Deism, Revealed Religion, USA

Dear Reader,
The main thing is that you respect the rights of others who live abiding by the Golden Rule. The golden rule has its roots in a wide range of world cultures, and is a standard which different cultures use to resolve conflicts; it was present in the philosophies of ancient India, Greece, etc. Christians received it from the Hebrew Ten Commandments. Jesus summed it up when asked what is the greatest Commandment? He answered the first and the second which is equal. Do unto others as you would do to yourself.


This coming Sunday, May 16th, The Ascension of the Lord. Readings:
Acts7:55-60/Rv22:12-14, 16-17, 20/Jn 17:20-26.

These are carefully chosen readings to enforce the foundation of your reason, which is Faith.

However, my foundation evidently is the opposite of yours: being reason is the foundation of my faith.

Now, to believe in God both are needed; it is in the order, I have found, where disagreement comes about. And so I have read up on all four who were said to have written all truth because they possessed and were guided by the 3rd person named as the Holy Ghost (Spirit) to be free from error.

The four I speak about are Matthew, John, Luke and Mark.

The writer of the book of Matthew relates, that the angel that was
sitting on the stone at the mouth of the sepulcher, said to the two women, both named Mary, in:
Matthew 28:7 (New International Version)
7Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you."
And the
same writer at the next two verses (8, 9), makes Christ himself to
speak to the same purpose to these women immediately after the angel had told it to them, and that they ran quickly to tell it to the
disciples; and at the 16th verse it is said, "Then the eleven
disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had
appointed them; and when they saw him, they worshiped him."

But the writer of the book of John tells us a story very different
to this; for he says, chap.20., ver. 19On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord."

According to Matthew the eleven were marching to Galilee to meet
Jesus in a mountain, by his own appointment, at the very time when,
according to John, they were assembled in another place, and that not by appointment, but in secret, for fear of the Jews.

The writer of the book of Luke contradicts that of Matthew more
pointedly than John does; for he says expressly that the meeting was
in Jerusalem the evening of the same day that he [Christ] rose, and
that the eleven were there. See Luke, chap 24 ver. 13, 33. (On the Road to Emmaus)
13Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles[a] from Jerusalem.
33They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together

Now, it is not possible, unless we admit these supposed
disciples the right of willful lying, that the writer of those books
could be any of the eleven persons called disciples; for if, according
to Matthew, the eleven went into Galilee to meet Jesus in a mountain
by his own appointment on the same day that he is said to have
risen, Luke and John must have been two of that eleven; yet the writer of Luke says expressly, and John implies as much, that the meeting was that same day, in a house in Jerusalem; and, on the other hand, if, according to Luke and John, the eleven were assembled in a house in Jerusalem, Matthew must have been one of that eleven; yet Matthew says the meeting was in a mountain in Galilee, and consequently the evidence given in those books destroys each other

The writer of the book of Mark says nothing about any meeting in
Galilee; but he says, chap.16, ver. 12, that Christ, after his
resurrection, appeared in another form to two of them as they walked
into the country, and that these two told it to the residue, who would
not believe them. Luke also tells a story in which he keeps Christ
employed the whole day of this resurrection, until the
evening, and which totally invalidates the account of going to the
mountain in Galilee. He says that two of them, without saying which
two, went that same day to a village call Emmaus, three score furlongs
(seven miles and a half) from Jerusalem, and that Christ, in disguise,
went with them, and stayed with them unto the evening, and supped with them, and then vanished out of their sight, and re-appeared that
same evening at the meeting of the eleven in Jerusalem.

"This is the contradictory manner in which the evidence of this
re-appearance of Christ is stated; the only point in which
the writers agree, is the skulking privacy of that re-appearance;
for whether it was in the recess of a mountain in Galilee, or a
shut-up house in Jerusalem, it was still skulking. To what cause,
then, are we to assign this skulking? On the one hand it is directly
repugnant to the supposed or pretended end- that of convincing the
world that Christ had risen; and on the other hand, to have asserted
the publicity of it would have exposed the writers of those books to
public detection, and, therefore, they have been under the necessity of making it a private affair". Quote from Thomas Paine's book: "The Age Of Reason".

"As to the account of Christ being seen by more than five hundred
at once, it is Paul only who says it, and not the five hundred who say
it for themselves. It is, therefore, the testimony of but one man, and
that, too, of a man who did not, according to the same account,
believe a word of the matter himself at the time it is said to have
happened. His evidence, supposing him to have been the writer of the
15th chapter of Corinthians, where this account is given, is like that
of a man who comes into a court of Justice to swear that what he had
sworn before is false. A man may often see reason, and he has, too,
always the right of changing his opinion; but this liberty does not
extend to matters of fact."

This is all gathered from study of the Deist thinking of our American USA forefathers.

I have found in the revised Vatican 2 catechism approved by Pope John Paul 2, at #285 Deism is briefly mentioned in one small sentence fitted into the Paragraph along with Pantheism, Dualism, Manichaeism, Gnosticism, and lastly Deism with a false definition of it's meaning.

Certainly not the meaning Thomas Paine gives to it in his outstanding book "The Age Of Reason". This book is only being revised lately from being buried, by Christian influence, pertaining to books approved for Public Education.

When I was a student in the New York City Public School System Thomas Paine books were allowed including "Common Sense" which rallied America to defeat the British Crown and become a free nation with a Deist inspired Constitution and Bill of Rights.

I know, for I completed a Book Report assignment on it in Junior High.

Today students never heard of it. We fought and won the entire WW1 and WW2 with one nation undivided with Liberty and Justice for all. And all were proud of our Service people.. Our motto was E Pluribus Unum (Out of many, one). Or as I like to put it, We're all in this thing together.

Unlike today: one Nation, under God, which divided our Nation immediately because of all the variations expressed as who or what God is and demands of us..

Yes, the world is changing, and when hearsay revealed religion controls, past history proves, it is not for the betterment of Man.