Hard News to Report
I have been asked to tell you something today that is going to make most or all Christians hate me even more than they already do, but since God has asked me to tell you this, and since the Christians are murdering me with their hate anyway, I will tell you.
You know me, Dear Reader, first I write a preamble.
This is only the second time God has insisted I tell you something. The first time was when God told me to tell you George W. Bush will destroy the world.
Even when I was given my great commission from God to write The Obituary of the World, that commission came in the form of a request that I accept the commission.
Those who have read my work over a long period of time may recall how and when God told me George W. Bush will destroy the world, and insisted I pass that horrible truth on to you.
I will repeat that experience briefly.
It was about fourteen months before the 9/11 attack, and I had gone into the wilderness for my usual month-long hike to regain my health.
(In passing I will note that I can no longer do that because since Republican American Fascism usurped power government pigs follow me and torture me wherever I go in the wilderness, even seeking me out with helicopters if I go far off the beaten trail, but that's another story.)
So, as I have reported here before, I had just arrived in the wilderness and was at my base camp acclimating and loosening up my spirit and my body, when God told me I had to go back to my work, that I must report as broadly as I could that George W. Bush will destroy the world.
I, argumentative as I some times am, responded by saying to God that I needed that month in the wilderness to regain my health, that without it I might die; and God said it would be better that I die trying to report the truth about George W. Bush than not to try, since unless greater minds prevailed his stupidity and fascism would destroy the world.
So, I packed up and returned home, and immediately upon arriving the murderous torture of me that evolved after George W. Bush occupied the White House began; and now, three trips to the emergency room later, living in homeless with no opportunity for a home visible in my future, God comes along and insists I tell you something no Christian wants to hear.
That's the preamble; now here is what God insists I tell you.
"The final book of the Bible, Revelations, is a false book."
That's it, that's what God wants me to say and anything further I might say would be my interpretation; so, of course, I will give my interpretation.
Of course, Dear Reader, any Jewish person serious about Judaism would tell you the whole New Testament is a false book, that Jesus Christ did not fulfill biblical identification of the Messiah, and if I were a Jew I would probably say the same thing; and even as a Christian I do not believe the New Testament is a full and accurate record of the life and work of Jesus.
Nor do I believe the Old Testament is word for word the Word of God; I see in it more than a little self-serving Jewish history woven within true lessons given by God.
For that reason, as a Christian I primarily consider only the teachings of Jesus as found in the Gospels and not on the other books of the New Testament.
While I was able to read the Bible through with considerable understanding and loving instruction from God after America railroaded me into prison in Singapore, I now seek to read fewer words rather than more words; and I ask God for insights, and I have learned to trust the insights God gives me.
Those insights more often than not are very different than the insights priests and preachers seek to instill in me.
Such questions I have asked God and received most loving and clear answers to include what is the meaning of Jesus' walking on the water, and what is the meaning of Jesus' descent into Hell for three days after the crucifixion? I look to the parables, and more than that I look for the meaning within the miracles.
I limit myself to the Gospels because in my view the spirit and style of Jesus was not continued by the Disciples and by the late-comer, Paul. This is not to say I do not appreciate the work and the faith of the Apostles and all the early Christians; what I mean is if I want to understand Christianity I seek to understand Jesus, not Peter, not Paul.
Now, back to the statement God asked me to relay to you, the statement that is making steam come out of the ears of TV snake oil preachers even as you read this, that the Book Revelations is a false book, a bogus book, and interloper book of the New Testament.
God asked me to tell you that; and I have told you; and being me I will continue with my interpretation.
Step back a moment, and look at the Bible in terms of changing style. I suggest you can see at least four distinct styles, as clearly different as if the Bible were handwritten and four different hands did the writing.
The first style is the Old Testament in total, although true scholars may see it in more complexity..
The second style is the four Gospels, the varying records of four students imperfectly reporting what the Master said and did.
The third style is everything else in the New Testament except Revelations.
All these first three styles have a certain natural development, although they have serious differences.
In terms of style, Revelations is a bird of a totally different feather. Current popular assumption seems to be that the author of Revelations is John, as in the Gospel According to John, which is my favorite Gospel.
I personally do not agree with this. The writing style is too different, and too acid-trippy of a wild monk in the wilderness to reflect in any way the style of John or the teachings of Jesus. In my view, Revelations is at best on a par with Nostradomus.
I realize American Christians have on the most part totally missed my beautiful and perfect friendship with God, and I am their Cinderella who should not be allowed to go to the ball, but I thought I would close today's report, so bitter in Christian mouths from sea to shining sea, with showing a way God helped me out, using the Bible, when I was in prison in Singapore.
I had been allowed by the warden of the prison to take my Bible into my cell with me. It was a beautiful little Bible I had bought at a second hand store in London, and pressed within it was a rose I had bought in Venice.
So, being alone in a rather simple monkish cell I would sip tea, sniff my rose, and in the course of this I read my Bible cover to cover. I had been reared a Christian and had had the full range of religious instruction, but that was the first time I had ever read the Bible through.
So, being on a Christian journey and having passed through the Holy Land and India before my country was able to hound me into another country's prison, I one day decided to do a religious fast from Friday through Sunday, and began very politely to refuse my food, expect for my tea.
The other men on my cellblock became very worried for my welfare when I started to do this, telling me the prison guards would take my fast as a hunger strike, and while I explained what I was doing, and that three days without food could not be interpreted as a hunger strike, my fellow prisoners proved to be right.
Sunday morning came a knock on my cell door, and when it was opened the head guard called me out and told me that if I did not eat my breakfast they would take me down stairs and run one hose through my nose and down my throat and another up my ass.
This did not seem very appealing to me, but I was fasting in my service to God and decided to ask God what I should do.
I asked the head guard if I could think about this for a minute or two and he very kindly said yes, and I returned to my cell and picked up my Bible and closed my eyes and flipped the pages and put my forefinger on a page, and when I opened my eyes the message from God was, "The working man sleeps well whether he eats or not".
Consider the random probabilities that I would come upon a phrase concerning eating, and a phrase telling me I could eat if I wanted to.
Of course, I told the head guard I would be happy to eat breakfast, and the crisis passed.
God never asked me to suffer pain and degradation in my service to God, it was America and the Americans who insisted on that.