought to keep this in mind when we read of people being ' slain in the spirit', or speaking in tongues, or similar manifestations of  'the Toronto blessing' happening in churches.

This is not to knock anyone who does speak in tongues, just to put it into perspective a bit. Me, I have follwed a trajectory a bit like Halley's Comet - whereas some people have stayed in the church that they were born and raised in all their lives, I was born C of E and went to a traditional boarding school, where school assembly, RE lessons and confirmation classes were the done thing. however, my mum got into Jehovah's Witnesses, whom I left for the New Age Movement. from there , I slowly moved back towards Christianity by way of a small and Christian fellowship and ended up in the United reformed Church , where I have been the last 15 years or so.

The Witnesses introduced me to the idea that Christmas had a pagan origin, and they did not celebrate Christmas for that reason . however, I got to see as I grew older that the Witnesses were not infallible and that god was not leading them as much as they might suppose. Moreover, the Bible itself was full of borrowed pagan ideas which the Hebrews gacked from their pagan neighbours.

So, on leaving them , I went to chat to some local pagans - reading in those days, being not far from Greenham Common Airbase, was awash with new Age Activists who were into ecology, CND and Green Politics. so that is where I headed next. i joined ashrams, or teaching circles, I became a chela, or pupil, to certain English people who could show me something of the esoteric traditions of India, China and Japanese Zen Buddhism. I studied Tao, Astrology, chakras and such . And yet somehow, this was not for me. Things happened that I shall recount another time perhaps, and I set my feet once more for the Western Christian tradition.

And so I began to look at the Christian faith afresh - not as the Witnesses saw things , but with a more informed view on Scripture. And so I began to check out Charismatic and other churches that were not C of E. the URC was one such place and that is where I ended up, but I did the Alpha course, and went to Westminster Chapel,  where R.T . Kendall did theological lectures in the evening during the week.

It was R T Kendall who introduced me to the books by Jackie Pullinger, a Christian woman who went as a missionary to China. In her books, she recounts her own adventures in the faith - how she got addicts off of heroin, using nothing more than prayers and strong black coffee. She also  won the respect of hardened criminals among the Hong Kong Triads- the Chinese equivalent to the Mafia. She came across to them as she does to me, a very courageous and virtuous individual, much in the Gladys Ailward tradition.

Interestingly , when she began to convert Chinese people to Christianity, some began speaking in tongues. Now, I have been to St Luke's, an Evangelical Church run by the C of E in Cranham. I did the Alpha Course there, and have heard people speak in tongues in their services. And really, it seems to me that these people were just babbling ecstatically and then someone would translate for them , not repeating the form of the original message, but saying something rather shorter, less repetitive and rather different.

Yet Jackie reports that in her congregation, someone who was new would get up and speak in English - good English - 'the sort of English that you would hear from an Oxford don' , as she put it. And then someone else would stand up and repeat the phrase in eloquent Mandarin  Chinese. Now, Jackie Pullinger was the only person in the room who could have got the sense of both or even performed this feat, she says- and she says this happened, and other ordinary , uneducated  people did it. As far as I am concerned, her character is such that I quite believe her.

Closer to home , I have not seen that happen myself, yet I do know that some strange things have happened in Britain.  I recall reading about a reporter for the Evening Standard going along to a revival meeting being run by an evangelist visiting London . The Evangelist would have people come forward , and he would lay his hands on them and they simply collapsed, fell backwards and were caught by two assistants who were there to make sure they never got hurt. This rather cynical reporter went froward, and was instantly ' zapped' as they put it. Our reporter never saw any visions of heaven , never got converted - they just had an experience they could not explain . they felt no pain , just inexplicably blacked out when the minister laid hands on them. Hmmm...

While I was at R.T. Kendall's class one evening ,  The hymn writer Graham Kendrick was there as the guest speaker. he recounted the story of how he was writing a song at the time, and wondering about one of the verses he had done. Graham explained that a fellow Christian in his church came up to him and said " the Lord has given me a message to give to you. Jesus wants you to keep that verse about Moses and Elijah in the song - don't delete it." Now, Graham had not even mentioned the song he was at work on to anyone. how did this person know about the verse in question ? Again , considering the source of this story, i am prepared to go with it.

But what is going on here? Is all this somehow connected to God and Jesus, or is there something else at work? If so, what is it? Western science does not seem to be able to supply the answer as to why a cynical and curious journalist should be knocked unconscious by the lightest touch of the hands - yet to those who taught me, the answer is simple: it was Kundalini.

Those who have a knowledge of the eastern Esoteric Traditions will know that yoga is more than just posture and breathing exercises. it is also about ' opening ones chakras'. the chakras are thought to be energy centres in the body that regulate the flow of 'prana', or life force - the Chinese call it 'qi' and the Japanese 'chi'. By the use of acupuncture and acupressure, some practitioners can channel the flow of this energy to promote healing , or even drug free pain relief.

But the real aim of an adept  is to raise ones own chi to a point where ones chakras are in perfect accord and the energy can flow through the system with more effect.  the Hindus call this state ' Kundalini'. they claim that one whose life is in balance can become master of their emotions , and face life with total serenity. not only that , but do things like accomplish healing just by touch - the Master's 'energy field' will align and adjust that of the sick person, making them well. Someone whose powers are still latent or are newly formed will not have the same degree of control and will simply ' short out ' their subject, according to my guru. I wonder if this is what happened to the reporter from the Evening Standard. Also, it seems that the' Toronto blessing' that leaves some people rolling on the floor making animal noises  is not something that a wise and loving god would do, but might be the result of raising someone's chi  for them to suddenly - it would release all sorts of emotional tensions, but that is all. A guru would understand how to direct these energies to a more dignified and better result. i much suspect that Jesus was a master of Kundalini- the art if manipulating chi.

Not only that , but s/he will be able to discern the thoughts and emotions of those nearby. And have the ability to speak their language and understand theirs. Now, I have seen people at Spiritualist churches who claimed to be clairvoyant ' demonstrate their mediumship', and try to offer me proof that they were in contact with the dearly departed. sadly , all I saw was ' cold reading '. However, I have also seen a Christian Prophet at work, using what he called ' the gift of prophecy'. he was ale to tell someone in the audience a great deal, with no prompting whatever. he even said something to me, a complete stranger which is strangely coming about in my life, just as he said. Perhaps i should write next about spiritualism and cold reading - but my conclusion , so far is that healing , Gifts of prophecy, speaking in tongues , are all gifts that flow from God - but God does not give these gifts solely to those who walk the Christian path. they are also available to those who practice Yoga , tai Chi and Zen Buddhism it seems.

Not everyone has the gift of playing the piano by ear - but some people can . Likewise some people , it seems, have a natural talent for healing , clairvoyance, and other abilities that seem as if they are touched by some divine presence in their lives. And , perhaps they are.

Avebury, Wiltshire.

According to one Antiquarian who studied it in detail, Avebury surpasses Stonehenge like a cathedral does a parish church.

When you go there, it is easy to see whu he makes the comparison . The stone circle of Stonehenge is vast, but Avebury is big enough to contain a whole village within its stones - well worth a visit tot he Marlborough Downs. It is now a World heritage Site, and was most probably built by the people who had a small unobtrusive  enclosed settlement on nearby Windmill Hill.

Yet this vast stone circle isn't the only monument that these Neolithic people raised - they also build nearby Silbury Hill, an artificial mound comparable in size and age to the pyramids of Egypt, as well as a nearby Long Barrow and several other earthworks. It were as though they had constructed a Neolithic theme park around their humble settlement. And yet they did not do this for their own amusement, but rather to honour their Gods.

Woops, a big G - but let us leave it there for now. Take a look at Silbury hill itself (click on the pics for a larger view). Constructed of chalk blocks, and covered in topsoil and turf, it is the largest man made mound in Europe. it was built in midsummer - flying ants were found entombed in the lowest levels. Most probably a mound to commemorate the harvest - for the harvest moon rises over it and is reflected in the artificial lake that surrounds  it - or would have back then , at least. Guy Underwood talks at length in his book 'The Pattern of the Past' about what we can glean of the Neolithic religion, and it is a fascinating book.

Now, Avebury village has a set of circles within the main circle, and the earth banks that surround it face inwards - this was not a defensive rampart, but more like an amphitheatre. Those sitting on the banks could see what was going on as the priestly rituals were conducted on the high days and holy days of the Neolithic calender, as you can see from the view from the top of the rampart of earth surrounding the village.

Yet inside the village itself, there is a URC Church  (yay!)

But note how this church stands in its own space amid the vast stone circle. In times past, excavators and historians tell us,  the villagers, at the instigation of their local clergy, would attack the stones and overturn them, as a yearly ritual to celebrate the triumph of the Christian Church over the ''forces of Evil'. We know this from written records of those who watched the proceedings , and because we found the skeleton of a man who was killed when a stone collapsed on top of him . After the death of this man , the rituals ceased apparently.

But such cultural vandalism is not without precedent in the Bible, nor parallel today. God did say to the Israelites that they were to tear down and destroy pagan altars, and Paul in his Epistle, at I Cor. 10:20, that the things that non Christians sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and  not to God.

It's a very negative view.  For the religion of the neolithic people had much the same aim as ours; to promote the prosperity of the group and connect the people to the world that they lived in. For modern day Africans who practice Ju-ju, as well as Haitian voodoo worshippers, the spirits they encounter are not malevolent, or to be feared, but rather welcome paricipants in their rituals.

Unlike the God of the Hebrews, who had to be kept at a respectable distance and was only approached with fear and trembling by senior representatives of the tribe, the gods of Ju-ju and Voodoo are held to come down and enter into the bodies of the worshippers during their dances, and possession by one of them was seen as an honour and a blessing. But this is modern Afro Caribbean tradition we are talking here - it may or may not have happened in Neolithic Britain, where the climate may have been a bit too parky for outdoor worship circles and the natives a bit too straight laced to get up and dance! But Avebury does provide us with a look at the neolithic culture.  Today , we celebrate and preserve it rather than destroy it. And perhaps we should take a look at the religion that we can trace through myth and legend - for it contains fascinating accounts of shamanism  - of men and women who communed with the spirit world on behalf of the rest of the community, interceding with the spirits on behalf of the tribe or local group.

Now - you don't get that primitive sort of mumbo- jumbo happening in the modern day Christian Church today - or do we?  Are you sure ? Have you not heard of the Toronto blessing ? Or being 'slain in the Spirit'?

Our next ramble will take you somewhere else, and reveal what goes on in deepest Britain , in a church not far from where I live , and may be going on in your neck of the wood, toos. For I have seen what certain Christians get up to with my own eyes, as well as talk to some about their own experience as they tell it in their own words.- and when you are able to compare it to another culture, like I am, you see surprising parallels and connections.  Join me on my next ramble, please!

The Jesus paradox.

One point that Richard Dawkins raises in his book ' The God Delusion' is that if everything needs a Designer, why is God Himself exempt?

It is a valid question , but then he postulates that Natural Selection gives forth everything alive on earth today.

It might seem rational that we find religion of one form or another around the world, and that Pantheism and Animism gradually develop into Monotheism, as it did with the Jews.

Let's be honest, the God of Abraham needed to go send a couple of angels into Sodom to go check it out - this is a far cry from an Omniscient God  who according to Jesus, knows when a sparrow falls.We may say that either God has changed, or is it our awareness that has grown? Hebrew religion shows sign of having developed over time, rather than being handed down, all complete, from the hands of a Divine Revealer.

And yet, there is a paradox about Jesus that I cannot quite fathom.

If Jesus is a legend, as Dawkins insists, then I would expect Jesus to be shaped by the dictates and fancies of his followers. How much easier it would have been for monotheistic Jews to conclude along with the JWs, Arians  and  Moslems  that Jesus was simply a messenger - an angel or Archangel on a mission.

Yet this is not what we see. After meeting Him , not only are they emboldened to declare that He rose from the dead, but they also declared Him to be God incarnate,  and started behaving in line with this. And these were men who were monotheistic Jews who had real problems in letting go of circumcision, don't forget.

Darwin's theory of Evolution was inevitable, it is argued. If Darwin had not found it, Wallace or someone else would. And yet, was Christianity ' inevitable' - something just waiting to happen when the time became right?

I don't get that this was entirely the case. It is as if God, whatever He happens to be, came into our world, and then  went out again , in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Not so much to fulfil Jewish hopes and expectations , but to affirm His love for all humanity. And perhaps, this is what actually did occur.

In the beginning...

The Bible starts by taking us back to the time when the world was made. Well, the time that the Author thought the world was made. And then goes on to tell us about Noah and the Flood, about Abraham , Isaac and Jacob, before intoducing us to Moses and telling us the Thrilling tale of how the Children of Israel escaped during the Exodus. And all this information was either written down by Moses, or else he collated the earlier stuff and used it to introduce his own Biography.

Now, no less a renowned scholar that Spinoza stated " It is clearer than the sun at noon  that Moses never wrote the Pentateuch" - the Pentateuch being another name for the Torah. So what actually did happen , back in the Beginning?

It would appear that about 1,000 BC, or thereabouts, a small tribe of Canaanites , living on a small fortified hilltop in Palestine , began to write themselves a history - weaving possible real events that happened in days gone by into a grand and self - congratulatory epic in which they were the chief protagonists and  main beneficiaries of their God, Yahweh.

To be sure, the local people round about, Canaanites like themselves, worshipped a God called El, another called El Elyon, and a whole host of other major and minor deities who were all nature gods of one sort or other. But gradually, these people began taking these gods , with their own myths and stories attached and reworking the stories until they were all about Yahweh. Yahweh was even given their names as His other titles, and became known as El, El Shaddai, and other epithets in His own right.

In Exodus, he tells Moses " I appeared to Abraham as God Almighty , only my name Yahweh, did I not make known to him'. Well, that is interesting, because Yahweh became transliterated into ' Jehovah ' , in the KJV. And there we find that when Abraham went to offer up Isaac  upon Mount  Moriah, and found instead that a ram had been caught in a thicket and he offered up that instead, he renamed that place 'Jehovah-jirah ' - 'Jehovah provides'. Now, why would he do that if he did not know the Divine Name ? Someone has clearly lost the plot!

Indeed, we  find that  God makes Adam before the animals in one version of Genesis, and after the animals in another . That Noah took 2 of every kind of animal into the ark. or was it two of every unclean and seven of every clean animal? And so many stories have 2 different versions of the same event. Curious.

Until a German chap  named Julius Wellhausen pointed out that there were actually 4 different narratives that were woven together as one to make the Torah that we read today. And then another Redactor went to work. These 5 different sources for our  Torah in the Bible may have been lone individuals, or separate ' traditions', and the whole idea of the different narrators became known as the ' Documentary Hypotheses.

Ok, so maybe Moses didn't write the Torah after all - but surely, God made the world , and revealed Himself to the Jews as The One True God- and the Jews had a revealed religion, and not a made up mythology like the rest of the pagans, right from the start... didn't they? Or was it more the case that the Jews were actually Henotheists, and not Monotheists, originally ?

Did they start out thinking that their God was just one of many other gods, but slowly gave Him more and more prominence, until they started declaring that the other gods just didn't really exist at all? Let us be honest , when Yahweh first  meets Abraham , it is always under trees. In many ways, Yahweh is very much like the nature gods of Canaan that He later supplants. When Naomi turns to Ruth , her daughter in law, and points to Ruth's sister, she points out that 'she has returned to her gods and her own people', and urges Ruth to do likewise. No hint of evangelism here. No  'stick with me , kid, for our God is the only one who is real' pitching from Naomi. Oh no. God even sits down in the assembly of the Gods, in one of the Psalms . For the Local Gods met in council in Canaanite myth. And how strange it is that David, the King who wrote all those psalms to his God, should have an idol in his home that his wife could use to throw Saul's men off the scent when they came to kill David. I mean, what are teraphim doing in David's house ? You know what teraphim  are, right ?  The little idols similar to the Lares and Penates of the Romans - household gods  - So why does David own one ?

Clearly, a lot of work was done to paper over the cracks in Israel's past - yet somehow, the hints of the truth still show through. most mysteriously, when Moses is about to go down into Egypt to confront Pharaoh, God wants to kill him, and Zipporah, Moses wife , saves his life by circumcising their sone and touching the feet of the angel with the foreskin , saying ' you are a bridegroom of blood to me'. the fragment of this once great tale is simply found in a few verses that someone tacked into Exodus, where it makes little sense to the modern reader until s/he studies anthropology.

Now, what was all that about? One theory is that circumcision was really a substitute for child sacrifice. it enabled parents to placate the gods by offering up flesh and blood, but still keeping the child alive. It obviously caught on as a better way of doing busines than the full blown burnt offering. But how bizzare that Yahweh wants to go kill Moses on the eve of his entering Egypt to deliver Israel...

If we read carefully, we may even detect that the God Yahweh even had a female consort, who is carefully concealed and yet carelessly alluded to in the Hebrew Scriptures. But that is another story. Let us conclude for now by saying that the bible is not the whole story, but rather the story that an all male priesthood wanted to show the people, and us as well. More detail may be revealed by the translator of texts, the archaeologist , the folklorist and the historian. And we get, not a monotheistic faith revealed by Almighty God, but rather, a people creating monotheism out of the myths and legends  of the people who dwelt round about them, adapting and improving the stories until we get the Bible that we have today. Or at least the Old Testament that we have got now.

The Mystical Quaballah.

In my last post , I posed the question  - what exactly did Jesus encounter in the man called 'Legion'?

For many people today, the Devil does not exist, and any talk of hauntings or the supernatural is laughed off as mere superstition. On the other hand, many Christians deeply believe that the Devil is out to ensnare people into ' the occult', and some Christian writers would even warn us off of playing D&D and reading Harry Potter.

I have to be  honest, I have struggled long and hard with this question of what to make of the Bibliccal accounts of angels and demons flitting in and out of Christ's ministry. I believe, though, that the best book on the subject was ' The Mystical Quaballah' by Dione Fortune.

Although a Christian , she spent a lot of time in India, and this led her to investigate eastern , and then Western Mystical traditions, including the Jewish Quaballah, a body of lore that really repays study, in my view.

From a Quaballist point of view, God is unmanifest, dwelling in unapproachable light, but causes Creation to happen on several different levels. there is the physical plane , but also an emotional plane , and a Plane of Ideas, as well as the spiritual plane. Force on one plane is Form on another.

In brief, this means that if I think something, it has no efffect on a physical level, however, the force of my thinking takes form on a higher level. What has all thiis to do with Jesus and His miracles , I hear you ask - well, back in the 1970s, if I recall it right, there were a group of phychic reasearcher who decided to test the 'Tulpa theory' and see if they could construct a thought form, so they did. 'Tulpa' is a word meaning ' thought form '. The theory states that a human mind can construct a form on another plane and then let it act as a vessel for non physical energy.

They thought hard, concentrated and invented a fictional character called ' Philip', they gave Philip an outlandishly impossible life story so that they could never stumble upon a real person who matched him by mistake, and then they started conducting seances. Sure enough, 'Philip' came through to them. not only that but other psychics and mediums unconnected to the circle began to get Philip coming in on their sittings as well. A small number of skilled and dedicated psychic researchers had  manufactured a spiritual entity on the Astral plane, which is one level up from the material one we live on.

Now, if a small group of people can raise enough energy to construct something like that , imagine what a few thousand people could so, having their minds directed by someone conducting a magical or religious service. Arthur C.  Clarke once said that any form of technology sufficiently advanced would be indistinguishable from magic - and any form of technology that was still distinguishable had not been advanced far enough!

I should point out that when I left Jehovah's Witnesses in 1984, I went into the ' alternative politics' of the day. Thatcher was in at Number 10, Greenham Common Airbase had Cruise Missiles sitting in it and people came there to protest and link up with others opposed to Thatchers plans. . CND had a lot of members, some of whom were trade unionists and Left wingers, other were people who were into ' New Age', some were conventional Christians,  and some were into alternative forms of Spirituality, like Wicca, Astrology , Buddhism and the like.

It was there that I began to rub shoulders with such people, went to meetings run by groups who were not JWs or even Christian and eventually joined  Ashrams , or teaching circles - in fact I belonged to several such groups. As well as taking part in training exercised and group ceremonies, I was also given a lot of reading to do as homework, and was initiated to several levels in a few groups. I got to meet people who practised what some would term ' magic', and learned something about magical workings myself.

The theory is that humans have several ' energy centres' in their bodies. these are what the Hindus called 'Chakras'  - there are seven , that roughly correspond to the endocrine glands, and these are said to be linked to the seven visible planets.

Basically, if a group of people imagine a form in unison , that form can then contain all the emotional and intellectual energies that are directed towards it on the Astral Plane, and , given enough energy , it will take on a life of it's own. it will even begin to go around seeking energy to draw from.

An Astral being that is constructed out of love and good will therefore, will seek out those of a similar disposition to replenish itself, so to speak.  However, an entity made up of other emotions and ideas - something like a pagan war god, for instance, would seek out other sources of power. Hence it would be that there are several beings, up there on the Astral plane with a definite interest in seeing as much pain and misery going on down here to keep themselves going. These , I believe, were the demons that christ spent so much of His time kicking out. To be sure, some people were simply lame, blind or otherwise physically impaired, but I am convinced that some were in fact spiritually oppressed.

The fact is that Voodoo is drwn from an African word ' Voudon ', meaning ' idol' - the slaves brought to the Carribean from Africa still kept a lot of their native traditions,  and one of these was belief in the Laos. A Lao is a spirit, and it is believed that in a ceremony where there is dancing and strong, rhythmic drumming , that the worshippers enter into a kind of trance where the Laos descend and ride the dancers, like a person  would ride upon a horse.

Temporarily, during the dancing ,the Voodoo worshipper is possessed and controlled by the Lao, or Spirit. yet this is not seen as being oppressive or malevolent. The Voodoo worshipper welcomes the Lao in the same way that the Christian would seek to be controlled and inspired by the Holy Spirit, and reports the same feelings of ecstasy and being lifted up to a higher state.

So why was it different in Christ's time , and why is it different in so many cases of ' demon possession ' in our culture? Perhaps it is that our Western  minds are differently attuned, and contact a different sort of Entity. The Caribbean slaves were contacting Astral beings who were originally made when their people were free - the benevolent spirits forged by their ancestors. Not for so the people oppressed in Roman occupied Palestine, or for modern day thrill seekers who get in touch with things on the ouija board, it would seem.

The salient thing to remember is that Jesus had control of these things. Astral beings come in all shapes and sizes, but none were any match for Jesus. Nor does Christ need them to reach his people, or for they to gain contact with Him.Some may say ' If the pagan gods are just human creations, what about the God of the Bible - isn't He just another product of human thinking, simply another Tulpa ? The short answer is  " No- not exactly  - He is somewhat different, and this shows up in Scripture.' But that will do for another time, I think.  We need to examine Hebrew really closely to even try to begin to come to some sort of understanding of What god is, and then , we only have an approximation and not an exact assesment .We can never know God fully, but we can come to Know Him better.

You are free to post comments and ask questions if you wish , i have tried to cram an awful lot in here, so please seek clarification  if you want it.

A Strange Encounter.

I took this pic when I went on holiday to Israel . we were standing at the same location where Jesus was when he healed a demon possessed man. Today, the level of the lake has dropped, but one can still make out the edge of a cliff, where once, the water came right up to the foot of the precipice, it now appears further back. but this is where the Gaderene swine rushed into the sea.

This incident, like so many incidents in Christ's life were not just set in the ' long ago and far away', or 'once upon a time' . The gospel writers put in so much detail that we can accurately place the time of Christ's ministry to the years 30 to 33AD, and you can still visit the spot where Jesus meets a man who is an outcast.

According to mark, who is our earliest Gospel writer, the man says that he is possessed by many evil spirits - so many in fact that in Mark , chapter 5, when Christ asks the man his name, one of the demons answers  "My name is Legion , for there are many of us ".

Jesus orders them to leave the man, and they entreat Jesus not to destroy them and entreat him to cast them into a herd of swine instead.  Jesus does this and the swine stampede over the precipice into the sea. The man , who previously wandered among the tombs around the area, slashing himself with sharp stones and howling and shrieking, is now in his right mind and goes throughout the Decapolis and tells people about Jesus.

Of course, today , many people don't believe that evil spirits or demons exist in any real sense. Some would argue that it was simply the noise and commotion that startled the pigs and caused them to stampede over the cliff. On the other hand , there are those who take a very literal view of the Bible's account here. For them , the Devil and the Demons that he rules over are real indeed. So let us examine what Scripture says and see what conclusions we can reach.

If the first mention we get of Satan is in the book of Job , we get the demons much sooner. Genesis 6; 2 tells us that the Angels looked down from heaven and saw that the daughters of men were good looking , and they lusted after them . Now here, it does not say so explicitly, but genesis is referencing an Apocryphal work, the book of Enoch. in Enoch we get the same story , but with more detail. the Sons of God, the angels, lie with the daughters of men  and have unnatural offspring  - and they also teach the sons of men the arts and crafts, teaching them to make weapons of warfare like swords and shields. Not gunpowder weapons, you will notice. Or Greek fire, or any such things as were known in the ancient world - no, just swords and shields. You would have though that they could do better than that .

Also note that they lusted after mortal women. I have to ask why. i mean , Ii find women attractive , but I'm a human male who was biologically designed to mate with them. Why would a discarnate entity find female humans attractive? if it was sex they were after, well, rabbits have a lot more sex than humans , I reckon, and serious scientific study has revealed that woman are capable of having more intense orgasms than men - and they can have them more often! It just doesn't add up.

One suggestion is that the whole Legend of the Watchers, as found in Enoch , is simply a way for Hebrews to explain all the pagan myths around them. The Unnatural offspring are  "the Mighty Ones, the men of fame". Ok, you come across pagans who claim a mighty hero like Hercules, you say this was down to the Fallen Angels. The thing is that The Devil does not appear in this myth. The Satan/ Lucifer myth does not mesh with this one, and you would think they would, but no. Not here.

In the NT , we find that Jude and Peter reference the story themselves. ( Jude 6&7, and 2Pet. 2;4). I know that Jack Chick insists that the NT writers in the Bible do not cite Apocryphal works, but he is wrong here, as are all those who insist that the Bible is totally separate from secular sources. Just like they borrow the pagan myth of Helel ben Shachar, they now borrow Enoch and fiit the two together. Interesting , huh ?

Such people will tell you that the Flood of Noah was sent to purge the world of the angel / human hybrids called the Nephilim, and that the Angels shed their bodies of flesh and reverted to being spirits again to save themselves from drowning in the Flood. However, they were not allowed back into heaven alongside the other angels and were instead cast out from god's presence and took to living in the shadowy realms between heaven and earth. From there, they plague mankind by haunting buildings and trying to gain possession of human souls.

But the whole story sounds so implausible. No scientific evidence for a global flood, all the available evidence seems to point to a complete lack of a global catastrophe at the point when Noah was supposed to have built his ark - and as we have already discussed, the idea of sex mad angels doesn't stand up to scrutiny, nor does Satan appear involved. in Enoch , they do it off their own bat.

So what did Jesus encounter by the sea of Galilee?  What else do non biblical traditions have to tell us about evil spirits and how does this help fill in the gaps in our knowledge? before we go plunging off into the deeper waters of myth and folklore, I would like to pause and allow anyone who wishes to comment or ask questions. But the answers will be given in part 2. At least , I will try to offer what I feel may be a possible  answer to the conundrum; not only explaining what happened back there, but even attempting to explain a lot of what goes on today that we might deem ' paranormal'.  Just my own theory, mark you . However,  I would like to submit it for peer review.

In the next part, more will be revealed and the whole question wrapped up, I hope.

Who do you say I am ?

For someone like me, sitting here on a computer terminal, it is very confusing sometimes.

I mean, I am reasonably educated. I never went to university, but I learned science at school, and know how the world works on a physical level. So, when I come up against stories of people parting th e red sea, or even walking on water, I tend to be something of a sceptic.

The Torah was written in the past tense and the third person.  Later on, people like Jeremiah and Joel write in the first person - they were big on morals and ethics, but light on miraculous deeds. I cannot help  noticing this, and want to bring this to your attention.

It is odd that we don't have any secular details on King Solomon. Ok, the Bible records him , but I know of no receipts, no entries in any ledger from another kingdom, no mention of any foreign princess who became one of his many wives. Nobody I know of has ever  found any mention of him in all the world outside the Bible. How about you? Isn't this a bit strange, if someone like Solomon can completely disappear - or did the Hebrew scribes just make him up?

Now, Jesus lived in obscurity, born in a small village under Roman occupation in a small cultural backwater in the Roman Empire. And although none of his contemporaries took any notice, there was a community of Christians living in Rome in 64 AD. Just 31 years after the crucifixion, Jesus has a following in the heart of the Roman Empire , hundreds of miles from where He was born. Again , I think this is extraordinary.

It is tempting to feel sometimes that it would have been wonderful to have been there when it all started, to have been someone who actually saw Jesus heal the sick and walk on water. But was it?

For when the disciples came back from a preaching tour, they said to him ' some say that you are John  the Baptist, while others say you are Elijah'. And Jesus asked them  "But who do you say I am?" And that is crucial. because the chief priests, the scribes and the  Pharisees saw the miracles too, and they were not impressed.

They could not deny that Christ did these things - but they accused him of doing it with the aid of Satanic powers. They were the the Establishment. the experts on the Law. And they said that if you believed in this lowly carpenter, then you were as damned as he was. Imagine how it must have been for humble Galileans like Peter, John and James to stand up against that sort of opposition.

Today, we know that Jesus was the man who changed History - if he wasn't the Messiah , then who else was? But back then , they only had Jesus. Sometimes, even John the Baptist had his doubts (see Matthew11:3), so it is no surprise if we are confronted with doubts today.

Wherever we stand in the stream of time we are faced with the same question  and the same problem when Christ asks us "Who do you say I am "? none of us can fully know all the facts - just what we are able to gather from our own standpoint.  like the Apostles of old, we must make our own leap of faith, going against public opinion and everything we learned in school if we want to say ' you are the Christ' - for that is not where logic, or the majority view, or the experts opinion will usually lead us.

Like me, Peter never saw the resurrection actually happen. Like most people would be perhaps , he was very sceptical when the women in the group came running back and said that the tomb was empty. But he still went there to make sure. And even when he found the tomb , i don't think he really understood what was going on. Like peter, I am still unsure on exactly how it all fits together. But , i am prepared to make the journey to the Empty tomb to see what all the fuss is about.

A few years ago, I went to Jerusalem , and took some photos. You can see my album on Facebook. as we approach Easter, I shall be posting and recounting my own experiences in the Holy Land. I  hope that you will join me on my journey, and share your own thoughts and feelings .about things as we go along.

The treasures of the British Museum

London is a place of wonder. My mother brought me her from a small mining village in derbyshire at the age of five, and I have lived here, on and off  for most of my life. A very cosmopolitan city in its own right , it has several museums of great interest to me.

The Natural History Museum now has a large wing devoted to the Theory of Evolution, and it's place in biological science. the Geology Museum , right next door , tells the story of the earth and it's crust. We have already been to the Planetarium at Greenwich , and will be visiting the other sites in due course - but today, i want to take you to the British  Museum and tell you about it. 

For it is here that you will find the most fascinating artefacts in human history. there is a small ivory casket to be seen, with the Legend of Wayland on one side, and on the other, a strange inscription. the carving below the inscription appears to be of three men holding out small offerings to a seated woman with a child on her lap, and the inscription , in Saxon Runic script reads  Mann , Ansur, Gifu  Issa.  Which transliterates into our alphabet as M A G I - this casket was intended as a gift to a saxon warlord or local king , but the giver maybe hedged his bets and put a pagan scene on one side and a Christian scene on the other, as if he wa not sure which one the recipient would like most.. it dates from the 5th century, when Christianity was new to these islands.

You also find the Rosetta Stone here. It has an inscription in Arabic, Demotic Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphics. The Greek and Arabic are a perfect match for the same message - and the discoverers wondered if the Hieroglyphic text was another repeat - indeed it was, and so the code was cracked and many other inscriptions in many temples and other places could be deciphered.

But some of the most fascinating pieces on show , for me, are the ones where the Bible intersects with history.

Many years ago, I saw an inscription from Assyria, that mentioned Sennacherib.  He was the king of Assyria mentioned in the Bible. it told the story of the campaign he launched against Hezekiah, and how the Hebrew king was shut up like a bird in a cage in the city of Jerusalem as it was under siege.

Here is the bible intersecting human history. there really was a King Hezekiah , and a Sennacherib. secular , independent sources agree on that. We have yet to find any contemporary references to Solomon , though.

But here we see two people mentioned in the Bible, are also seen in a secular document.

Now, the Bible says that the Angel of the Lord came down and slew 185,000 of the Assyrian army in a single night. The Assyrian inscription says that Hezekiah  bought Sennacherib off  with an awful lot of gold, silver, precious stones and the like.  So which story do you want to believe here?

There has been no unearthing of a mass grave, and military historians tell us that Rome at it's hight did not deploy armies of that size in the field. So large a number represents a huge logistical problem in terms of supplying , feeding and deploying in the field. how did the smaller Assyrian Empire out do the much bigger and later empire of Rome many centuries earlier? the Bible does not say.

And the Bible is full of such encounters, where Secular History meets Biblical Narrative. And often , we have to choose which one we believe. for many years, scholars were sceptical of the references in Scripture to the  Hittites. Until fairly recently, the Bible was the only source that mentioned these people. Luke was also the only person who mentioned a Proconsul of Rome ruling over a comaratively small place somewhere in the Med. Luke was obviously making this encounter up, the sceptics said. there was no way that a great Procunsul  would have such a small remit. the whole tale was fabricated to put paul in front of a great Roman magnate, it was claimed. And yet, just as modern archeologists  discovered the whole powerful Hittite civilization in more recent times, an inscription has been unearthed hat names the very procunsul that Luke names, and says that he was ruling over this small place when Luke says he was. We cannot always dismiss the bible out of hand at every turn. And yet, there are still some places where the Bible has yet to be vindicated.

In the life story of Jesus , we read in the Gospels that he cast out demons , and that He even had a conversation with the Devil himself.. Now, I believe Jesus to be a historical figure, like Herod the Great or Pontius Pilate. These people are known and acknowledged as real people by secular historians. But Satan the Devil ? this , for me, is where Narratve and history clash instead of weaving and knitting together. but I hope to resolve this question , one way or another, befoe much longer.

The Tale of Helel ben Shacar

I have edited the title and intro to this post,  as the event it flagged up has passed, but the question is still an interesting one  -

Who is this chap 'Satan' , as mentioned in Scripture?

He isn't actually mentioned by name in Genesis. Oh , we get a talking snake appear, but no mention is made of a fallen angel leading a revolt or being set the task of looking after Adam and Eve and trying to Tempt them instead. I know we get that from Milton , but Paradise Lost was not in the Canon when last I looked.
So, where does Milton get the story of the fallen rebel angel who leads Adam and Eve into sin ?

To answer that, let us go back to the first mention of Satan  by name in the Bible. This would be the Book of Job. Now, when the book opens, the narrator tells us who Job is, where he lives, what he is like, for the first 5 verses. But when Satan appears  as well,  in Job 1 :6 we don't have anything to go on  from the previous books. Who is Satan , and what is he like ? Now, Job is not behind Esther chronologically speaking , but in the order they were traditionally thought to be written, we do not have any info. So what has happened?

One possible answer is to be got from a clue in Genesis. Remember how God puts 2 Cherubs to guard the gates of Paradise to stop Adam and Eve returning ? Well, what is a Cherub? Genesis chapters 1 - 3 do not tell us. God made the heavens and the Earth , the Moon and stars, but no mention of Seraphim or Cherubim is found here. So, whence this Cherub , and whence Satan , I ask ?

We must not suppose that the Scriptures were written in media vacuum. Jews of the day had doubtless had dealings with foreigners - people like Uriah the Hittite lived in Jerusalem, and there is therefore a strong possibility that Hebrew people would have heard of pagan myths and legends well before they went and wrote the Torah . They may have borrowed pagan ideas and concepts and my contention is that they almost certainly did.

I don't know if anyone else reading this has read and studied Funk and Wagnell's Encyclopaedia of Myth and Folklore, or read Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough , or perhaps Joseph Campbell's 'The Masks of God' - but I have. And it transpires that, Just as the Romans took all the Greek gods and gave them Roman names, the Canaanites, the Babylonians and Assyrians all took the old Sumerian gods , together with the associated myths and legends and put them in their own pantheons and theological theories. So did a few others, I know, but lets be brief here. the question is how much these ideas influenced Hebrew writers.

Now, the Sun god had two sons, Dawn and Dusk - and the Dawn god had a son of his own - Helel, if I recall correctly. His full name is "Helel ben Shachar', if I recall correctly, and there is a story about him known throughout the Levant.  Every time the sun rose up in the morning , the other stars deferred to his greater glory and went out - but Helel not only rose just before the sun , but arrogantly continued to shine in the morning sky even after sunrise. And this went on day after day , until  finally Samash , the Sun god , seized hold of the presumptuous Helel and hurled him down from  heaven.

Ok, anyone who knows  about ' just so ' stories and has a smattering of Astronomical  savvy will say " It sounds like they invented this myth to explain the movements of the Planet Venus - it rises in the morning until it gets so close to the Sun that it passes behind the sun and reappears on the other side, becoming the Evening Star instead."

Oh , yes indeed!  the Hebrews knew the myth , but did not write it down . they knew the story, we may surmise, because the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel both reference it,  ( Isa 14 ;12 translates 'shining one' as the Latin -  ' Lucifer', and it puzzled me even then why a Hebrew Archangel should have a Latin name ) and  in both cases, they liken  the rulers of Babylon and Tyre to Helel. the presumptuous star - rather in the same way as cartoonists liken politicians like Tony Blair and David Cameron to Pinnocio, the storybook character whose nose grows another inch when he tells a lie.

So, Ok, Satan has an origin in Pagan Myth. He is useful though , for explaining why bad stuff happens to good people. so he finds an unlikely home in the Jewish and Christian world-view as the Opposer, the Adversary or Resister - that is what Satan actually means. The Hebrews started with just having God, then needed some angels , so they borrowed them from the Babylonians. however, that was not enough. Satan then got promoted to the prosecuting counsel in the heavenly court, and from there , they turned him into a baddie - a bit like Goldstein in  Orwell's book, 1984.
Once we have that sorted, we can go on to say  more about him, and indeed I will. But not on this post.

Our first journey: Greenwich: The Big Picture.

This blog is almost like a personal Tardis. Come with me my friends on a  journey across time and space, on a vehicle powered by my imagination -  and the Internet and a pinch of fairy dust. It will also take you from time to time inside my head and show you my own thoughts and musings  - it's Gerry's mind at work in here, so expect a bit of weirdness !

But we start at Greenwich , in London , England. It was from here that the best maps in the world were once drawn, made by royal command with all the tech that only the British Monarchy could muster.So they got used throughout the world. we still set 0degrees on our maps at Greenwich , and use Greenwich Mean Time to navigate, so we shall start our first journey from there, and see where we end up before I get you back safely.

                                             The view from the observatory across the park
I took a small party of friends from Trinity Church there once - any and all pics that appear here were taken on that occasion. Greenwich park is ideal for a picnic, but at the top of the hill is the famous Greenwich observatory. I suppose it is fitting that there is now a Planetarium on this site.

                                         The Observatory. The red ball on the left is the famous Greenwich Time signal.

We went to see the Planetarium as part of our visit, and an interesting experience it was , to say the least.
Sitting back in our seats, we were able to see a picture of the Greenwich skyline projected onto the domed ceiling above, and a young man 's voice came on over the mike and gave us a guided commentary.

As the auditorium darkened,  the picture on the screen above us slowly morphed from a daytime shot of Greenwich park to a night time one, just after sunset. A full moon rose, due to the wonders of time lapse photography.

The voice of the commentator told us that the moon was a quarter of a million miles away, but we could go there in a very short time, thanks to the overhead projector and the wonders of  CGI. This proved to be the case, and it was as if our Planetarium had become a large spaceship, for the image of the distant moon  slowly filled the screen , as if we were actually moving towards it.

Perhaps it was actual footage from an Apollo moon shot,  or was it more CGI? Either way, we were soon seeing the moon as if we were standing on the lunar surface,  and looking at the mountains and craters stretching far into the distance, as our own Planet Earth hung like a blue and white ball in the inky blackness of space.  as beautiful and awe inspiring as this was, our guide had further wonders to show us, and the camera swung away from planet Earth to the other lights in the Lunar Sky. as effortlessly as the last time, it seemed that we had risen into the air again , and this time , we were off to the more distant planes - to Mars , Jupiter and Saturn . As we looked back towards earth now , from the depths of space, we saw Earth as a small point of light - and yet we continued to move out to the very edge of our solar system until our Sun itself was a a mere speck of light.  And still we kept moving away from our Native planet.

At this distance, our sun was just one small star among a mass of other stars that were all pretty  much the same, and eventually we saw that all these stars were spinning in space around a central point, like the froth on a cup of coffee that has just been stirred.

This was our own Galaxy of stars - the Milk Way.we watched in awe and amazement as we learned about the size and shape of our galaxy - millions of stars, all swirling through space together. And yet we moved away, deeper into outer space once more. soon , our Galaxy was a mere speck of light, surrounded by other specks - and these small specks were not stars - the were other galaxies like or own . millions of stars , all clumped together, and there were hundreds of galaxies all spread accross the screen. the mind boggled at the sheer size and scae of the created universe - and my own mind boggles rather more easily than most !


But from this faraway perspective, we came back to Earth again. the nearest galaxy to us is in Andromeda. the Andromeda Spiral is 2  million light years distant. Now , what does that actually mean?  Well, imagine you had to get from Trafalgar Square to Waterloo Station. I could tell you the distance in miles, but it may be simpler to say ' it is about a half hour walk, but only 10 minutes on the Tube.'

A light year is a bit like that - it is the distance between two points if you were moving at the speed of light.
Our galaxy is Two million years away from Andromeda , if we could go at the speed of light.- 186,000 miles a second , or about 300,000 kilometres per second.

Now, if we can see it, this implies that the Andromeda spiral was actually there and shining away 2 million years ago! here, however, some people may object. doesn't the Bible say that God made the world in 6 days , about 6,ooo years ago? Well, maybe it does, so how do you explain what you see here?

For people like R.T. Kendall, it is because God painted in a beam of light so we can see it. god also made the earth to look really really old, and handed it over to Adam and Eve. Sorry- I don't buy that. Why does God want to make the Earth and sky look as if it has no maker? Why does God want to hide away?

Isn't it more likely that if a rock appears to be millions of years old, then it really is ? So perhaps the earth is older, and the Universe is far more vast than we or our Bible writing ancestors could ever imagine - in which case, try to get used to it ! You ain't seen nothin' yet!!!

This is merely the big picture, the whole canvas of the material plane , laid out before us. you wait till I show you some of the amazing details. I am going to take you back into the past and forwards into the future, we will journey from the mountain peaks of Switzerland to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. i will show you a world that some can scarcely believe possible, but i can vouch for it being there, having seen most of it for myself.

Hello!

Hello, welcome to my Blog.
Me, I am Gerry. I am  55 at present,  married ,and living in London England ,  I work in the transport industry and I help people on their  travels as part of my daily life. I have also made some amazing journeys of my own that I want to talk about. Not just journeys to places like Stonehenge or Jerusalem  -yes, I have been there, but I have also made what you might call ' journeys of faith' - pilgrimages, if you like. Explorations into the unknown

I have joined in worship and been involved in activities run by Christian Churches, and also by religious organisations quite outside the Christian tradition . I am also a member of an interfaith forum run locally that invites Christian , Jewish , Muslim, Buddhist  and other speakers to talk about aspects of their own tradition and faith .

However, I have also gone and done my own research , sat under trees and upon lonely hill tops and thought my own thoughts about Life, The Universe and Everything.

This is a log of my own wanderings and observations , gathered up over the last 50 odd years or so. I hope you will enjoy travelling with me, I shall be posting pics, I hope, and sharing my thoughts and memories of the places I went to and talking about the stories associated with them.

Born near Creswell Crags in Derbyshire, I have been to London , Paris and Venice. I have also been to Glastonbury, Avebury, Stonehenge,  as well as Bethlehem,  Jerusalem and Galilee in Israel. And I will be sharing my thought and memories on these places and many more. So, welcome to my world and the wayI see it.

I do tend to be rather talkative, but I hope to be informative and interesting as well.  so welcome on a juorney through time and space with me. I hope you will enjoy the ride.