Six-year-old Kelly thinks it’s simple: “Babies go to heaven because that’s where they belong.” Kelly, does this include babies who cry a lot? Oh, I almost forgot. Scripture says God will wipe away every tear in the New Jerusalem.

Elizabeth, age 9, agrees, but for a different reason. “God will take them to heaven even if they haven’t reached the age of accountability.” Does this mean they’re too young to pass the CPA exam? What is this age of accountability?

Let’s get some help from Molly, 12, who says babies go to heaven at death “because they are not old enough to understand sin, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.” Jesus said the Holy Spirit would convict the world of sin, righteousness and the judgment to come.

According to Molly’s reasoning, people must be capable of being convicted of their sins by the Holy Spirit before they can accept Jesus’ solution. Therefore, children who are too young to understand sin and their need for Jesus Christ through the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit have not reached the age of accountability.

In other words, there’s a point in normal people’s lives when they are held responsible for their decisions and actions. Exactly when this is varies from person to person.

King David had a child by Bathsheba who became very ill. David fasted and prayed to God all night for his baby son’s life, but the baby died. Afterward, David made this statement about his baby boy: “I will go to him, but he will not return to me” (II Samuel 12:23).

The following short story was written by a 9-year-old girl named Hillary, who lost her baby cousin, Martha Caroline:

“Hillary, the baby is about to be born,” my mother said. “Your aunt is in labor right now! She is at the hospital, and so far everything is going fine.”

I thought back nine months ago when I heard the news that my aunt was pregnant. I was so excited! We had felt her stomach and talked to the baby for months! Now was the time for it to be born. I would have a new baby cousin!

My father told me the baby would be born by morning. I went to bed that night excited about what the next day would bring.

When I woke up, I leaped out of bed, dashed down the stairs and pounded in my dad’s study. The sad look on his face told me something went wrong. It was then that I heard the terrible news that the baby, whose name was Martha Caroline, was a Down syndrome child. I found out that her lungs were not fully developed so she could not breathe properly. The doctors were doing their best to keep her alive. My mom and dad immediately went to the hospital, and I stayed with a baby sitter.

Her death was very hard on my sister. My brother was a little bit too young to understand. I just have to trust the Lord and let His will be done.

God was faithful and helped us get through the hard time. Without God’s help, my aunt would have been left depressed and sad, but God’s presence made it easier.

When I think back on this moment, I realize it brought my family closer together. My aunt is no longer shy, and now my cousin will never be teased. She won’t have any pain or sadness, and now she won’t ever get sick. Also, she will get to see God every day, and just think about the wonderful toys she’ll get to play with. Even though I’m sad, I know Martha Caroline is the sweetest little angel in heaven.

Here are some different types of funerals currently being practiced around the world, beginning with the secular/Christian version that is most familiar to Western society today.

Western Secular/Western Christian

Across the board in the US, Canada, and other Western nations today, funerals follow a fairly predictable structure, albeit with small variations in rites and differences in taboos between religious and cultural groups.

The first segment is the wake, also called a “viewing” or a “visitation.” The body is displayed in a casket a night or two before the funeral. Sometimes, it’s an “open casket” wake, where the casket is left opened (with the deceased embalmed and usually dressed in his or her best) so that mourners can say goodbye one last time, say a few prayers, etc. In other cases, the family and friends prefer to keep the casket closed during the wake.

Memorial services are next, often just called funerals. They might take place in a funeral home or at a church. Sometimes, they’re held in a chapel at the cemetery where the deceased is to be interred or at a crematorium. The ceremony is presided over by a clergy person or a non-religious officiator.

The final part is the burial or cremation service. These are typically shorter and take place directly after the memorial service. Mourners usually follow the hearse in a line of cars from the memorial to the burial, using their blinkers to indicate they are part of a funerary procession.

Jewish Ceremonies

Many modern Jewish funerals are nearly identical to the type listed above. However, there are a few specific requirements. Judaism, for instance, bans cremation. Rituals include bathing the body and covering it with a shroud.

Islamic Traditions

Islamic funerals vary considerably by region, but one interesting commonality is that the deceased should be buried facing Mecca (Saudi Arabia), the Muslim holy city.

Sky Burial

One of the more jaw-dropping practices still occurring today, sky burials can be found in Tibet, Mongolia, China, Bhutan, Nepal, and India. The corpse is left exposed as “alms for the birds” (for vultures and other scavengers) on a mountaintop, with the idea that it is the spirit that’s important, not the body.

Hindu Death Practices

Because of subtle understandings of the spirit and body, adults in Hindu tradition are cremated, but children are buried. It is thought that cremation is necessary to dissolve the soul’s desire to be connected with the body, but young children have not yet developed that sense of attachment. The earth is also thought to be soft and soothing for the very young.

Many people have heard of the archaic Hindu tradition called “sati,” whereby a widow commits suicide by burning herself on her husband’s cremation pyre. The first cases were recorded around 400 A.D., and although this is rarely practiced today, there continue to be infrequent examples of sati in the modern world.

Knowing some afterlife ceremonies will give you a chance to reflect on how you would like to be honored when you pass.

When a million dead sardines floated in and around Redondo Beach, California, on the morning of March 8th, 2011, everyone was both astonished and amazed by this sight. Only three days later, a massive earthquake and tsunami hit the northern coast of Japan. Was the sudden appearance of these dead fish, a warning of an impending super quake?

Everyday areas close to the fault lines of the Worlds quake zones regularly have minor tremors, as this restless belt collides. Perhaps on the morning of March 8th, a mini earthquake deep in our seas caught a large school of sardines and poisoned them.

We aware about the chain reaction of earthquakes, as the fault lines are interlinked. There may be one quake in one area of along this giant fault, and a chain reaction occurs further along this dangerous line that criss crosses our planet.

Seismologists around our world are conscious of this natural knock on effect of any quake, but are often powerless to predict where any quake will strike next. Perhaps nature could help, as the sudden mass death of our marine life, could signal a possibility of a future earthquake.

Inside the quake zone, a small dedicated group of people observe the intricate and often destructive movements of this fault line, and perhaps one day, an occurrence of the major death of scores of sea life, could help to predict a probable quake along this fault line.

Our mythical past also could hold a clue to how nature could warn us on an impending disaster. Inside many ancient holy books from all beliefs, we can find a link between the unnatural death of our animal and marine life, preceding another tragic event such as an earthquake or tsunami.

Ancient man often saw the signs of a similar occurrence to the million dead fish as a prelude to another more devastating event. And perhaps this was simply an event on the fault lines, which have existed for millions of years that created a similar event like the Japanese earthquake.

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 24 AD, burying the cities of Pompeii Stabiae, and Herculaneum. Records show that scores of birds had fallen before the great eruption, and became part of the ancient myth that the Gods were angry with Rome.

Two thousand years later New Zealand experienced the odd occurrence of a school of beached whales dying, preceding the Christchurch earthquake. Strangely enough the mass sardine deaths in California also occurred days before the Tohuku quake and tsunami.

Was the sudden death of this immense number of fish, nature warning us that somewhere along this fault line, the second chain reaction would be the tragic mega quake in Japan?

This is the concluding part of the article I began on how to motivate someone that’s dying. I shall continue along the same premise I begun in the first article of the same title. It is simply that, you can influence whether you die or not by the actions you take when everything else fails.

I still restate that it is better to fight to live, than give in like a lame duck and lie prostrate in bed waiting for death to visit you. Let’s see how the following strategies below could really be of help in motivating someone that’s dying to live.

They are: reaching out to God or Universal forces, seeking alternative remedy instead of waiting for death to come swiftly to you, awakening the desire to do awesome things that would outlive you, pushing the thought of death far from your mind and welcoming life instead of waiting for the grim arms of death to make the predictions of your doctors true.

It is better to…

Grasp at God, Fate or Universal Forces

Motivate someone that’s dying to grasp at the slight chance, that his earnest prayers can be answered by God, fate or some forces in the universe. You see everyone believes in a God or supernatural force somehow.

When push comes to shove, atheists would cry out to God or a supernatural force and earnestly hope for some form of intervention that would give them relief.

If that is the case, motivate someone that’s dying to reach out for this unseen force through prayers and meditation. Urge him to believe that his prayers had been answered. Inspire him to believe that somehow, he would be on his feet again full of life and vitality soon.

Encourage him to make his belief real by taking action to do what he couldn’t do before the prayers and meditation began. If he believed that he was healed, then he would at least sit up on his bed and gradually gather strength day by day till he regains full health.

Make him understand that even when his prayer was answered; it would take a little more time for all his bodies’ functions to become normal again. So during this brief spell of time, encourage him to be patient and never waver in his belief that he had been made whole again, and in a short while his testimony of healing due to his faith would become permanent.

Seek Alternative Remedy

Motivate someone that’s dying to seek alternative remedy instead of waiting for death to come. Make him see the need to explore wide and far to get alternative cure for the ailment.

It has long been established by medical doctors and food nutritionist, that what you eat determines how strong your body is. So if you eat nutritious and healthy foods with daily exercise, you would enjoy a healthy lifestyle.

Also, it had been recognized by Doctors and Nutritionist that most health giving foods are better eaten raw to ensure all the vital nutrients in the foods, stay intact and goes into your body completely. They say overcooking food; make them lose most of its nutrients, so it is advised you be mindful of this fact when cooking.

Get this information across to the patient. Show him the connection between nutrition, diseases and wellness. Get books and DVD’s on nutrition and health and help him study and watch them. Motivate him to study vegetarian lifestyle and what he could gain by living that kind of lifestyle.

Encourage him to become a vegetarian even for a while to see how that impacts on his health. Persuade him to use fruit and food based remedies, take physical exercise more, use water therapy etc.

Inspire him to wholeheartedly try this alternative therapy than wait to die because an orthodox doctor said so. Help him build a new way of life even while in this situation so that instead of waiting for death, he starts activities that could lead to his recovery.

There is every possibility that forming a new habit would give him a new lease of life. If he embraces this healthy habit, who knows he could regain his lost health and bounce back to a life of vitality.

Awaken the Desire to Do Awesome Things that Would Outlive Him

Motivate someone that’s dying to live by inspiring him to do awesome things that would change the world positively. Make him dream big dreams of inventing something, building something, or even helping somebody get out of the very ailment he was suffering from.

Stimulate him to have compelling reasons to live such as creating a service or product that would outlive him and give him reason to aspire to live. Pursuit is the proof of desire. Make him strive to become healthy so he could pursue the amazing dreams he has and reach them.

If he accepts big challenges, his will to live could reach an intense desperation that could motivate him to fight to stay alive by all means than give in to death easily.

Welcome Life Instead

Motivate someone that’s dying to live by flooding his mind with thoughts of life and sunshine and push the thoughts of death far from his mind, to welcome life instead. If you can inspire him to think life daily, his body and mental physiology would have no choice but to adapt to the new information being passed down to it by his mind.

Make him say what he wanted daily. The Holy Bible states that life and death are in what you say with your own mouth. Inspire him to want life so much it reaches an intense peak in his mind.

Tell him to override every negative thoughts of death with life giving affirmations. Urge him to visualize life instead of death.

If he consistently applies this to his body through the renewal of his mind by what he thinks, says, sees and believes, the physical body would begin to co-operate with this counter instructions passed to it from their master control room the mind.

Don’t forget that what he sees, hears and speaks with his tongue, has a part to play in the curative process. Procure health and wellness Audio and Video programs he could listen to and watch frequently to help reprogram the mind to accept to live again.

If you encourage a terminally sick person to apply this entire mind changing therapy to his body, he would be welcoming life instead of death. So Motivate someone that’s dying to live by helping him see the true connection between what he sees, hears, and speaks with his mouth to health and wellness.

Final Words

Motivate someone that’s dying to live by making him welcome life and fight to live by trying alternative remedies instead of stoically waiting for death to strike.

I have discussed several approaches you could use to attempt to live on despite the pronouncement by your doctors that death was imminent. I do hope you would motivate someone that’s dying to embrace the challenge and fight to live rather than submit to their Doctors judgment.

Ultimately whether you live or die does not depend on medical prognosis alone, but on some other unseen forces which sometimes may work in your favor and sometimes may not.

Above all other factors, your personal will to live matters most despite the debilitating ailment and doctor’s pronouncements. Resolve to live and fight like you have never done before and you may succeed and live. But if after all efforts to stay alive fails, it would be said of you that you did all that was humanly possible and died gallantly.

DISCLAIMER

The writer does not have the power of life or death. This article does not promote claims that any person in life threatening conditions could merely read it and instantly become well.

Rather, this article is merely to motivate someone that’s dying, to grasp even the slightest chance available to everyone through a positive shift in their mindset, and take actions congruent with their new beliefs to possibly shift the inevitable hour so they could stay with loved ones a little longer.

Ultimately everyone must die!

Christianity has long endowed the natural world with sacred meaning. Every day, material existence — food and drink, life and death, humans and animals, Earth and sky — is recalled in countless rituals and stories as the primary medium through which God relates to humankind and the wider Earth community.

Christianity’s central ritual is a group meal that remembers the saving death of Jesus by celebrating the good gifts of creation — eating bread and drinking wine. Its central symbol is a wooden cross — two pieces of lumber lashed together as the means and site of Jesus’ crucifixion. Its central belief focuses on the body — namely, that God became flesh in Jesus and thereby becomes a mortal, breathing life-form who experiences life’s joy and suffering.

And Christianity’s primary sacred document, the Bible, is rich with ecological imagery that stretches from the cosmic potter fashioning the first man from dust to the tree of life yielding its fruit to Earth’s inhabitants. Christianity, then, is a “deep green” or “earthen” religion because it binds God to the created order and thereby values the natural world as a holy place.

In Finding God in the Singing River, I take up the question of Christianity’s earthen identity by way of a nature-based retrieval of the Holy Spirit as the green face of God in the world. The Holy Spirit reveals herself in the biblical literature as a physical, earthly being who labors to sustain humankind and other beings’ solidarity with one another. The natural world — the body of God, as it were — is best understood as the primary mode of God’s presence among us today.

Without a deeply felt spiritual bond with the Earth community as the enfleshment of God’s presence, it is difficult for Christians and other people of faith to develop long-term, sustainable relationships with the good creation God has made. A partial turn to valorizing nature as sacred ground was made in post-Vatican II papal encyclicals and bishops’ pastorals where the created order is understood sacramentally as the dwelling place of God’s goodness. But a residual anthropocentric bias in contemporary Catholic thought — namely, that the end of creation is human flourishing — has prevented a full biocentric turn to ascribing holiness or sacred value to the created order.

In the earthen theology I propose, Christianity’s “animist” identity is reawakened through the ancient ideas of incarnation and spirit — the Bible teaches that while God is beyond all things, God is radically enfleshed within all things. Apart from a thoroughgoing deep green reawakening of Christianity’s central teachings, it will be impossible to experience a spiritually charged connection to the land that is our common home and common destiny. Without this connection, the prospects of saving our planet, and thereby saving ourselves, are not good.

It’s elemental, my dear

While Christianity’s primordial identity is fundamentally nature-centered and body-loving, this thesis has historically been at odds with a residual Platonist tendency within Christian theology to emphasize spirit or mind as superior to matter or body. But rather than prioritizing the spiritual over the earthly, Scripture figures the Holy Spirit as a carnal, creaturely life-form always already interpenetrated by the material world. Indeed, the Bible is awash with imagery of the Holy Spirit borrowed directly from the natural world. The four traditional elements of natural, embodied life — earth, air, water and fire — are constitutive of the Holy Spirit’s biblical reality as an enfleshed being who ministers to God’s creation.

As earth, the Holy Spirit is both the divine bird with an olive branch in its mouth that brings peace and renewal to a broken world, and a fruit bearer — such as a tree or vine — that yields the virtues of love, joy and peace in the life of the disciple. As a bird or a flowering tree, the Holy Spirit is a living being who shares a common physical reality with all other beings. Far from being the “immaterial substance” defined by the canonical theological lexicon, the Holy Spirit is imagined in the Bible as a material, earthen life-form who mediates God’s power to other Earth creatures through her physical presence.

As air, the Holy Spirit is both the vivifying breath that animates all living things and the prophetic wind that brings salvation and new life to those it indwells. The nouns for the Holy Spirit in the biblical texts — rûach in Hebrew and pneuma in Greek — mean “breath,” “air” or “wind.” Literally, the Holy Spirit is pneumatic, a powerful air-driven reality analogous to a pneumatic drill or pump. The Holy Spirit is God’s all-encompassing, aerial presence in the life-giving atmosphere that envelops and sustains the whole Earth. As such, the Holy Spirit escapes the horizon of human activity and cannot be contained by human constraints. The Spirit is divine wind — the breath of God — that blows where she wills, driven by her own elemental power and independent from human attempts to control her, refreshing and renew-ing all broken members of the created order.

As the living water, the Spirit quickens and refreshes all who drink from her eternal springs. As physical and spiritual sustenance, the Holy Spirit is the liquid God who imbues all life-sustaining bodily fluids with flowing divine presence and power. Moreover, the water God flows and circulates within the soaking rains, dewy mists, thermal springs, seeping mud holes, ancient headwaters, swampy wetlands and teeming oceans that constitute the hydrospheric Earth. The Holy Spirit as water makes possible the wonderful succulence of life as we experience it on a liquid planet sustained by nurturing flow patterns.

Finally, as fire, the Holy Spirit is the bright flame that alternately judges evildoers and ignites the prophetic mission of the church. Fire is an expression of God’s austere power. On one level, it is biblically viewed as the element God uses to castigate human error. But it is also the symbol of God’s unifying presence in the fledgling Christian community where the divine pneuma — the rushing wind of God — is said to have filled the early church as its members became filled with the Spirit, symbolized by, as it says in Acts 2:3, “tongues of fire [that were] distributed and resting on each one” of the early church members. Aberrant, subversive and creatively destructive, God as fire scorches and roasts who and what she chooses apart from human intervention and design — like the divine wind that blows where she wills.

God as Spirit is biblically defined according to the tropes of earth, wind, water and fire. The Earth’s bodies of water, communities of plants and animals, and eruptions of fire and wind share in the Holy Spirit’s very nature, as she is continually enfleshed through natural landscapes and biological populations. The Holy Spirit is an earthen reality — God’s power in the land and sky that makes all things live and grow toward their natural ends. God is living in the ground, swimming through the oceans, circulating in the atmosphere. God is always afoot and underfoot as the quickening life force yearning to bring all denizens of our sacred Earth into fruition and well-being.

Idolatrous ecology

Pope John Paul II and many bishops — as well as countless religious leaders from non-Catholic traditions — have broken new ground in religious environmentalism by emphasizing the biblical creation story and the ethic of respect for life as central to a moral response to the ecological crisis. On New Year’s Day 1990, Pope John Paul II issued “The Ecological Crisis: A Common Responsibility.” A year later, U.S. Catholic bishops promulgated

“Renewing the Earth” as a response to the crisis. These statements and others emphasize the goodness of God’s creation, and that Adam and Eve were made in God’s image in order to exercise dominion over the Earth in wisdom and love. Human sin, however, destroyed this divine ordering and creation has suffered as a result of human beings’ continued decisions to not live in harmony with the Creator’s plan. Pope John Paul and the bishops have regarded the environmental crisis as a moral crisis.

Catholic social teaching prioritizes human welfare as the bedrock norm for maintaining the well-being of creation. In his 1990 World Day of Peace address, Pope John Paul made this point in the language of a moral first principle: “Respect for life, and above all for the dignity of the human person, is the ultimate guiding norm for any sound economic, industrial or scientific progress.” The pope and bishops contended that locating human need at the center of environmental policy-making results — in a ripple-like effect — in the extension of moral regard for non-human creatures.

The logic is that once the needs of the human community are secured, human beings will be empowered to reach out in justice and compassion to the wider biotic community. At the World Day of Peace in 1999, the pope makes a similar point: “Placing human well-being at the center of concern for the environment is actually the surest way of safeguarding creation; this in fact stimulates the responsibility of the individual with regard to natural resources and their judicious use.”

It is understandable why they place human dignity at the center of environmental well-being. On apparent biblical grounds and in light of the environmentally degraded state of most human populations, it is natural to posit the restoration of human dignity as the keystone value necessary for building a morally just social and ecological order. It is assumed that making human flourishing the center of environmental concern will have a green halo effect on other beings.

‘Ecological without being ecocentric’

Catholic social teaching has another reason for assigning, relative to the whole of the natural order, supreme value to human well-being: It protects Christian ecology from erasing the distinctions between humans and others in the manner of creation spirituality. This anxiety with this type of spirituality is given full expression in the bishops’ 1991 pastoral statement, which calls for a love for creation that is “ecological without being ecocentric.” The bishops warn, “We can and must care for the Earth without mistaking it for the ultimate object of our devotion.”

This statement clarifies the difference between “ecological theology,” which preserves the hierarchical order that separates Creator and creation, and “ecocentric theology,” which runs the risk of overly venerating nature as an object of worship, according to the pope and bishops. If there is excessive dialogue with nonreligious environmentalism, mainstream Protestant and Catholic theology worries that Christianity will disintegrate into a neopagan reverence for earthen well-being that blurs the distinctions between God, humans and others — which some Christians deem necessary for a proper and ordered relationship with creation. In a word, the charge against deep green theology is idolatry, that is, bestowing undue reverence on the creation that diminishes God’s status as the supreme bearer of absolute value. But how well-grounded is this charge?

Human dignity — the primary focus of classical Catholic doctrine — is best secured by maintaining the health of biologically diverse species linked together through intricate feeding relationships. Correspondingly, practical decisions about resource allocations and the like should focus on ensuring the dynamism and vitality of the energy cycle, not on the particular needs of individual participants within the cycle, including individual human needs. In conversation with conservation biology from a religious perspective, we humans should see ourselves as equal citizens of the biotic order, rather than as overlords of creation who possess more value than other beings.

Critics regard this subordination of human concerns to the welfare of the whole as a dangerous flattening of important differences, even a kind of ecofascism in which human interests are now located in — or subordinated to — the wider orbit of ecosystemic interests. The point is not that human happiness is unim-portant in green systems theology, but rather without the well-being of the whole as the paramount concern, attention to human needs and in-terests is not possible. Frankly, if the worldwide system of energy flow patterns collapses due to ecocatastrophe of our own making, then our discussions about whether human beings have more value than other beings will seem academic at best and, at worst, contributory to the very mind-set that gave rise to the collapse in the first place.

Home of God’s presence

If earthen theology seeks to shift the center of gravity toward ecosystem well-being rather than human flourishing as such, does this make it a type of paganism or idolatry that dare not speak its name? I think not. The witness of Scripture and tradition is to the world as the abode of divinity, the habitation of life-giving Spirit, the home of God’s presence where the rhythms and vitalities of everyday life are sacred. All life is sacred because the Earth is a natural system alive with God’s presence, which supports the well-being of all created things.

God’s gift to all beings is this highly complex, biologically diverse Earth where life itself is celebrated in all its fecundity and passion. Sacredness inheres in the God-given capacity of plants and animals to stock and replenish the food chain on which we all depend. God as Spirit is the green force in the Earth who animates the living food chains that make possible the flow of energy for all of us.

It is not blasphemous, therefore, to say that nature is sacred. It is not mistaken to find God’s presence in all things. To speak in animistic terms, it is not wrong to re-envision Christianity as continuous with the worldviews of first peoples who bore witness to and experienced divinity everywhere — who saw and felt the Spirit alive in every rock, tree, animal and body of water they encountered. God is holy, and all God made participates in that holiness. Thus, when we labor to protect and nurture God’s good creation, we invest all things with inherent, supreme value as a loving extension of God’s bounty and compassion.

Sacred, then, is the ground we stand on. Holy is the Earth where we are planted. Discovering the natural world as holy ground has the potential to vivify our primordial sense of belonging to the life-web that our kind and others need for daily sustenance and future well-being. This perspective signals a revaluation and continuation of characteristic Christian themes that celebrate the important connection between human beings and the natural order that sustains them.

Christians speak of the embodiment of God in Jesus 2,000 years ago, but now the entire life-web is the incarnation of God’s presence through the Spirit on a daily basis. Christians speak of the miracle of the Eucharist, in which bread and wine become Christ’s flesh and blood, but now the whole Earth is a living sacrament full of the divine life through the agency of the Spirit who animates and unifies all things. Christians speak of the power of the written word of God, in which God’s voice can be heard by the discerning reader, but now all of nature is the book of God through which one can see God’s face and listen to God’s speech in the laughter of a bubbling stream, the rush of an icy wind on a winter’s day, the scream of a red-tailed hawk as it seizes its prey and the silent movement of a monarch butterfly flitting from one milkweed plant to another.

In the warmth of the sun, the shelter of the encircling sky, the strength of the great oceans and the fecundity of the good land, we have everything we need to recover our kinship with the Holy Spirit and the Earth.

Spiritual Wisdom Hinder By A Corrupt Mind

The theory defined as the Noetic Effect of Sin concludes that the fall of mankind accumulated in the perversion of the whole man, touching body, soul, spirit and mind. Thus the sin that destabilizes the physical body and the purity of human emotions also hinders the human capacity to rightly comprehend the mining of Holy Scripture. For Scriptural confirmation of this theory, review the book of Romans wherein the apostle Paul pens the following words:

“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God,” (Romans 12:2).

By probing into the Scriptural story of a man born blind for the purposes of God, Christians can see that a supernatural healing entail much more than physical restoration. In fact, to be fully effectual supernatural healing must also include a supernatural change in how humans think, thus physical and emotional healing should also be accompanied by a distinct increase in spiritual wisdom.

The “old man,” the “sinner from birth,” the “man not yet redeemed by grace and faith” has not the capacity to accurately discern the significant of holiness, righteousness and Godliness. Thus the theory of Christian conversion embraces not only the spiritual death of the old man, but it also embraces the demand of a psychological metamorphosis in the new man.

The corrupt mind cannot grasp the things of God. Even without assigning a official term to the condition of Spiritual Blindness, Christians are taught that a carnal mind cannot be subject to the law of God (see Romans 8:7). This condition of enmity with God is called the “Noetic Effect of Sin.” The term dates back to the early years of Christian theology, wherein redeemed men came to realize that the fall of Adam induced not only physical death but also a measure of mental death. Thus we have a simple explanation for why denominations, church assemblies and even individual Christians cannot come to full agreement concerning correct interpretation of all Scriptures. We may be “washed in the blood,” but until rightly conformed to acknowledge and accept the thoughts and intends of God our minds remain under the curse. Thus perfect understanding seems often to resist our hopes. The voice of the Spirit remains unheeded. And unity within the body of Christ remains ever just beyond our grasp.

Now if all this sounds like a mass of self-righteous theo-talk, you might be somewhat right for we often tend to overcomplicate simple truths. Be it enough to say that the Noetic Effect of Sin means that without coming to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you and I lack access to the full potential of our mind.

CHAMBER OF REFLECTION

“Let your heart therefore be perfect with the

Lord our God, to walk in his statutes and

to keep His commandments…”

1 Kings 8:61

According to Jewish literature and traditions, great care was taken of the personal condition of every Israelite who entered the Temple for Divine worship. The Talmud dictated the following requirements: “No man shall go into the Temple with his staff or with his shoes on his feet, or with his outer garment, or with money tied up in his purse.” Masonry has adopted portions of this ancient Jewish custom regarding the preparation of the candidate for entry into a lodge.

Although not Jewish in its origin, the Chamber of Reflection, which has been incorporated into a candidate’s preparation in some American lodges, is an updated version of the ancient cave of initiation. Nevertheless, it similarly serves to prepare the candidate for entry into holy ground. Generally, the chamber is a small room lit only by a candle that casts feeble light on a number of ornaments, including a human skull, human bones, a lump of bread, a flask of water, an hourglass, a saucer containing salt and another containing sulphur. The candidate is seated inside by himself to silently contemplate the holy significance of his intended Masonic journey.

Seated at a table, the candidate must write a philosophical will that will later be read aloud in lodge. In order to compose that will, the candidate must search his soul for his true feelings about life, death and the transformation of the self from its material nature to its spiritual destiny. It should come as no surprise that the symbols situated within the chamber derive primarily from alchemy – the science and philosophy of metamorphosis.

Alchemists believed that salt which is extracted from sea water by the process of evaporation constitutes the element of fire delivered by water. Sulphur is to the human body what the Sun is to the earth. The coupling of salt and sulphur symbolizes life and death, or light and darkness nourishing one another. Thus, while the general candidate for Masonic degrees is not entirely knowledgeable about either alchemy, or the symbols it employs, it is intended that he meditate upon such esoteric matters as the evolution and continuity of all life, as well as the fact that the transformation from material life to spiritual existence is a matter of personal experience. Each and every human being will live, die and live again, but nobody can fully appreciate how that will feel until it actually happens.

For Masons, the time passed in the Chamber of Reflection symbolizes the trials of life. The first lesson to be learned is that nothing is intrinsically good or bad. People are responsible for making matters better or worse depending upon how they conduct themselves. Thus, the first lesson relates to the importance of accepting responsibility for one’s own actions.

The hourglass asks the candidate to reflect upon the irreversibility of the passage of time. Material life is on a continuing progression toward decay and there is precious little time available to participate in the development of the spirit. The bread denotes the transformation from the raw to the fully cooked – from raw wheat to the bread which is fit for human consumption. A Mason is not valuable to the world in which he lives simply because he has been initiated into the Order. Rather, he must prepare himself by study and the application of the knowledge that he acquires, if he is ever to benefit society and mankind. The flask of water represents fertility, or regeneration, of which lustration, or baptism is also a symbol. The regeneration explained in this symbolism is not that of the resurrection of the spirit and soul, but of the resurrection to moral and virtuous living of the material body. Regeneration of the spirit and soul benefits the individual, while renewal of the resolve to live will benefits others. Most religions teach that unless a man renews his material life to the doing of good works, he will not fully prepare himself for eternal life.

It is essential for the candidate to understand that Masonry does not teach that good works achieves salvation of the spirit and soul. Rather, religions variously teach that lesson. Freemasonry instructs upon how a life should be lived – how the “works” of one human life actually reflect upon the “faith” that one holds. Therefore, the journey for which the Chamber of Reflection prepares the candidate is the journey toward better living, not salvation which can only come by the grace of God – never by man’s own works and deeds.

The human skull that is placed in the chamber is intended to remind the candidate that death is the great leveler. No man may escape its grasp and no man can truly know how it feels to be dead until he himself has experienced death. The skull is also intended to teach the candidate that death is also a source of life. As vegetable and animal life dies to be consumed by human life, the truth that death contributes to life is profoundly illustrated. As a good man dies, his deeds remain and contribute to the welfare of those who continue to live. The converse is true of a bad man. While his bad deeds die with him, the effect of those deeds may live long after he has passed away. The lessons acquired in Masonry enable the member to make it more likely that his own dying will be a source of life to others – not a source of grief and torment.

The symbols arranged in the Chamber of Reflection are also intended to inculcate in the mind of the novitiate the importance of distinguishing between that which is real and that which is fantasy. When man attaches to that which is real, he frees himself from the phantoms that so quickly set light and darkness into opposition. More often than not, evil conduct is the consequence of a confused imagination. In Hitler’s twisted fantasy, the Jew was responsible for the ills of his society. A serial murderer frequently fantasizes that taking life viciously and violently brings pleasure.

Energy is the fruit of contradictory forces which resist each other. It either becomes positive energy, or negative energy depending upon whether or not the dark side of life becomes too excessive. Light does not always shine in a man’s soul any more than it always illuminates the earth. For approximately twelve out of every twenty-four hours in each day, darkness prevails. In man’s life he does not always enjoy good health – for at least a few days, his body is ill. It is not a question of how to remove darkness, for that is contrary to the laws of Nature. Rather, it is a matter of what to do when surrounded by the dark that dictates whether or not positive energy will eventually prevail.

In preparation for the Masonic journey, whether or not that journey commences with a period of private contemplation in the Chamber of Reflection, a candidate should be led to reflect upon where he is in his own life, where he wishes to be when his life on earth ends and how he should best accomplish the journey between those two points. Many lodges in America have stopped teaching this valuable lesson at the outset of a candidate’s Masonic career. Candidates are most often merely “prepared” by the manner of their attire, which is eventually explained after the journey has begun. Little if anything is said about what it means to pursue Masonry, or why that pursuit is meaningful to man and society until after one or more degrees are conferred upon the candidate.

Is it possible that by re-instituting the important symbolism of the Chamber of Reflection into the workings of every Masonic lodge that some who leave the Craft after a very short journey would continue their pursuit? Is it important to teach a candidate what is expected of him before he receives Masonic degrees? Symbolism is a way of showing how words create images and how those images become elements of myths, imaginary tales which have the ring of truth because they run along winding paths that lead from desires to ideas to actions. Because Masonry communicates its wise and serious truths by the symbols that have been selected throughout time, it is quite likely very important that a candidate for degrees appreciate the meditation required of him before he ever embarks upon his Masonic journey.

For many Masons, the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom is a continuing process of study, application, review of what has previously been studied and further application of new lessons learned. This process is consistent with the exhortation frequently uttered in Masonic lodges – “gather what has been scattered and reconcile what appears to be contradictory.” Each of us has experience the need to both conform and to be different. We have also experienced believing and disbelief; certainty and doubt; and order and chaos. Those of us who are able to read this writing have yet to experience the difference between what we know as life and death, and whether or not there is any difference at all.

If in your Masonic career you were not permitted the opportunity to contemplate within a Chamber of Reflection before you received your degrees, you may do so now by bowing your head and offering a prayer to the Great Architect for understanding about where you are in your life, how you got there and how you shall journey to the end of your life. As in all Masonic matters, the choice is yours to make. As is also true in all Masonic matters, no man should ever enter upon any great or important undertaking without first invoking the blessing of God.

The concept of Hell in Christianity is a fantasy-world where the souls of the unbeliever and sinful people are supposed to suffer every kind of punishment.

In order to make this doctrine somehow understandable, we have to assume that there is a soul co-existing with the physical body. Additionally, we have to accept that the soul does not vanish after death but transform into some other kind of existence. This existence is supposed to have many similarities with the life of the physical body since it has the ability to feel pain, repentance, agony or other kinds of feelings. The executive director of the place, Hades, is supposed to be a great inventive man who exposes his "subjects" to all kind of evil treatments.

The Christians love the idea of ​​hell. They are certain that their enemies, the unbelievers, the critics of Christendom or the heretics, who are supposed to be Christians but have somehow different opinions about the "Trinity" or the "Holy Spirit", are already on the path leading to hell. Expressions like "go to hell" were unknown to people prior to the Christian era. The scribes of the Christian Bible, the Saints, the Apostles and other Church fathers used to practice the doctrine of hell to spread fear among those who did not totally surrender to the doctrines of the Holy Book. The "Hell" has become synonymous to a place for souls not following the words of God.

The theme of the Christian Hell is about some virtual place (as well as the Paradise) nobody can possibly know anything about its character or even its existence. Additionally nobody can possibly know anything about souls or what happen to them after death. We shall, however, take a look at the real Hell here on Earth, the place from which Christianity copied the concept of Hell.

The place is known as the "underworld" in the Greek Mythology, where Hades is the master of the place. He forced Persephone to marry him after he abducted her. In Sumerian Mythology Persephone is known as Ereskigal, a grand daughter of both Enlil / Yahweh and Enki / Poseidon and sister of Inanna / Aphrodite. She married Nergal (Hades), the son of Enki, after he abducted her. "Eresh-Ki-Gal" probably means "Adobe of the Great Queen on Earth". Nergal was known as the god of the underworld in Mythology. In reality he was the executive director of the underground goldmines in Southern Africa. The Brotherhood of the Gold extracted most of the gold they sent to their home planet from just Southern Africa and Mesoamerica. South Africa is still the largest producer of gold.

The underground mines, full of unhappy slave-gold-miners have been the original source of many mythological stories. It was a real place of hell for living humans, not for the souls of the dead. We have many stories about gods and demigods who were imprisoned in the underworld and later allowed to return, witnessing of a place of living people. The underworld in Greek Mythology is a very realistic description of the underground gold mines in Southern Africa. Nergal, also known as Hades, was the administrator of the underground mines and the god of the underworld.The concept of the "underworld" derives partly from the fact that the mines were beneath the surface and partly because they were located in the Abzu, probably a Nibiruan word from which the word "abyss" derives. Both names, Nergal and Hades, have been connected with death, punishment and Hell.

Nergal, being a member of the alien Brotherhood of the Gold, was a very result-oriented executive. He could travel around in Africa, Asia and Europe, selecting men to use as labor in the mines. Being selected / captured by Nergal was equivalent to be considered as dead. The mineworkers were transported to the underground mines, where they worked until they died. They were provided with food and water to keep them alive although they probably had been manipulated to believe they were dead. Those people lived the rest of their lives in the mines. We find a very appropriate description in the Greek Mythology where they are called "living dead". When they no longer were able to work, they were just buried under the excavated soil. They never came up again. The "underworld" was a place of no return. Surely, it was a terrible fate for those ancestors of ours. It was literally a place of Hell. The "living dead" were providing the Nibiruans with gold under thousands of years. The gold transformed into gold dust, becomes an elixir for health and longevity.

While the Master of the Underworld in different Mythologies is Nergal and Hades, that represent the same god and member of the alien Brotherhood of the Gold, the Christian Church chose another name for the Master of Hell. The name "Satan", from Arabic (Islamic world) is supposed to describe this man in a more negative manner. The original "Shejtan", however, means "adversary" which is equivalent to "competitor". Was there another god? Was there a competition between gods?

Besides Mythology, there are historical documents witnessing that Nergal / Hades used to take workers by force in order to use them in the mines. In 1887 some 350 clay tablets were found in Egypt at El Amarna, the capital city of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV. Those tablets, today in European Museums, were written under the time of Amenhotep III and his son, Amenhotep IV who later changed his name to Akenaten.

They are written in the diplomatic language of the time, Akkadian, reflecting the correspondence between Egyptian Pharaohs with other leaders around Egypt. One of those "letters", with the ID "EA35", is from the king of Cyprus (Alashiya) to the Egyptian Pharaoh. Here is what he says:

"Speak to the King of Egypt, my brother. Thus says the King of Alashiya [9], your brother: All goes well with me. With my houses, my wife, my sons, my chief men, my horses, my chariots, and in my lands, it is well. And with my brother may it be well. My brother, behold, my messenger I have sent with your messenger to you to Egypt. Now I have sent 500 talents [1] of copper to you; I have sent it to you as a gift [2] for my brother. Do not let my brother be concerned that the amount of copper is too little , for in my land the hand of Nergal [3], my lord, has killed all the men of my land, and so there is not a (single) copper-worker [emphasis added]. " No men to use as copper-workers. They were needed to dig gold for the gods in the underworld. Note that only men were "killed" by the hand of Nergal. They were, of course, not "killed" but taken away and considered as dead. Had it been some kind of disease, plague or natural disaster then Nergal (Hades / Death) would have taken women and children too. This real Hell was the creation of the alien gods who "s Commander Enlil later became Yahweh and God. They could use as many slaves as they needed as gold miners, servants in their homes, priests and hierodules in their Temples, soldiers, agents, kings, prophets or whatever. Our ancestors had no possibility to escape "the hand of Nergal". Today we are not slaves any more but free citizens with the ability to dig for gold for ourselves, or so we think. Are we doing the digging and storing the gold for someone else? Are our steps directed into paths already predetermined by the doctrines of Yahweh?

Mentally we are indeed enslaved by the doctrines of Hell, Paradise, Trinity, Holy Spirit and the like, also created by the god of the Old Testament and his agents. The Church demands from us to believe in those manipulative doctrines, threatening with Hell if we don't. The fear for punishment by god is still here. Yet, neither the Church fathers nor anybody else can possibly know anything about such things. Fear and Hope, Hell and Paradise, the doctrines that re-enslaved mankind, the very basement of the Christian structure, are closely connected with Yahweh and his Gold Mission on Earth.

References

www.reshafim.ord.il/ad/egypt/alasiya.htm

http://www.mindspring.com/~mysticgryphon/descent.htm

Many believe that the story of Daniel in the lion’s den is nothing but a fairy tale. It is not, but even if it were so there is a significant divine message behind the account. It applies to this very moment in time and the coming tribulation period (apocalypse).

Daniel was the only prophet who spent his entire adult life living in exile in Babylon and Persia. He outlasted all of the kings in his time. Daniel was first exiled into Babylon as a youth of approximately 17 years of age, when Israel was invaded by the Babylonians who took many Jews captive.

Because the kings all recognized that Daniel had an excellent spirit in him (since God’s favor was upon him), Daniel was always appointed to positions of nobility in the various empires that he would serve under. Instead of serving as a slave like many of the captives, Daniel always was appointed to high positions within these empires.

By the time that he is convicted to death he is approximately 83 years of age. Let’s review the reason for his persecution.

Under King Darius of Media-Persia Daniel was appointed as one of three chief governors. Because of his excellent spirit, He was preferred by Darius over the other governors.

In time great jealousy developed among the governors against Daniel and they conspired to have Daniel killed. So they conspired to set a trap for Daniel to have him executed. They could find no fault in him (Dan. 6:5-8) but they knew that he was unwavering in his faith in the God of Israel. So since they had to convict him by his religious belief, they established a 30 day statute whereby anyone who was caught praying to any god other than to king Darius – he would be put to death. We see the spirit of Satan at work here, whereby he influences the leaders of nations to worship man instead of God.

King Darius was tricked into accepting this edict, and according to the law of the Medes and Persians once established, a law could NOT be revoked.

As he was accustomed to doing Daniel continued to pray three times a day facing Jerusalem with window open (Dan. 6:10).

So they reported to the king that Daniel had violated the statute and therefore must be put to death. This greatly displeased the king, and he was upset at allowing himself to be deceived. Some scholars believe that King Darius respected and revered the God of Daniel because he may have been the grandson of Queen Esther (the Jewish exile who the Persian king Ahasuerus chose as his wife circa. 478 B.C.).

So the king had to carry out the death sentence – and put Daniel in the Den of Lions. Based on the biblical account, it is apparent that the King believed Daniel would survive even though it would take a miracle. However his level of faith was nowhere near as strong as Daniel’s. So the king was deeply distressed and could not sleep all night. It is likely that the fear of God was upon him, knowing what would happen to him and his empire if he killed Daniel (Dan. 6:13-15)

Early in the dawn, the king rushed down to the Den to see if Daniel had indeed survived (Dan. 6:19-20, 23). In one of the greatest miracles of the bible – God had shut the Lion’s mouths, and Daniel was unharmed. Daniel was spared because he believed in God (Dan. 6:23).

The king was delighted. Those and the families of those who deceived the king where then cast into the Den of lions and were all torn to pieces (Dan. 6:24).

Daniel died in his mid 90’s. He served God his entire life even though his entire life was spent in captivity. The important take away here is that no matter where you live, whether a free man or in jail – we can still serve the Almighty. We can turn our lemons to lemonade regardless of our situation or position in life. I believe that a special crown in heaven, awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast in their faith despite their handicaps or trials. I believe this is why our Lord revealed that the first shall be last, and the last shall be first in God’s kingdom.

God never took Daniel away from his exile in Babylon, because God knew that Daniel’s level of faith would allow him to persevere even under captivity. This is why Daniel was held in high esteem, and why the Archangel Gabriel revealed to Daniel visions of what would happen at the time of the very end. Daniel was probably the greatest prophet of the Old Testament, and received detailed revelations of the apocalypse, and all the players thereof. In fact, many of the prophecies in the book of Revelation were foretold in the book of Daniel.

We learn some foundational truths from this account:

– God’s People are Persecuted

– God’s Children are not Swayed

– Even ungodly men respect those whom the Lord has blessed and anointed.

– God’s Children are Protected

– God honors those who honor Him!

God remains with us when we face trials and persecution, and depending on our level of faith, God can deliver us from anything (Matt 28:19-20)!

A popular theme in this secular world is that there are many ways to God. This is obviously a poke at the major monotheistic religions; Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Since there is only one way to God, we must be courageous just like Daniel and stand up for our God – even in the face of death. Daniel was willing to die for His God; and His God remembered him at his moment of peril.

There will soon come a time when you and I may also have to stand up for our God. If your faith is unwavering, like Daniel’s was, then you too will persevere and stand up for your faith knowing that the sovereign God of the Bible is the only way to eternity in Paradise.

When God first created man, He created man to live forever on this beautiful planet that He had made. God loved His creation and He even walked with man in the garden called Eden, but in time things would change. Satan’s pride got the best of him and God cast him out of heaven. Satan was angry that God wanted him to serve man, so Satan decided to influence man into disobeying God.

When God first put man in the garden, He told man not to eat from the tree of good and evil, He told man that he would surely die if he partook of that tree. As Satan tempted Eve into partaking of the tree, she went to Adam and had him partake of the tree. Then their spiritual eyes closed and their carnal eyes opened. They became what we are now, they lost what God had blessed them with.

Since they became unpure by disobeying God, they became disconnected from God by losing the Holy Spirit because they sinned. In order for them to not live forever in the misery of their sin, God allowed death to the flesh. It wouldn’t be until the sacrifice of Jesus Christ before man could actually return to God and be in union with Him once again. This is a spiritual union that man can make with God by building a one on one relationship with Jesus.

By accepting Jesus and following Him, not man, He will show us how and what we need to do to make that union with God. One must be willing to give up their will to travel with Jesus to the cross. It takes a lot of faith and the willingness to do this at all costs which means that you need to be completely open to sacrifice and to do whatever it takes to get back to God.

There are two deaths and one life, one is carnal life and death and the other is spiritual death. The soul has been living longer than the flesh and God tells us this in the Bible. For instance when God told Isaiah that He knew him before He formed him in his mother’s womb.

We all know that the flesh is born through the womb of a female and death can come in numerous ways, but the soul can experience life forever or spiritual death, this is where man’s free will comes in. God gave us all a choice to make as to whether we follow Him and have eternal life filled with His many blessings or death in the lake of fire.

You may say that, that is not much of a choice and it almost seems as though God is not giving us free will and He is forcing us to choose Him because if we don’t we will be spending eternity in the lake of fire. This is not so, you have to think of it this way. Look at the world around you, would you want to live the same way forever and ever with all the evil that is going on now? God certainly doesn’t want all this corruption in heaven and the new world or new age.

So, this is the choice we have to make, to live with God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and all the people that made a choice to live in peace, happiness and joy forever or reject God and choose the lake of fire with those that made that choice. What this world offers is death, what God offers is life. It’s your choice, Life or Death. May you make the right choice and God bless you.