messiah

No God, no messiah, no prophet can grant your wishes _ it is only through your own efforts that you can make your wishes come true _ it is only you who can grant your own wishes.

I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the Jews. And the Jews, ravenous as they were for any sign of the long-sought Messiah, were not taken in by either of these two pretenders, or not in large numbers or not for long.? I myself certainly hope that it will not. The Jews have seen through Jesus and Mohammed. In retrospect, many of them have also seen through the mythical, primitive, and cruel figures of Abraham and Moses. Nearer to our own time, in the bitter combats over the work of Marx and Freud and Einstein, Jewish participants and protagonists have not been the least noticeable. May this always be the case, whenever any human primate sets up, or is set up by others, as a Messiah.

It is in the nature of the human mind to give in, and hold on, to the source of solace with all the might it can muster. Life is hard and any figure that tends to ease the subjective perception of that hardship, attains a high pedestal of utmost reverence in the realm of the individual mind. It all takes place at a molecular level in the human brain with the purpose of self-preservation.

Kilio kikuu cha Yesu, __loi, Eloi, lama sabakthani?_, yaani, __ungu wangu, Mungu wangu, mbona umeniacha?_, na __mekwisha_, vilitabiriwa katika Zaburi 22 ili watu waliompinga Kristo waamini kama Yesu alikuwa Masihi. Zaburi 22 ulikuwa wimbo maarufu katika kipindi cha karne ya kwanza, kipindi ambacho Yesu alizaliwa na kufa, uliotungwa na mfalme Daudi, ulioitwa __aburi ya mateso na matumaini ya mwadilifu_. Kwa hiyo Yesu aliposema maneno hayo yaliwaingia watu akilini, na kuanzia hapo imani hasa ya Ukristo ikachukua kasi hadi leo hii. Zaburi 22 inaanza na __ungu wangu, Mungu wangu, mbona umeniacha?_ na inaisha na __mekwisha_, miongoni mwa maneno saba aliyoyasema Yesu pale msalabani Golgotha. Kwa hiyo, Zaburi 22 ni utabiri wa kifo cha Yesu.

[I]t is no doubt true that our image of what a messiah might look like may keep us from recognizing the real thing when it stands before us. Could it be that we have embellished the long-awaited event with so many aggadic flourishes that we can no longer recognize the reality when it happens? Could our overly literal reading of our sages_ poetic descriptions have led us to overlook completely the miracle as it happened? One of the dangers of taking the statements and speculations of our sages as literal truth__hen they were not meant as such__s the distortion of our expectations.

In a remarkable midrash (commentary) on Proverbs, we read the following: __ll of the festivals will be abolished in the future [the Messianic Age], but Purim will never be abolished.__he miracle of Purim is very different from the miracles mentioned in the Torah. While the latter were overt miracles, such as the ten plagues in Egypt and the splitting of the Red Sea, the miracle of Purim was covert. No law of nature was violated in the Purim story and the Jews were saved by seemingly normal historical occurrences. Had we lived in those days, we would have noticed nothing unusual. Only retroactively are we astonished that seemingly unrelated and insignificant human acts led to the redemption of the Jews. The discovery that these events concealed a miracle could only be made after the fact.Covert miracles will never cease to exist explains the Torah Temimah. In fact, they take place every day. The midrash on Proverbs is not suggesting that the actual festivals mentioned in the Torah will be nullified in future days. Rather we should read the midrash as follows: Overt miracles, which we celebrate on festivals mentioned in the Torah, no longer occur. But covert miracles such as those celebrated on Purim will never end; they continue to occur every day of the year. Purim, probably rooted in a historical event of many years ago, functions as a constant reminder that the Purim story never ended. We are still living it. The Megillah is open-ended; it was not and will never be completed!

If there are any ifs to salvation then no one is saved by grace. Everyone saves himself who can meet the requirements

Divine determination and decree is this: that God has foreordained all people without exception unto eternal life, for his love is unconditional.

When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' we see the origin of every Jewish shrug from Spinoza to Woody Allen.

Life will be wonderful when men no longer fear dying. When the last superstitions are thrown out and we meet death with the same equanimity as life. No longer will children's minds be twisted by evil gods whose fantastic origin is in those barbaric tribes who feared death and lightning, who feared life. That's it: life is the villain to to those who preach reward in death, through grace and eternal bliss, or through dark revenge.

God is another word for Love.

Some people are bringing the business tricks of scarcity mentality into God's mind. They will tell you that only a few will see God. Why? God's heart is infinitely huge, his arms infinitely large that all of us can have a place in him

In this messianic vision, machine intelligence will come to redeem the universe of its incalculable stupidity. He takes a goal-oriented approach to cosmology, imposing upon the universe itself a kind of corporate project-management structure, composed of a series of key deliverables across deep time.

Mine is the only view that appropriately combines the end-time messianic expectations of the Jews with Christian scripture.

I come only to ask a simple question. Is Muad'Dib's death to be followed by the moral suicide of all men? Is that the inevitable aftermath of a Messiah?