Blowing Minds

Several years ago my (then) wife and I went to Waterton National Park for an Anniversary get-away. We were both Baby Christians (at least that is the consensus if you’re under 10 years strong). We stayed at a quaint hotel in the small Rocky Mountain community, and like most hotels and motels throughout Canada and the USA, there is a bible in the bedside table drawer. However, this bible was a bit different, it was the Book of Mormon.

I perused through the introduction and maybe through the first chapter, and I found it amusing, at the very least. The introduction told the story of how the book came to be, and how Joseph Smith came across some Golden Plates with ancient writing on them in the hills of the modern state of New York. Joseph was given a gift from God (If memory serves, they were glasses) to interpret the mysterious Golden plates. After he wrote the new book, about how Jesus came to the New World (America) to give the gospel message to the native population, he was told to destroy the Golden Plates. I thought it was convenient, as thousands of ancient scrolls outline the story of civilizations from the creation of Adam and Eve and everything in-between. But this is not my main concern, it was a little note before the introduction on the blank page, presumably written by a young teenage girl, which read:

Dear reader of this Book,
If you are unsure if the words contained in this book are real, I would encourage you to pray. I had grown up not knowing if what I was reading was true, and after I prayed the spirit of God filled my heart. I now know that the Book of Mormon is true.
With love, from a daughter of the Prophet  (It is not verbatim, but you should get the idea)

I got a very unsettling feeling after reading the little note, and it frightened me knowing that some young girl was being manipulated to believe such rubbish. I got the feeling of the spirit piercing my heart and soul less than 10 years earlier, we couldn’t both be right, could we? Her experience was from the devil I surmised, mine was genuine. But something else was welling up inside my spirit, understanding. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the young lady was under a hypnotic spell, but maybe I was as well.

Moving on to this week…
I heard some clapping and praise on the weekend, so I went to check out what all the commotion was about, it was a baptism. I have always been overjoyed when people make a public confession of their faith and are willing to announce to on-lookers the joy and peace they have from finding Jesus, the manifestation of God. I was surprised to see it was someone I knew, and I tried to encourage them, although most of the time I feel I give into my warrior rhetoric. I truly believe that when the spirit of God hits our soul the enemy is right at the doorstep challenging our decision, but my understanding and angle of Christian pulpit theology has changed. In 2018 it was an unconventional Christian book that changed my habitual manner of thinking, and was further exemplified 2 years later with Convid. It appears that long-standing Christians were waking up to some disturbing truths about Christian origins and the gatekeepers of the pulpit, and they wrote about it.

This was MIND-BLOWING!
'Do you mean to tell me that there are wolves in sheep's clothing in the church, and the buildings that Christians are coerced to attend?
Do you mean to tell me that there are people who started churches that knew the secret sorcery of the past to lie, deceive, and manipulate our ideas of God while starting churches to steal our money and lose our souls?'

NO WAY!
'I’m right, and everyone who does not follow the God of the Holy Scriptures is wrong, as I stand firm in my convictions about the words in the Bible being the only inspired word of God', I insist in stubborn protest! 

Not everyone is convinced that what they are feeling is anything more than the human conditioning, maybe this is true, but what do I know...

From the “manipulated”(being facetious) Bible,
"... And YOU shall love the Lord YOUR God with all YOUR heart, and with all YOUR soul, and with all YOUR mind, and with all YOUR strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like it, love YOUR neighbor as YOURSELF. There is no other commandment greater than these..." -  Mark 12 30-31

YOUR God is in you!

Mind-blowing concept I know.

Denominationalism, religiosity, and spirituality that convince us to look for God outside of ourselves is false doctrine, PERIOD! Sorry to people who believe in the outward Jesus coming back to save you, stop waiting because he/it lives inside every person. I realize that not everyone manifests the spirit of Christ, but this is for another topic. If you expect that God will send you a perfect spouse, a perfect house, a perfect wife, or a perfect life, you are waiting for the antichrist.  If you are waiting for God to send his son again to make all things right in the world, you are waiting for the antichrist. If you are waiting for God to take you out of here because you hate how people dress, how people act, or how people look then you are following the antichrist. If you look in the mirror and say, “I don’t like what I see” and choose to see all the wrong in people, then work is needed in your heart. This dogmatic teaching is polluting the work required to truly move with God, Allah, the Holy Spirit, Jesus, Yeshua, the Universe, or the ‘Most High’. 

Everything we feel is from God. The young Mormon girl had a true God experience when she prayed. The Muslim man who cried out to God to save his family, and then lived through the evil bombings and bloodshed, experienced God. Yes, even the drug-induced psychotic addict on the dirty streets of East Van who said take these drugs from my hand, who heard the voice of God say, let go of the drugs and drop to your knees.

Everyone heeding the call of the spirit within their mind, body, and soul conversion was mind-blowing real. The conversion from death to life is real. Being saved, from wars, drugs, alcohol, or predators, is real. The feelings are real, as they come from God, and now we turn feelings into action. It didn’t matter where the converts went from there, as long as they understood that they were walking with God. We should now be able to look in the mirror and say, “I love myself because I love God”. What ever you choose YOUR God to be, is for YOU, because it resides inside of YOU!
  
If you read this and still aren't convinced, may I suggest, that you take to prayer, like Matthew 6, to the inner room where God exists. Be Vessels!

By the vessel,
William John

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