Paradise is where God is your Sun, God is your moon. You are in God's permanent presence. There is no good versus evil struggle that feels like a constant on earth. But paradise is the lowest of the seven heavens. It is love of God that can take you from paradise to the higher heavens.
Where do you think Mother Mary is right now? Is she in deep sleep somewhere awaiting Judgment Day? Is she undergoing endless cycles of birth and death like the Hindus claim? Did she dissolve as her body decayed upon death like the naturalist atheists will have you believe? No, she is in the highest heaven. She loved God, or God's only Son, like a mother loves her very own Son. And that is why she is in the highest heaven. That does not make her God. But she has powers that the most powerful angels don't. And the final book in the Bible tells you about the powers that powerful
angels have. When it is time to draw the curtain on earth, God will delegate. His angels will do it for Him. Those servants of God will get the work done. They have the power to wipe out creation as you know it. And they are not even God.
What is the idea of God? God is
infinite, the human being is finite. Angels are also finite.
The earth is a fallen state. God meant for human beings to be in paradise. But the human being had free will. If the human being did not have that free will, he would not have been capable of love. And
love is the point. When the human being disobeyed God, paradise was lost. Why? Why could the sovereign God simply not have looked the other way? Or that one time? It is not like He has a higher power. Or that he has to ask for anyone's votes a few years later. Why? Because although you have free will, exercise of that free will has consequences. And if free will did not have consequences, it is not free will. The asteroids in space move at vast speeds and tremendous force. But they don't have free will. They can't sin. To make the point explicit that free will has to have consequences, the Son of God had to volunteer to come to earth and die. Somebody has to make up for it. And the infinite God paying the price pays for all sins.
The earth is still earth. The human body in flesh is still the human body in flesh. There is not the slightest flicker of time when you don't need God. Just like there is never a time when God is not aware of who you are, and what you think, and what you do, and what you desire.
In the
Geeta, Lord Krishna, the second human incarnation of Lord Vishnu, the Holy Father, says, just like the physical universe is contained within space and time, all matter and all energy is, all that exists is contained within me, and I am aware of the spin of every atom.
Theologians of today have their work cut out. Just like theologians of every age have had their work cut out. If the Bible is timeless, as it is, like Lord Krishna says, "I am unborn, unchanging, undying," or in the Bible it is said God is "the same, yesterday, today, and forever."
Theologians need to address global warming. The climate crisis is not 50 years from now. It is today. Look at the wildfires in Australia. In the
Koran, the Devil explicitly says, "I will talk you into
destroying nature that is your home." Looks like he delivered, does it not? Why did the greatest progress in science and technology also coincide with humanity's most existential collective crisis? A few more degrees of warming and humanity is over. Because as man learned more and more about the physical universe, he started thinking less and less about God. Instead of seeing God as the source of all that is, too many human beings started seeing the physical world as an alternative to God. No amount of human knowledge impresses the Devil for he is far smarter than you.
Theologians need to address political strife, especially those that seem to arise out of religion. The new year gift from the White House for a day or two looked like might be World War III. Those who read the Bible and go by the Bible will have to face and answer the question, is Islam a true religion or a false religion? The answer is explicit in the Bible. Is God for or against slavery? That question was never in the grey territory. There is an entire book called Exodus. God said to Abraham, don't worry about Ishmael, I will make a nation out of him also. God never made a promise he did not keep. Either we are still waiting for him to keep that promise, or that is the nation of Islam. Well, then, was Jesus a prophet or was he the Son of God? People who understand the logic of the crucifixion should be able to understand this fairly easily. God so loved humanity, He
denied His own Son. In that understanding is reconciliation.
The Jews expected the Messiah to herald an Age Of Abundance. Instead, they got a man with no property to his name who instead of sitting on the throne was last seen helplessly dangling from a cross. Of course, they rejected him. Besides, he said nothing that they did not already know. As far as they were concerned, he broke no new ground in teaching.
Top tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley will tell you, we seem to be on the cusp of -- and this is their precise phrase -- an
Age Of Abundance. Just when the Jews might finally be right about the Messiah, the vast majority of Chrisitians are hellbent on confusing the final coming for the
second coming. All three comings have been explicitly described in the Book of Isaiah.
Only God has the power to see all of time at once. Prophets
prophecy because God is passing on some of that knowledge.
Does God matter anymore? Only theologians who have refused to do the work of translating the timeless Bible to contemporary realities might face congregants asking such a question.
Bible thumping Christians are the only ones who have a solution to
the caste system in India. There is a city in India called Varanasi. It is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. India got conquered so many times - by the Muslims, by the British - but that city remained untouched. The current Indian Prime Minister is not from Varanasi, but that is where he contests elections from. Varanasi is 10,000 years old. As per the Hindu scriptures, you are trapped in an endless cycle of births and deaths. As per the Muslim scriptures, you no longer have the luxury of that recycling once you have seen the path to salvation. Then you are put to sleep until Judgment Day. The Muslim scriptures are more like 1400 years old. According to the Hindu belief system, you end up in the lower castes because of your accumulated sins over various lifetimes. What washes away all sins will end the caste system and grant political equality to the Dalits of India here and now, and salvation for the afterlife. Is the message in the Bible urgent? What do you think?
Jesus is not foreign to India. Christians say the Son of God was "begotten, not made," as in the Holy Father gave birth to the Holy Son. Of course He did. An infinite God does not face limitations. So the question, how can God give birth, only women do that does not even make sense. Hindus worship the Holy Father as Lord Vishnu. Hindus worship the
Holy Spirit and call Him
Shiva, among many other names. And they do know Bramha as the Creator, which is the exact thing that has been said about the Son of God in the Gospel of John. All that was made was made through Him. In the Hindu epic Mahabharata at one point it is said, O Bramha, you have many names, one such name is
Isa. Isa is the name for Jesus in the Koran. But how do you make sense of all these other characters in the Hindu belief system? How do you make sense of the hundreds of millions of angels mentioned in the Bible? Heaven is not empty.
During summer time it is hard to imagine on that same spot where you stand there was snow in winter. But you do have knowledge of it. But for a creature that might only live for a few weeks of summer, that might as well be beyond imagination. Just like the earth goes around the sun, the sun itself goes around another star, as per the Hindu scriptures. The sun has a twin star. That cycle also has four seasons, not all of equal length, since the two stars go around each other. When they are near to each other, they speed up. What Hindus call yuga is called an age in the Bible. In the Hindu scriptures three of the other "seasons" have been described.
Curiously Bramha is fully acknowledged but not worshipped in India.
