i was watching that hell thing on the history channel.if you really want to read a thought provoking fiction trilogy read the Christ Clone Trilogy by james beauseigneur.I just finished it and it just makes you think.Talk about the devil hiding himself..

hell and heaven r simply creations of mans mind, if one truly believes that one of them is where he/she should go then when they they die there they r in what they expected
The mind/souls' final destination is totally up to the individuals beliefs

Abra;

Your questions are not derogatory at all. They are excellant
questions which get to the root of understanding some of the basic concepts of Christianity. I hope my responses meet the challenge.

As to the question of Satan tempting Jesus - it does seem illogical that Jesus, having become incarnate - would all of a sudden not remember that He was God. I think this conclusion is a reasonable and valid one given the premise that "once God - always God" should hold true. The explination involves a premise which I can only claim as valid to my thinking. Though Satan was created through Jesus - it is God the Father who is the creator. As examples of his creation (you and I that is) we know that we are bound by time, and have free-will (freedom of choice that is) Having become a man - Jesus was also bound by these limitations. Therefore - he was faced with all that we are. He had to eat to survive - had to "toil the land" as it were. Was faced with temptation and had to make choices, and being in a human body - was able to suffer pain and death as we do. Though he could have made the choice to respond to Satan as you have indicated - they would not have been his best response. (Remember - you're thinking like a believer and worshoper of God here) His focus was not on who He (Jesus) was, but rather on who he revered. Satan would have understood Jesus' response as being representative of God the Son, and it was Satan who understood who Jesus really was. Remember too - that Satan is not omniscient, and this occurance in the bible is the first time that Satan realized who Jesus was. So - though Jesus was tested, it was the "tester" who came to the realization that the Savior was in fact - present on earth.

As to the second question. It's not clear to me that the angels who fell to earth with Satan (Or actually Lucifer) were "unhappy" with heaven. It sort of falls into the catagory of "Those who have - want more" (A la - Bill Gates, half the NFL, MLB, NBA and the like who just don't have enough money and need more) It was the "lemming principle", as at the time, none of them were aware of the consequesnces of their actions until they had made their choice. Once having made that choice - to turn away from God to pursue their own desires - they were stuck with that choice for eternity, for Jesus is the Savior for man-kind, Not the fallen angels. Therefore - the only actions left for the 33% were to do everything they could to thwart God's plan/wishes. Which is to reconcile every man/woman to himself.

That is my best response to your question - for the moment - without having to consult another's commentary or reference.

Lizard;

This blanket statement you have made is actually not true. There have been those who have seen heaven, and have returned to write about it - if you want to claim that Paul and John are liars - than come here with some proof of that - but since the existance of Heaven has been documented, refraise your comments. As to the existance of Hell - perhaps you are closer to the truth here, because modern day understanding of hell is actually a lump sum definition of a number of "locations" documented in the scriptures. But there is one definite attribute to hell - it is a state of being separated from God. So hell is really a "state" of existance" not a place where people will congregate. You will not be sitting around with a group of people reminiscing about life on earth when in "hell" as is commonly understood.

Eljay,

You wrote:
"... This blanket statement you have made is actually not true. There have been those who have seen heaven, and have returned to write about it - if you want to claim that Paul and John are liars - than come here with some proof of that - but since the existance of Heaven has been documented, refraise your comments..."

There is this delusional man, wom calls himself 'Rael', and claims to have been to this 'kind of heaven' with extraterrestrial beings. He showed pictures, and brought strange hieroglyphic scriptures, which he only could translate, back from his pretended journey to heaven. Is that what you would refer to as sufficient documentation to establish tat HE HAS SEEN HEAVEN?!?!?

When you suggest:
"... There have been those who have seen heaven, and have returned to write about it.."

Please explain how that could possibly constitute proof of heaven?!?!? Before having to prove it opposite!

most people hwo believe in such concepts dont feel they need proof besides the bible and that everyone else with proof is being tempted by satan
i think its rather hypoctical to ignore facts and solely go by faith and mythology 4 ones beliefs

Just checking in to say hello to everyone

an extension of a broken arrow...a symbol of peace

I hope that we can lay down the arms
in the religion wars
and find the things that we can agree on
rather than focusing so often on the opposite.

Peace and love...

hugs to all of you...

James wrote:
So what is your explanation for this question? How could the devil possibly tempt the very God that had cast him out of Heaven? What could he possibly offer the God that created him?
===============================================================

I need to agree with ElJay in everything he said. And I need to add that in that precise moment the Lord used this experience as a learning tool for us. The main teaching is that we are always going to be tempted by the devil, and even though we are human we have the strenght to say no to temptation. The Lord having the human condition felt exactly the same way as every single human being. He was offered options, and He always chose the right one to let us see, that we have the same strength to overcome temptation. A temptation is just an enticing, it becomes a sin just and only when we choose to follow that enticement. That is the theolovical teaching within.
You see James God chooses things that does not make sense to our mind at some points. And when we put to much brain into it, sometimes it will not make sense at all. However, if we put a little bit of heart it's easier to find the logic of it.

================================================================

JAmes wrote:
What’s going on? Why is heaven such an undesirable place for angels? Why are they so unhappy there?

===============================================================

Angels as human beings have free will. So let's say for instance a politician (because that's what satan is) comes to the people and start making promises and talking sweet, a lot of people will fall for it.
Same thing happened in heaven Luzbel one of the 4 archangels (Michael (my favorite), Gabriel, and Rafael), he was very powerful. He started doing politics because he felt that he need to be the same as God (something that too many people around here pretend to be), and he started making promises to this angels, and sadly some of them fall for it. And they made the worst mistake ever denied God as God. But not because the Heaven in unperfect, but because they were enticed and stupid enough to fall for it.

Very simple things.

Lizardking19 wrote:
hell and heaven r simply creations of mans mind, if one truly believes that one of them is where he/she should go then when they they die there they r in what they expected
The mind/souls' final destination is totally up to the individuals beliefs

===============================================================

That statement is based solely in your own experience of life, the only facts that back up such statement is what have u lived so far.
Nevertheless, you don't own the truth, and I don't own it either.
But 6,000 years of human history back up the existance of heaven and hell. Every single culture in the world has supported this idea. And if it were not true, is that thousands of million of people were crazy, and somehow you have some kind of enlightment above any human comprehension.
Even within physics there has to be heaven and hell in order to have a balance in this world. As when we study electromagnetic fields, there has to be a positive and a negative pole, to maintain a balance in the field.
Now heaven and hell are not physical places are simply states of being.
Hell is the nonpresence or absence of God.
Heaven is the presence of God.
ergo i can conclude that in earth we have heaven and hell as well.
When i'm weak, i fall for temptation, and I sin. And I do not recognize my sin, and I don't stand up and keep walking then I God is absent (Hell).
But when I see because I'm going to do it because it's my nature, but i stand up and keep going. And I love my brothers and sisters. Then God is with me, so I'm in heaven.
NOw this earthly visions of heaven and hell are parcial. After we leave the human form we will see both of them depending on how we have lived our lives in plenitude.

previous post:

------denial is the root of all evil-----

maybe so

----------

but it is definite that:

the root of all evil is -- organized religion

no doubt about it

yes organized religion causes 4 more trouble than its worth

and walker, just bcause all human cultures have storys of heaven and hell doesnt mean they exist many human cultures have storys of vampires and other mythological beings, this doesnt verify their existence, only the existence of what jung called the collective unconsciousness

Certainly, later in life Jung downplayed the "biological" aspect of his psychology, and even discarded it altogether, preferring to see the archetypes in a more Platonic sense of prexistent spiritual entities. And in his voluminous alchemical writings he was more concerned with the dynamics of the psyche, and its transformation, than with explaining how the psyche or the archetypes came about in the first place. So it would be unfair to judge Jung on these grounds. Jung himself obviously did not consider abstract theories concerning the metaphysical or cosmological origin of the archetypes as important a practical here-and-now understanding of how the psyche worked, and how spiritual transformation and the growth to greater wholeness occur.

check your sources

An occult critique of Jung's conception of the Collective Unconscious
Jung was a truely brilliant observer. He was what we could call a Phenomenologist. That is, he studied the appearances or phenomena of the psyche - the various appearances and manifestations and forms that the psyche produces - and understood them with a depth of insight that has probably never been equalled since. And it is his observances in this way that make his writings, heavy and obscure as they are, a mine of information on the workings of the human psyche.

But when it came to interpreting his observations metaphysically - to formulating hypotheses in other words - he was disappointing. Jung's so-called "Collective Unconscious" cannot be denied as an empirical or phenomenological fact. But I would say that for the most part what Jung stumbled upon was not any sort of "racial memory" or collective human psyche, but the experiences of the Inner Being (sensu Sri Aurobindo), including the Numinocosm or psychic universe in all its richness and power.

From the occult perspective then, Jung's Unconscious is not something which is tied up with the human psyche at all. It should not even be called the "Collective Unconscious". After all, one does not refer to the physical world as the "Collective Physical". The term "collective" is redundant in the latter instance, as it is for anyone who reads Jung with esoteric eyes.

And so because of this misinterpretation of the "Collective Unconscious" in biological holistic-materialistic terms, the significance of this discovery was lost. Which is perhaps just as well, as - apart from a few occultists (and no-one who is any way part of the mainstream listened to or understood them) - there was no-one in Jung's day, and precious few even in our own, who can sympathetically understand such a concept. So it was the very conser-vatism of his metaphysics which guaranteed the acceptence, partial and critical as it was, of Jung's ideas.

The trouble with Jung's term "Collective Unconscious" is its sheer vagueness and ambiguity. The same term is used to describe realities that, from the perspective of occult understanding, are quite distinct, no matter how much they may resemble each other from the point of view of the superficial materialistic consciousness.

It's like the problem with "God" and religion. Just as to the esoterically uninformed, any experience that transcends the personal ego and takes them out of themselves must be "God", so to the conservatively alternative or New Paradigm understanding any greater or transpersonal psychic or archetypal reality must be "the collective unconscious". These problems have arisen because of the metaphysical impoverishment of our present materialistic society.

It seems that when Jung was describing the "collective unconscious" he was referring to one of at least four different realities:

any of the worlds of higher, spiritual or divine archetypes, or any of the Gods or Cosmic Powers that inhabit those worlds (as explained in Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Kabbalah, etc etc)
the wider or greater psychic reality beyond the individual ego and personality, especially the Numinocosm
the earlier or parallel paraphysical realities, such as are described by Blavatsky and Steiner under the headings of previous Rounds, Root Races, etc
the lower, atavistic, sub-physical reality, which a number of occultists, such as Osmund Spare, have attuned to.
What all these realities have in common is simply that they are pre-personal or trans-personal; they are atterly beyond the consciousness and boundaries of the individual rational ego-personality, and hence encountering them elicits a feeling of awe, like the traditional religious "God" (and certainly realities (1) and (2) at least would automatically be defined as "God" by any religiously minded person).

Eljay,

Ok, Eljay, your explanation makes PERFECT sense. Seriously it does. It fits the story to a T.

You see I wasn’t looking at it like that because even though I keep claiming to believe that it is mythology I don’t really view it that way. But I see now how it fits into the overall story. It’s not about Jesus resisting tempting. That was never in question. It was all about this game that’s being played between God and the Devil. The whole idea of Jesus being temped was solely for the purposes of proving to Satan that Jesus was in fact God.

This highlights the mythological aspect of the whole story. This story isn’t about humans at all. It’s about two Gods. One good God that’s playing some kind of a game with a bad God and humans are just pawns on the playing board.

This story makes some sense in a way. Because it’s not about an all-loving god and human beings. It’s about a battle, or a game, between two gods that are gambling for human souls. These gods keep creating new souls with every body that’s born. When those bodies die one of the two gods wins the soul of that pawn. And evidently the bad god is winning more soul than the good god.

I don’t mean to belittle the religions with this analogy. In fact, I didn’t make this analogy up. I heard this analogy from Jehovah’s witnesses. This is precisely the story they are selling when they come knocking on my door.

I don’t care for that picture at all. Obvious it could be true, but how disgusting if it is! To think that we are just pawns in some kind of gambling game between two gods that are playing to win our souls is just not an appealing picture to me. If it’s true I can only hang my head in total disillusionment that I am stuck as a pawn in the middle of such game-playing deities. Neither of those two gods appears appealing to me. I’m not convinced that the good god is all that much better than the bad god.

I guess I’m far too aliened from this religion to ever go back to it now. I don’t think I could ever view the God of the Bible as being someone that I could trust, much less love and worship. If this kind of scenario is indeed what’s really happening my own prayer would be to be allowed to go back to non-existence. I’m not interested in being a pawn in that game. Seriously. I don’t care what the reward might be. I’m not interested. Just please un-create me and let’s pretend this whole thing never even happened.

I have to believe that there’s a better picture than this. I would seriously rather just be an atheist and die when I die than to be part of a scenario of game-playing of gods gambling with my soul.

It’s just not an inviting picture for me. If it’s our true reality then I’m very depressed. Because all it would be about is saving my own butt in a game between gambling gods. What a pathetic essence to life.

If I’m going to believe in a god, I’m going to believe in a really nice god. One that doesn’t gamble.

Otherwise, I’ll just be an atheist and let the cards fall where they may. Que Sara Sara.

I won’t have any part of these game-playing gods. Whoever wins my soul more power to him. May the best god win!

That's all I can say to that. No offense intended to anyone who likes this picture. More power to ya!

It's definitely not for me.

I'm so sorry James, but your picture of two Gods gambling for souls does not make sense to me at all.
The first nonsense that i find is your statement "two gods gambling," it's a nonsense to me because satan can have some power, but he is not God at all. the devil is a mere persuasive entity.
The second nonsense that i find, is even though we have own will God knows what our choice going to be no matter what because is out of time He sees what hapened, what is hapening, and what is going to happen in a constant now. What we understand as time is not a concept with God. So how, If God knows everything, is He going to be gambling if at any time He will know when He is going to win or lose a soul, as you call it.
Third nonsense that i find, is Jesus's temptation had the purpose to prove Jesus that he was God. For me the sole purpose of the temptation, is that the human being has the power and strength to overcome temptation.
My dear friend would you please tell me how do you come with all these ideas. Would no be easier just to think that there is a God who loves you, and you very existance is the biggest proof of His love to you. But what the heck man, that is just the way i see it. I'm not trying to make you believe what i believe.
I don't know why is so hard to see things just the way they are the purpose of evil is to make balance with good.
if we did not have black and white we would not have the full spectrum of colors.
As I have lived my life, and you guys can call me a delusional idiot as far as I'm concern, but whatever influence satan has had in my life, it's an oportunity that God's has given me to learn from the mistakes I have maiden out of the devil's enticements.

And then again you can call me a delusional idiot, but through 14 years volunteering in my church, I have seen a lot of things.
Even the nasty things, and I have seen the devil's action even to a physical way.
And believe me is scary s h i t, i don't want anybody here to see the things i have seen, but they are very real.
I mean if there are 20 people in one room all of them seeing the same things, I don't think that is just the product of mass hysteria.

I’m sorry Miguel. It’s just that I found Eljay’s explanation to be a real eye-opener.

I know you think my posts are negative and derogatory and all of that. But had I not asked this question I would have never thought of the answer Eljay gave and his answer really does make PERFECT sense with respect to a particular interpretation that I unfortunately do not find acceptable (rational but not acceptable).

I was trying to find a rational explanation that I could accept so I wasn’t even thinking about explanations that I might find repugnant.

So my apologies to anyone who thinks I’m negative.

I learned something today. So the exchange was worth it for me.

James:
I think that ur concerns are justifiable, i think that the words that u use can come across as derogatory. However, I understand that they come out of the frustration that you can have with religions in general.

Voil;

When someone brings his name up in a forum 2,000 years from now - than his comments will qualify for legitimacy.

I' m so happy that we are reaching some common denominators...

Good Work Men...These posts are interesting...
there is so much knowledge & wisdom herein...

I am glad that eljay was able to sufficiently
answer your burning question..abracadabra.

I hope & pray you find peace in your soul
and that the answers to your questions
are revealed to you in supernatural ways...

The lonely walker... i loved your comment

" Would not it be easier just to think
that there is a God who loves you,
and your very existance
is the biggest proof of His love to you."

God Bless us with knowledge & wisdom
bring us to a closer understanding of you...