Intro
This is Dreamwalker1960. As a reminder you can read the transcripts of all my podcasts at dreamwalker1960.com. You can use most podcast platforms if you wish to listen. All you need do is do a search for Dreamwalker1960.
Discussion
Seven years ago, I wrote several blog posts entitled “Millennial Outreach.” The purpose of which was to reach out to those that have not been given all the facts. I expect many to laugh, scoff and even attack me for presenting this information. Fine do so. As you can see this podcast is already here and somewhere someone may accept or at least consider what is presented. The purpose of this podcast is to talk about several topics. History, Socialism, Capitalism and Christianity. In fact, as to the latter topic it is admittedly influencing how these topics are presented here. This as I said may cause many that listen or read this to ridicule and attack me. That is their choice, but it is now all the same here for all the world to reject or accept.
Give God a chance.
Now I open with this topic because I realize that many within the younger people out there do not think there is a God, or if they do their view of the Creator is not fully informed.
Don’t judge a book by its cover. This is a time this old adage that can easily be applied here. But what is the cover of the book of God? I don’t mean the Bible, but that will come into play later. I mean what is the face of God that you see presented in the world today?
Many will say the buildings called “churches,” which is the correct answer. As you can see throughout the world there are many religions. Christianity is the largest of these and there is a good reason why, but that is not important at the moment. What we are centering on is those buildings called “churches.”
The word “church” appears within the Bible only in the New Testament and is the word “ekklesia” in the Greek, which is defined as: “An assembly, congregation, church; the Church, the whole body of Christian believers”
As you can tell from the wording it is the people that are the “church” not the building itself. However, in the world we now live in that is what today’s definition of the word is: the building. This was one of the first big mistakes that have occurred over the centuries and there have been many. All due to humanity.
People have been replacing God with themselves ever since the beginning of the human race, and it has never stopped. This is why the cover of the book of God is something not pleasing to look at by most. For the cover you are looking at is not God, but humans placing their own personal views of what God is to themselves that you are seeing.
That is one reason there are so many divisions within Christianity itself. You have the Catholics which is the longest surviving image of a type of Christianity, but it is stuffed full of humans imposing their own agendas within it. Then we have the Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist, etc. You get the point.
Again, these are not God, these are just humans trying to give themselves some type of order in which they feel comfortable in their attempts to worship the Creator of the Universe.
Now here I will get a lot of snickers and scoffs because I used the statement: “Creator of the Universe.” Many will be saying that the universe is too large for a divine being to have created, but that is just the point, God is that great.
One of problems that those that say there is no God have is they cannot handle the concept of creation itself. Most within the churches hold to Creationism, that everything came into existence in six days.
Now as can be seen with things like fossils and layers of the earth that show a progression back in time, this does not fully hold together. On the other hand, we have those that believe the earth is billions of years old, this view does not hold together as well. So, if neither viewpoint is correct how does that prove there is a God?
One of the main points of true science when it comes to the creation of the universe is the Big Bang, or as it should be stated the “Big Bang Theory.” For no humans were present at the creation of the universe. So, it can never become an absolute, so the word “theory” must remain attached. Anyway, so the theory goes that from nothing or nearly nothing and in less than the blink of an eye an explosion of matter erupts outward causing the creation of the entire universe. Now let that description sink in for a moment.
Could this not be the action of a divine being? The answer is yes, it is. Then this shows that God is a real possibility.
Now it is time to mention the Bible, but I will stick to the Old Testament for the moment. Within these books there are over forty prophecies about the Savior. Where He will come from, when He will arrive and even the fact that He will be rejected and killed, just to point out some of the forty plus. The statistical odds for all the prophecies to come true is 1 in 10 to the 32nd power. In other words:
1:1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Yet, every single one of these prophecies was fulfilled in the being that is known as Jesus of Nazareth.
Only odds like that can be fulfilled by a divine being.
Therefore, if the action of creation shows there is most likely a divine being and the odds that Jesus fulfilled every single prophecy about Him and He is the Son of the divine being we call God. Then there is a God and Jesus Christ died for your sins that you are committing.
Wishing to help all.
This is one of the key elements that those that preach Socialism throw out to those willing to hear and listen. It has been this way since the beginning of the 20th century. This was one of the selling points by Lenin and Marx during the revolution that overthrew the Russian Empire.
Another key element in Socialism is the rejection of religion or more accurately God.
Now here is something that has been done throughout the centuries. Not just the open rejection of God, but the belief that humans can govern and control other humans. This is what Socialism boils down to. A government formed of and by select people dictating through rules and regulations who can have what and how much. This is a key element of most democracies as well as monarchies as well as dictatorships throughout all time. This, however, is not a key element of a republic which was the original governmental makeup of the United States when it was first founded.
Those that believe that Socialism has never been done in the “right state of mind,” is a fallacy from the very beginning. It always starts with honorable ideals and actions, but always ends very badly.
But for now, we will leave this alone and bring in another aspect. That being Christianity. Most of you will not believe this, but the Bible actually does describe how a community of Christians are to interact with each other. Christians are instructed to care for the widows and orphans of their fellows. It clearly states that if God has blessed them with worldly wealth not to horde it but to share it with their fellows that have not been given wealth.
Since I have never seen this done in the correct manner in my entire lifetime then I can understand why so many of the young people seek after Socialism.
Here is the problem. It is not, nor has ever been, the responsibility of the government to provide for the wellbeing of those within their respective communities. It is the responsibility without taxation of those within the communities to address the issues themselves. Whenever a third party known as a government gets involved in the situation it opens the door to corruption, greed, and mismanagement. This is one reason why this nation was founded as a republic and why the federal government had limited powers. This is why the majority of the power was left in the hands of the states. For those closest to the problems could handle them better. The further you get away from the problems the odds of solving them become impossible to achieve.
Now to return to allowing the government to be your caregiver, which is the basic tenants of Socialism. Two countries in the world went to full socialism, which then took the next logical step of becoming communist which is that the government controls every aspect of your life. I lived in the time when these two nations were coming to an end. One the U.S.S.R. which refused to let go of the socialist ideals, even though corruption had been prevalent within ten years of its forming. I watched the news as they showed lines of people waiting to get into their local markets just to pick up what they could to eat. Usually bread and butter. On the other end of the spectrum, you had those in the upper levels of their government living wealthy lives and eating caviar as well as any other food they wished to have. They surrounded themselves with beautiful women who were there mainly just to survive and to steal what little food they could get their hands on to give to their families.
The same was happening in China, but as they saw the soon downfall of the U.S.S.R. They realized they must adapt and change. Therefore, in 1978 they allowed the return of capitalism into their nation once again. However, still the majority of its citizens must struggle to survive while those in power live in luxury. Because they kept the communist governance in place.
I also suggest you listen to how things are for North Korea as well as Venezuela two small communist countries and you will hear the same horror stories and of political purging time and again. This is where Socialism always leads.
A prime example in history of the first true Socialist endeavor was the French Revolution, even though they were not strictly following a known socialist doctrine. The ideals and reasons behind it were nearly the same as those used in the removal of the Russian Emperor at the beginning of the twentieth century. The result was the guillotine and then a power-hungry dictator named Napoleon.
Socialism always ends up worse for the common human being and only a select few live in wealth and luxury while the rest live in poverty and starvation. It is simply a modified dictatorship or monarchy.
You can never get something for nothing. That is why capitalism is the best way to succeed and allows everyone the opportunity to do so. That is until we return to the way things were originally taught and organized in the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus.
It is here that many of you reading or listening will scoff and curse at what I just said. Examples of those living in poverty now within many of the inner cities within the United States will spring to your mind when saying that Capitalism is the better way. Yet what you are actually seeing is Socialism already in practice within the inner cities. Most within these areas already rely upon the government to survive and they are governed by strict regulations not allowing them to gain money without destroying their families in the process.
What is needed is the removal of government. Not the increase in more dependence upon those few in power that feel they are better than anyone else. These are things that are taught within the Bible to look for, and I challenge you to pick one up and read it, just make sure it is not a NIV version for that one has been modified by those that wish to control and govern you.
Religion
As we all know there are by category multiple religions, per Wikipedia twenty of them to be exact. The truly oldest of these that is still active is Judaism, which is a factor that we will get back too. But you need to remember this fact. At this time though we will center on the word “religion” itself.
Per Merriam-Webster one of the definitions is:
“An organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods.”
Now note that it is an “organized system,” with “rules.”
Here is the thing, there is ideals and principles that are taught within the New Testament of the Bible. Now there were rules and requisites established in the Old Testament or by its other name the Tanakh, some of which the ideals and principles point to in the newer parts of the Bible. However, some of these rules were made of a different time and the need for them to be looked at in a different way changed once Jesus of Nazareth entered the picture. But this point is a distraction at the moment even though it was necessary to mention.
What I wish to key in on though: where do these rules and need to organize come from?
They come from a need by humanity to have structure and control over any given aspect of their lives. For without some sense of stability humanity as a whole loses control. As can be seen if you look at the world today.
Does this desire of humans seeking control of their own existence exclude that there is a God? No, it does not even though there are religions that do dictate this very ideal. In fact, nearly one billion people think this very way, but they themselves constitute being labeled and counted as religious even though they themselves for the most part will deny this. They have their own organized system of beliefs and their own rules, they just choose to exclude the fact that there may actually be a God.
If you have ever entered into these buildings which are called “churches,” you will encounter a community of people which reflect many of the dynamics you most likely encountered during High School. There is a good reason for this. For those dynamics have been transplanted from the non-religious aspects of the halls of academia into this building people attend once or twice a week if that. This is a factor in the need for organization that humans seek to have a feeling there is some type of control in their lives.
This, however, has nothing to do with God, even though there is the pretense of worshiping Him. It is this charade that fills all religions that has turned so many away from God, and it is all due for humanity to have rules and regulations about how they are to act and behave, within the buildings that are called “churches.”
Those that turn away from churches see this hypocrisy and so in turn see the being known as “God” to be lie, a fallacy, a fabrication, a fiction. Not realizing that what they are rejecting is in reality the rules, structure and organizations made by human beings. They are rejecting humanity and the human image of God. They are also rejecting the social system that was transplanted from High School by those attending these social clubs called a “church.”
I cannot attest for most of the other religions in this world, but this I do know. The God of the Bible and the Torah. The God that is the focal point of the longest lasting religion is not nor ever has been what He is shown to be within these social clubs that have stolen the name “church” from.
Many within the religion of Atheism have strived hard to remove any portrayal or images of God from the public environment having already come to the conclusion that the hypocrites within the social clubs mentioned above would drive out people that are truly seeking to know what is real. They in turn give their own religious message on the fact that there is no God. They will spout out their own theories and ideals that have their own organization and rules that must be adhered to, like spreading hate and belittling those that do not agree with their point of view.
One of the methods they do this is to throw out this idea that the Bible and the Torah are myths. Their pretense for this is that anything that is written about any particular person or event in history that is made one hundred and fifty years after the fact is a false narrative since there are none alive to counter this myth that has come into being by the writer.
A prime example, the story of the siege of Troy. The Iliad was written four hundred years after the siege took place and within it are several events that can be said to be mythical. None contest this.
Here is the point though. Those that state there is no God, and that Jesus was not a real person or that he did not rise from the dead made these assertions over one and fifty years after the actual event when it is documented that the New Testament was written within twenty to twenty-five years, with oral traditions traced back to within eight years after the crucifixion and resurrection. This allows people alive at that time to challenge these statements by those that were the enemies of Jesus like the Pharisees, and those that did see Him after His resurrection including five hundred at one time, and since none did. That shows that those creating the myth are those that state Jesus did not rise from the dead and state there is no God.
It is also after the one hundred and fifty years that many of the rules and rituals created by humanity started to take place and overshadow the truth and the facts found within the Bible in the places called “churches.”
So those within all religions associated with Christianity have in many ways created an organized and rule-oriented mythos and applied them within their “churches” thus leading to many either not going to church, denying the very existence of God or denying the resurrection of Jesus.
Accordingly, religions for the most part are at odds with the Bible and with God at this time. It is up to each person to fully study the Bible and come to understand that God is real and that His Son did in fact walk this planet two thousand years ago. It is fact that he never sinned and died upon the cross for our sin. If that is the case, which it is. We must then truly learn the Bible and come to understand that through its teaching we can move on from this life into a higher and eternal existence that is no longer, in most cases, truly found in most religions.
A point that does need to be made. Yes, you can say there are still “rules” within the Bible. There is a difference between man-made rules and those things which come from God through His Son Jesus. The teaching that come from the Bible are something that when you accept salvation are things you seek to keep and to follow. The rules made by humanity are designed to fulfill the wishes and the desires of that religion that has been made not by God.
Example: The Catholic Church and the requirement to go to confession, using a human to tell your sins to when all that is required is to pray to God through Jesus and ask forgiveness. There is a bit more involved but that is a topic for another time.