Awakening to Reason & Rejecting Blind Faith – How I benefited from engaging the Flat Earth issue

[Conspiracy theories are like potato chips, it’s hard to eat just one]

INTRODUCTION

I will express some preliminary thoughts. Then explain how the flat earth movement led me to take a firm stand that the Bible is not the Word of God, but instead the word of man. And finally, I provide further elaboration and reflection on the religious and philosophical ideas expressed, the first part being where I encourage people as individuals to develop their own unique life operating systems (worldviews) and stick by them as best they can and carefully modify them as they learn more with time, but to be especially careful not to get swept away by the many snake oil salesmen of our day.

PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS

It has taken me a lifetime to get out from under the control and influence that evangelical Christianity had over me having been raised in it and intensifying my practice of it subsequent to that. But I feel like I am finally unraveling aspects of it in the last year or so (2017-2018) especially. At this point in my life I consider myself a Christian Universalist but also a religious pluralist. I no longer consider the Bible the Word of God, but instead the word of man. Much (but not all) of Christian theology takes the Bible (again word of man in my opinion) too literally and seriously to the point that you often end up with a concept of God that is over defined and self contradictory. Process theologian Dr. David Ray Griffin has written a book “God Exists But Gawd Does Not” where the term Gawd is used to differentiate the over defined concept of God from more reasonable, logical, and believable concepts of God, such as what process philosophy and theology suggests. With respect to those definitions, I could say that I am an atheist with respect to the Gawd concept of God. And this means that in many ways I feel I have more in common with the critical thinking atheists than I do with mainstream evangelical Christians. I also no longer feel like I have to get hung up on having an answer for everything. The further back in time you go the more uncertainty there is in understanding what took place and how everything came to be as we find it today in our lives on the earth. This is true no matter what view you hold. No one can really prove their view to be true. But the views that include more miraculous all powerful acts of God tend to be less believable in my view, because if you really view God this way, then you can pretty much believe just about anything. If there is anything you cannot explain, you can always just say that God did it. This is why I now lean more towards the scientific views of the age of the Universe and Earth and Evolution, not thinking that this necessarily removes God from the picture, but that perhaps this was the way that God could do it and chose to do it. I would like to see and participate in dialog between atheists and theists for the much common ground that I believe will be found, and they can also help each other improve their respective positions. Some may change their views from one way or the other, and even back again and so forth any number of times. I was reminded of a book that I read some years ago after hearing the author give a talk on the subject at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Sunnyvale, “Bridging the God Gap, Finding Common Ground Among Believers, Atheists and Agnostics,” by Dr. Roger Christan Schriner. So I have just gotten another copy of his book and am starting to read it again. He also has a blog on the subject at https://theistsandatheists.wordpress.com/

MY AWAKENING TO REASON & STRONGER REJECTION OF BLIND FAITH THANKS TO FLAT EARTH MOVEMENT

A year or so ago (2017) some of the conspiracy stuff I was listening to and entertaining the ideas of on Youtube were from devout Christian types (of the very narrow minded exclusivist type who also usually believe in hell as eternal (never ending) conscious torment) and within this there were some espousing flat earth theories based in large part on their literal interpretation of the Bible. And once I started delving seriously into the flat earth stuff from the standpoint of scientific evidence, and realizing how wrong they were, it also pushed me in the direction of drawing the line more precisely on what I was willing to entertain from a religious faith standpoint from that point going forward.

So whereas in the past if one was of a devout religious faith (especially Christian as I can relate more to that based on my background) and also speaking truth about much conspiracy related stuff, I would tend to give them a free pass and a thumbs up on the religious stuff without too much thought. But now I have concluded that more often than not there are flaws in their religious thinking that is now a red flag to me. I am not saying these are bad people, and I am still honoring and respecting them for their views and goodness of heart that resonates with me. But I feel I need to speak out and enter the dialog on areas where I now think they need to be questioned and challenged.

There are multiple examples I could give, that is, different people and authors, but I was just reminded of one recently when one of his books came up on Amazon as I was browsing. So I will use him. Just understand I am not singling him out. I am just using him as an example. The author is Edward Hendrie. So I read quite a few of this guy’s conspiracy related books years ago and thought they were pretty good. But I have now seen how he came out with a book in 2016 advocating flat earth truth.

And he is not the only devout truth seeking Christian student of conspiracy theories who has come out strongly taking this stand in favor of the earth being flat. There are many more. So about a year ago when I really started seriously digging into the flat earth arguments and realizing their claims could be soundly refuted, and spherical earth theory could be pretty easily confirmed in a variety of ways with measurements and experiments that ordinary people could conduct, that’s when I just had to draw the line. But the flat earth stuff led me to tighten up my thinking in other ways that I had previously avoided taking a stand on.

So I have changed my mind and now I am firm in my conviction that sacred writings like the Bible and those of other faiths are the writings of man, possibly reflecting man’s thinking about how he sees himself and God, and on that basis possibly having some information of value. But when man comes to believe and maintain that the Bible (as an example) is the inerrant Word of God, then this can and has led to a lot of problems for the human race, in my view.

And I have found that there are many people who were once very religious even to the point of being scholars and religious leaders, and eventually they just could not accept the dogma of their belief systems anymore. From these have come many of the great scholars and critics of fundamentalist religion.

Some of these people call themselves or identify as atheists, some agnostics, and some as progressives or religious pluralists. Where I am now in my life I have a lot more in common in my beliefs and viewpoint with these people than I do with the majority of the Christians in the United States, the fundamentalist Christian Zionist types who are likely supporters of CUFI. But there is a relatively small fraction of fundamentalist Christian types who are also students of conspiracy theories, and a good portion of these may be wise to the Jewish Question so are not Zionists, but their exclusivist Christian faith and belief in much end times Bible prophecy still remaining to be fulfilled in the future, taints the soundness of many of their other views, in my opinion, so I really have to be careful listening to these people in deciding the validity of everything they say.

Another viewpoint I have heard from these fundamentalist Christian conspiracy types who believe in much Bible prophecy to be fulfilled in the future, is that they definitely view Islam as being an evil anti-God religion, and it figures prominently in their views of Bible prophecy. It is amazing to consider that there are fundamentalist Jews, Muslims, and Christians, who all have their own end times God given prophesies that they take to be literally true. I no longer consider any of this to be valid or worthy of serious consideration as actual true prophecy, except to recognize that there are many influential religious leaders and believers in this stuff and at least two if not all three of these religions mentioned have significant influence on the leadership of nations with nuclear weapons, and if that is not enough to scare the living shit out of you, I don’t know what is. It is a recipe for world destruction and disaster, self fulfilling prophecies.

But what I have come to view as the poison pill in much of Christianity, is the turn or burn gospel, the belief in hell as eternal conscious torment. The turn or burn gospel is a sort of trauma based mind control method for inducting people into the faith. Do a google image search on “god loves you but will torture you in hell.” There are a lot of good ones, but I like the one where there is this guy with a smile on his face and a white beard (God) who says, “Worship Me or I will torture you forever. Have a nice day. Love, God.” So I came under this system of “trauma based mind control” for most of my life, but am now, at age 62, finally becoming free of it, and for good, and for good (doubled intentionally for two senses of good).

So I have already been burned (pun not intended) by this. I will not allow myself to be burned by this same thing again. So if (for example) a devout Muslim told me that if I did not convert to Islam, that I would go to hell and be punished by God forever, I would tell them that I have already been through this with Christianity, so I won’t fall for this type of fear based manipulation again. I don’t believe in God’s never ending torture chamber any more.

So when I see students of conspiracy theories who also have strong exclusivist religious faiths, and they are speaking out about the evils of atheism etc., I really feel that they are misguided and are just being manipulated into unfairly demonizing others, many of whom could actually be of much common interests for the well being of humankind.

This does not mean that all atheists are good people. But you cannot say this about any group of people. For example, can you say that all Christians are good people? Of course not.

Are there any atheists for 9/11 truth and if so how many? Does anybody know the answers? Also, how many different flavors of atheism are there? How many different nuanced positions do atheists take?

In my view now, many atheists are simply expressing their rejection of the over defined Gawd they were deceived into believing in, or the concept of God that is so loudly promulgated from fundamentalist evangelical Christians and possibly other fundamentalist religions that I am less familiar with. I really believe very strongly that people need to be and should be true to themselves and others as much as they can. I realize this is not always easy, because the exclusivist belief systems shun and retaliate against those who decide to leave them. If a person who was a Christian or Muslim or Anything decides that they are now an atheist, they should be honored and respected for that, for their right to make up their own mind on this. It is often hard for atheists to come out of the closet. Did you realize that? Some continue to go to church or whatever just to keep their family and friends happy. As I am just now starting to re-read Dr. Schriner’s book, I see he quotes two old definitions of “atheist” from respected dictionaries. “A godless person; one who lives immorally as if disbelieving in God.” Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition, Unabridged. “One who practically denies the existence of a God by disregard of moral obligation to him; a godless man.” Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, Volume One

I have recently re-read the books by Dr. Darrel Ray, The God Virus, and Sex and God, and have found them very helpful to me. He has a very solid Christian background, education, and experience, and yet he identifies as an atheist now. To me he comes across as a deeply spiritual, caring, and loving human being. To me, the fact that he identifies as an atheist means about as much as someone telling me they use Linux as their computer operating system rather than Windows or MacOS.

FURTHER ELABORATIONS ON SOME OF THESE IDEAS

BEST TO DEVELOP YOUR OWN OPERATING SYSTEM FOR YOUR LIFE, WORLDVIEW, PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

Regardless of how many organized religions, movements, philosophies, rules to live by, cultures, groups, etc. that there are, every individual is responsible for managing this for themselves. Some latch onto exclusivist narrow minded groups and let those groups do a lot of the thinking for them. I have done this myself a lot in the past, and I have learned from it so that I try to avoid this approach as much as I can in the remainder of my life. So I really think that people should develop their own rules for perceiving and analyzing information, perhaps even do this in writing from time to time, and try to stick to their own rules as best they can, so as to avoid letting themselves get carried away by those who seem to be very knowledgeable and offer a good sales pitch presentation of their views encouraging people to jump on their bandwagon.

THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF MAN

Much of this I have already mentioned, but here it is expanded a little bit. I have come to a very significant change of thinking on something over the last year or so that will have a significant impact on how I approach and live the rest of my life. I no longer believe that the Bible is the Word of God, nor do I believe that there are any other holy writings or scriptures that are such. I believe that holy writings are the words of man, where man may be writing about his views about God, and man may even think that he is inspired by God and that God is speaking through him. But this is just man’s nature to pretend and exaggerate his own importance. And the ruling elite perhaps write these scriptures as a means of organizing those under them in some kind of a cohesive force, where the lower followers may actually believe that their leaders really are speaking for God. And since this seems to work so well, this is a part of how religions and movements work.

MYTHS HAVE A PLACE BUT NOT AS LITERAL TRUTH

I don’t see a problem with calling these things myths, like for example, the founding myths of a religion or culture. Like the creation myths of the Bible, Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, etc. The myths are not so much expressing literal truths but deeper truths. If you accept the myths as 100% literal truths you can end up getting something like common evangelical Christianity, which has a lot of absurdities and inconsistencies. And creative atheists have developed a lot of very pointed and hilarious (in my opinion) material just based on ridiculing and making fun of these views. Just do a Youtube search for “kissing hank’s arse” or “if man obeyed god” for a couple I discovered for the first time not too long ago. Be warned. Many will find these offensive. And yet they are both expressing very logical arguments making fun of fundamentalist religion. I found these to be hilarious. I almost died laughing on the second one. In fact I wrote a comment, “In the day that thou watcheth the forbidden youtube video, dying, thou shalt surely die of laughter.” And there is even an entire version of the Bible based on making fun of it, called The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible, which you can get online or in a very high quality leather bound print edition.

TYPICAL EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN SALVATION THEORY

I was raised in and I once believed in the common Christian evangelical belief system where one must accept Jesus Christ as their sin bearing savior in this life in order to be saved from going to hell after one’s life on this earth is over, a place of never ending torment and suffering from which there is no possible escape, and even God himself could not get you out of hell. I no longer believe this. I have come to the conclusion that this is a deeply flawed belief system on many levels. Much can be said about this, and I have dealt with this in more detail in some of my other blog posts. Even though I was raised in fundamentalist Christianity, when I really went off the deep end and swallowed the whole thing hook line and sinker as a senior in high school in 1974 with a troubled life, the initial appeal was the idea that if you had accepted Jesus Christ as your savior as a little kid, and then later you got off on the wrong track into much sin and died suddenly, you would still go to heaven, and you might actually be surprised that you ended up in heaven. But the flip side of this evangelical Christian approach to salvation theory is that it seems to suggest that there will actually be a lot of good people going to hell. Have you ever heard of this one? It is quite common.

A UNIQUE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN SALVATION THEORY THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

WHAT IF A ZIONIST U.S. ISRAELI DUAL CITIZEN NEOCON 9/11 FALSE FLAG CONSPIRATOR GOT SAVED?

Let me illustrate with a unique example. Take any one or more of the many Zionist U.S. Israeli dual citizens in the highest echelons of U.S. power who were conspirators in the false flag attack of 9/11. Suppose one of these individuals got exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ through the Jews for Jesus ministry and the Holy Spirit convicted them of their terrible sins related to the 9/11 false flag attacks and their need of a savior, so that they wept profusely in repentance of their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their personal sin bearing savior. This individual would then have a guaranteed place in heaven. But suppose there were a simple Jewish grandmother who was faithful to God in the way that she was taught in her upbringing and strove to be as good a person as she could be and she never ever even thought of planning or executing a false flag operation, in fact she did not even know what that was, but she was never convicted of her sin by the Holy Spirit and her need of a savior, so she died without accepting Jesus Christ, so she would go to hell forever, torment and suffering without end and no possibility of escape. Doesn’t this seem absurd? But this is what basic evangelical Christian doctrine actually teaches.

[I am thinking of something I loosely quoted in a previous blog post, where I remembered hearing the dogmatic evangelical Bible teacher say something like, “It is better to be mentally retarded and go to heaven than a genius and go to hell.” This statement was made in conjunction with expressing the view that a mentally retarded person would automatically go to heaven because due to their impairment God would not hold them responsible for making a decision to accept Jesus Christ as their savior. To these evangelical dogmatic Bible teachers and believers nothing is more important than eternal salvation. So I just thought of something similar to this on my own. I admit I probably first thought of this many years ago, but this is the first time I am sharing it with someone by putting it down in writing. If eternal salvation is so all important, then is this a true statement based on Biblical doctrinal truth? “It is better to have been a serial killer child molesting child raping child torturing child sacrificing Satanist saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ as one’s sin bearing savior and go to heaven than to have been a law abiding unbeliever and go to eternal hell.”]

VIEWED FROM MY CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALIST PERSPECTIVE

So if I were to put on my Christian Universalist hat, I would explain it this way. I would say that all people reap what they sow (aka Karma in eastern religions) regardless of whether they accept Jesus Christ as their savior in their lifetime, and that people would reap what they sow in the afterlife as well, but that God would ultimately draw all people to Himself in love and justice. God doesn’t end up being the warden of an eternal torture chamber, but nobody gets away with anything either. There is justice. I believe what I have explained can be justified by Bible scripture, but I cannot prove it is true any more that the evangelical Christian can prove that their view is true. But I can say that my view makes more sense and seems more reasonable and logical. But no one is required to believe the viewpoint that I have expressed in order to benefit. And my viewpoint does not threaten with eternal hell anyone who does not believe it. And with my viewpoint, no one should feel encouraged to live a wild life of sin with the idea that they have accepted Jesus Christ and are saved, because all will reap what they have sowed, in this life and/or the hereafter.

SELECT THE BEST FROM ALL FOR THE COMMON GOOD – PLURALISM

And if you look at history you can see a lot of examples of organized religions and movements motivating and bringing about a lot of really bad shit. Christianity is no exception to this. If I had to accept all of Christianity to be a Christian, I could not do it, because there is so much bad within it in my view. But if I look to it to select out from it only that which is good to the best of my ability, then maybe I do not have to abandon Christianity altogether. But the same can be said for other religions. So this is where I would like to encourage all religions to examine themselves and their beliefs and practices to seek reformations where necessary to become more accepting, nurturing, and respecting of the rights of individuals to make their own decisions without coercion or fear of harm. I also would like to see religious pluralism encouraged. But I seek these things with loving persuasion rather than forceful coercion.

PLURALISM INCLUDES ATHEISTS AND AGNOSTICS

And I really have to include atheism and agnosticism here as well. There are very many people who have had religious upbringing and some who have even pursued their religions academically and in dedication in their lives and careers, but they have eventually come to the place of moving beyond it, and many of these people have done so because they could no longer accept many of the things within their religions that simply did not make sense to them. It is good for people to be true to themselves, and if they have the courage, to be honest with others. In religious history respected Christian leaders have had fellow Christians burned at the stake for not having quite the correct Christian beliefs. It is hard for me to imagine that this would have been a society and culture where atheists would feel safe expressing their true beliefs.

So I welcome atheists and agnostics into the brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind. I want to hear their arguments. I already know that I agree with a large portion of their arguments and views. I do not believe that they are headed to hell, the imaginary “God’s never ending torture chamber,” because of their beliefs or lack of beliefs.

I am glad to have them as a part of our nation, a nation founded and dedicated to the principle of religious liberty and separation of church and state. I am glad for their opposition to the many dogmatic and exclusivist religious teachings so common in the world and in the U.S. I welcome them for their search for truth and meaning in their lives and for their ways of doing good in the world. I do not agree with the view that atheism is an inherently bad or evil approach to life.

If I had to condemn people for being atheists, I would have to condemn people for being Christians as well, in order to be consistent.

A COUPLE OF MY ANECDOTAL EXPERIENCES WITH ISLAM

I also want to offer a couple of experiences I had looking at Islam. Many years ago I saw on TV a couple of women of the Islam faith in a middle eastern country and their conversation reflected a simple humble faith in God, that reminded me of the simple faith that my grandmother had in her Christian faith. And much more recently, within the last 2 or 3 years I struck up a lengthy conversation with a devout young Muslim man working at a bank where I was doing business, and I was impressed by his sincerity of belief and practice and his knowledge of the scriptures, including the New Testament, and his respect for Jesus. Could this devout Muslim actually also be a Christian in some significant sense?

I realize that the typical evangelical Christian would disqualify him because he is not believing in the correct Jesus, something like that. Have you ever heard this line from the evangelical Christian camp? “Salvation is through faith alone in Christ alone.” What exactly does this really mean, from a practical standpoint? My impression is that it really means, “Salvation is through the precisely correct faith alone in the precisely correct Christ alone.” There are a lot of possible points of failure here. There could be problems with your faith and/or problems with how you view Christ. And if that is not enough potential for failure, there is the use of the word “alone” which occurs twice. I have actually heard dogmatic preachers say something like, “If you add anything to faith in Christ, you are not saved.” To me this is an example of extremely narrow minded evangelical Christian viewpoint to the point that it leads to convolutions, contradictions, and consternation.

FINAL COMMENTS & CONCLUSIONS

People of necessity need to have their own worldview or approach to life including how they deal with any and all new information coming their way. If a person is in dire straights like a homeless person on the streets barely surviving, then for them, survival is everything, so huge amounts of information if you were to suppose it could come their way, they could easily just pass on most if not all of it as being irrelevant to their situation. Obviously this is an extreme end of the spectrum. Somewhere in the middle there could be a middle class family struggling to makes ends meet, and they may be able to take in some information that is relevant to their situation and make decisions on it, but things involving more uncertainty and risk and controversy they would likely pass on. But if you get to the point where you have a person who has the interest and means to take on some controversial issue, such as something that the Fake News might seek to marginalize by calling it a “conspiracy theory,” then this type of person can face a dilemma. Conspiracy theories are like potato chips, it’s hard to eat just one. So this person is subjected to the hazard of having a barrage of conspiracy theories coming their way, and they can’t possibly eat or digest them all. So of necessity they need to develop a system where they can quickly eliminate the things that are likely not worth looking into further, and also quickly determine which ones might be worthy of their time and attention to look into further. There are so many factors at play here that anyone who might be in a situation like this has to decide and figure this out for themselves.

For me personally, at this point, based on the change in approach that I have made as I have explained in this writing, I will be tending much more on passing up on examining further any controversies or “conspiracy theories” that require blind faith in something, which often is some sort of religious belief. It’s possible that this could cause me to miss something important, but I do not have the ability or resources to investigate everything, so I have to draw the line somewhere. So that is what I have done. It has simplified my life in terms of what further investigations I am willing to take on.

And even with this, I do not have the ability to take on everything that is worthy to be taken on. So this is perhaps where synchronicity, serendipity, quantum entanglement, or the grace of God, whatever you want to call it, comes into play.

And it is OK to tell somebody that you don’t have an opinion on something because you have not studied it.

So I really am thankful for the Flat Earth Movement for kicking my butt to get me to start blogging almost one year ago, to get my views out there, and also for pushing me in the direction of upping my game.

Minimal awareness of the Jewish Question prior to awakening to 9/11 truth in 2004

[The graphic used for this post is of the cover of the book “Anti-Semitism” by R. B. Thieme, Jr. which represents the views and beliefs I had on the Jewish Question that I learned from his teaching during the time I was one of his devout followers. I claim fair use of this image.]

[Preliminary comment about the God Virus theory of Dr. Darrel Ray. I have written about Dr. Ray’s work in previous blog posts. I have found his God Virus theory explained in his book to be very helpful to me. You know how fundamentalist Christians will often say something like, “we don’t hate the sinner, we hate the sin.”? Well, I can now say or think an analogous thing when I reflect back on spiritual leaders and teachers who indoctrinated me with wacky ideas that have taken me a lifetime to unravel. It is harder to have anger and bitterness toward them when you realize that they are just vectors for a virus that they had themselves been severely infected with. So I think the God Virus theory is good for how it helps to explain the way religions and movements (and even movements that are atheistic) operate and function and behave. So if you choose to stay in a religion or movement, you can be more discerning and pick one where the viral aspects are less severe, malignant, but instead benign. I am no expert on this, but viruses actually play an important role in biological life. They are probably necessary for life. In other words, if you could somehow eradicate all biological viruses on this planet, the entire ecosystem would probably collapse and all life would die.]

FAMILY AND RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND IN BRIEF

I come from families with a lot of fundamentalist Christian culture. My parents met in a fundamentalist Christian church. That is probably true for many of my aunts and uncles as well.

I am glad that my parents never gave me the turn or burn gospel threatening me with going to hell if I did not believe, but I managed to pick this message up on my own through the years listening to different pastors and evangelists give the gospel.

I was raised going to Peninsula Bible Church (PBC) in Palo Alto California. Although I did not understand all of these terms at the time, I have since come to realize that the teachings were of the evangelical, dispensationalist, Zionist, fundamentalist variety. The head pastor of PBC when I was growing up was Ray Stedman, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, a seminary very well known for its spreading of Dispensational Christian theology as made very popular in the United States with the Scofield Reference Bible that first came out in 1909.

When I was a senior in high school with a troubled life and seeking answers and seeking God, I was kind of at a cross roads. In my own thinking I think I was open to seeking God in my own way. When I thought about the idea of hell it did not seem to make sense to me. So I might have been open to exploring things outside of the fundamentalist bubble I was raised in at this time, if I had gotten exposed to the right kind of information. But instead, when I expressed my seeking to a good friend of mine, he said I should talk to his mother.

GOING OFF THE DEEP END – HOW I CONTRACTED THE R B THIEME JR GOD VIRUS IN 1974

So it turned out that his mother was a hard core follower of a particular Bible teacher who had a tape ministry where people would listen to his teaching on reel to reel audio tapes. This teacher was Robert B. Thieme, Jr. of Berachah Church, Houston Texas. R B Thieme Jr was also a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary of about the same vintage as Ray Stedman, but Thieme took his teaching to a much higher level of dogmatism and condemning others who do not believe as he does. He probably would have looked at PBC as an apostate church even though his teachings were similar in many ways. Anyway, unfortunately, I ended up swallowing everything from Thieme, hook line and sinker, and became a hard core follower of him. Looking back on it now, the way I describe what happened to me is that I allowed an operating system to be installed on the computer of my soul, and that operating system had one or more viruses in it. I guess it was no different than the way that many people are taken in by so called cults. I would further describe that I was so trapped within the Thieme belief system that even if I encountered something in his teaching that did not make sense, I could not shake by belief that this man was one of only a very few individuals in the entire world who taught true Bible Doctrine. It was his way or the highway.

You have probably heard of Hal Lindsey, the author of the book from the 70’s The Late Great Planet Earth. I believe that Hal Lindsey was also a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, and he also spent some time as a follower of Thieme and attending Berachah Church. Thieme also made it into the news when George H. W. Bush was running for president, since Dan Quayle and especially his wife’s Marilyn’s family were hard core followers of Thieme.

Webster Tarpley wrote a book with the title “George Bush The Unauthorized Biography” that ended up being available for free on the internet (I think you can still find it) where he covered some revealing information about Thieme. Many years ago I ended up getting a printed copy of the book, and the part about Thieme had been sanitized quite a bit, but I believe the original is still available on the web, Tarpley’s web site being the first place that I would check.

I think it was before the Thieme stuff that my friend’s mother had also introduced her sons and me to the John Birch Society (JBS). So I also started getting some introduction to conspiracy theory type stuff at this time through the JBS.

NOW FILLING IN MORE DETAILS PRIOR TO 1973

I want to describe what little introduction I had to Jewish information prior to the JBS and Thieme influence in my life, in other words when I was a kid growing up.

In so doing if I refer to someone being a Jew or Jewish I am simply referring to someone who was born into a family of cultural Jews, regardless of how devout they are in terms of any following of the religion of Judaism. And I would also include those who chose to go through whatever process they needed to in order to convert to Judaism, although I am only recalling one instance of this that I was personally aware of during my childhood.

There was a Jewish family in my neighborhood and I was good friends with one of the boys, and still am to this day. His family may have attended a reformed synagogue or temple to some extent. At PBC I was enrolled in the program called boys brigade which was kind of like a boy scouts for Christian boys. I remember when I was wanting to have my Jewish friend come with me to church as a guest on boys brigade night (Wednesday) the issue was raised as to whether this would be OK with his parents. I am not remembering for sure now whether he was able to come or not. But this perhaps was one of my first experiences of the exclusivity between Jews and Christians.

I did pick up on the concept of Jews being penny pinchers and the term to “Jew one down” as being to negotiate a lower price.

My childhood hero growing up was Herb Alpert, and his Tijuana Brass (TJB). I played the trumpet and piano growing up and I loved TJB music and playing it on my trumpet especially. I actually formed a group with three other boys where I played the trumpet, another played the trombone, and the others, drums and the piano, and we played TJB music. I did not know or learn until much later in life that Herb Alpert is Jewish. I suppose a lot of gentiles end up learning the same thing about other musicians, actors and actresses who they admired when young where their Jewishness was not readily apparent or emphasized.

I remember in junior high school where a female English teacher was in the process of converting to Judaism, and in her class there were at least a couple of Jewish kids who some felt she showed favoritism towards. I remember hearing the term anti-Semitism for the first time in my life being talked about a lot by a Jewish boy in the class.

I remember in high school being shown films of the massive heaps of naked emaciated dead bodies from Nazi WWII concentration camps. I don’t recall for sure whether the term holocaust was used. It might have been. I remember learning for the first time that the Nazis made soap and lampshades out of Jewish bodies.

I just have to throw in a little about the war culture I grew up in. As a young boy, what did we play in our neighborhood? Cowboys and Indians, army, or combat. In elementary school when we had drawing time, with my friends we would draw machine guns, tanks, and war planes.

After exposure to the JBS, the first conspiracy book I ever read was None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen. This was not an official JBS publication, as I recall, but it was certainly heavily used to help teach people about the international conspiracy and how it especially related to finance and banking, but the Jewish aspect of this was downplayed.

I recall that at JBS chapter meetings that I was attending sometime after I graduated from high school, a lot of people in attendance were readers of the publication “The Spotlight” but it was officially frowned upon by the JBS as being anti-Semitic. Eventually The Spotlight was closed down, in 2001 I think, but it later got resurrected as the American Free Press.

From a friend in JBS circles I also got exposed to the JFK assassination conspiracy literature, having read at least one of the many books on the subject by Harold Weisberg, one in the “Whitewashed” series. Also with this friend I attended a public showing of the Zapruder film at Stanford University when it was making the rounds.

R B THIEME JR TEACHING ON DISPENSATIONAL THEOLOGY AND ANTI-SEMITISM BECAME MY VIEW

From Thieme’s teaching I learned that even though Jews have for the most part rejected Jesus Christ as their savior and are on their way to eternal hell, that we must be very careful not to be anti-Semitic. After all, look what happened to Hitler. So anti-Semitism was taught to be a very serious sin. God blesses nations who are good to the Jews, like the United States. But in a sort of convoluted and twisted belief system, I came away with the impression that the Christian God was supposedly punishing Jews for their hardness of heart toward Christ with the holocaust. I guess as long as God is punishing His chosen people the Jews, it is OK, but don’t try to help God do this, or God will punish you for anti-Semitism. I think there was even a doctrinal term for this, God’s finesse judgment, where He uses evil to punish evil.

So this describes pretty much how my thinking was conditioned with regard to the Jewish Question prior to my awakening to 911 truth in January 2004. In my next blog post I will pick up at the point of my 2004 awakening and cover up to where I am now, in 2018.

Christian Testimony of Timothy Mark Hightower aka T Mark Hightower

In May 2017 I wrote up my Christian testimony and shared it with a few people, and was thinking about how I might eventually share it with a wider audience. I thought about posting it on the web but I was not sure exactly how to best go about doing that. So I procrastinated. Then about a week ago I felt so strongly about conclusions and views I was coming to on the flat earth theory versus the spherical earth theory controversy that I felt I had to move forward and get something on the web, so I started this Blog in the easiest way I could find, using Google’s Blogger app. So I no longer have an excuse to procrastinate in getting my testimony out on the web.

The only thing I think I would add for clarification at this point, is that I feel that I am definitely a religious pluralist. Both of the books that I recently read by Dr. Boyd Purcell, “Spiritual Terrorism” and “Christianity Without Insanity,” helped me to conclude that I have to be a religious pluralist, even though it is a concept that is worthy of much further study and deeper understanding. I simply do not feel that it is my goal to attempt to persuade those of other faiths or agnostics or atheists to believe as I do. I would rather love them, come to know them, learn from them, share with them, and appreciate them for who they are and how they have come to where they are in their life’s journey.

Dr. Purcell has written and posted on his web site (ChristianityWithoutInsanity.com) a truly liberating message of Good News from God. The first 5 lines which make up the title I have pasted below for reference.

Evangelism Booklet

Five Liberating Truths—Religions in a Nutshell

SALTED WITH FIRE

The Good News of God’s

Eternal Love/Amazing Grace/Infinite Mercy/Perfect Justice

Just because God will ultimately save all, this is not an excuse to live unrighteously. The Biblical principle is that people reap what they sow in this life and/or the life to come. The principle of Karma from eastern religions is a very similar concept.

Also, in this brief introduction to the posting of my testimony on this Blog, I want to confess my sin of having given the gospel of Jesus Christ to many people in a spiritually terrorizing manner by threatening with hell (unending punishment aka eternal torments) to those who do not believe. So if there are people out there who end up reading this who I gave the “turn or burn gospel” to I humbly ask for your forgiveness and I hope and pray that your life can be healed from any trauma that this caused.

So my testimony document from May 2017 follows.

A Brief Testimony to my Christian faith

By Timothy Mark Hightower, also known as Mark Hightower or T. Mark Hightower

Born 1956

San Jose, CA

Email: tmhightower@prodigy.net

I started working on this document on May 9, 2017 and I wanted to complete it in one sitting, but something pulled me away, so I am back today to complete it on May 24, 2017, on my third sitting.

INTRODUCTION

I have prayed to God for guidance as I write this brief testimony and witness to my faith in Jesus Christ. Over the last three and a half years both of my parents passed away due to failing health, the last being my dad in February 2016. This was a very difficult time for me. Over the last 5 years or so God has granted me repentance toward the things of God and over the last couple of years God has rescued me from a most horrible situation I got myself into of relapsing into anxiety and depression due to abusing alcohol as a means of coping with the family stresses related to my father’s failing health and his care. I was raised in a Bible believing Christian family and when I was a senior in high school in 1974 with a troubled life and seeking answers I was introduced by a friend’s mother to the ministry of a particularly dogmatic Bible teacher and pastor who had a tape ministry, where people would listen to his teachings on reel-to-reel audio tape. I became a hard core follower of him, I swallowed everything he taught hook line and sinker, and felt that I then knew “the truth.” This pastor was of the same educational background as the pastor of the church where I was raised, both being graduates of Dallas Theological Seminary where a form of Christian theology known as Dispensationalism is taught, but he was super dogmatic in his approach to teaching. I eventually left this teaching after quite a few years for less dogmatic forms of Christianity and spirituality. I went through a skeptical phase where I explored agnosticism and atheism, but found it difficult to fully embrace atheism. Perhaps it would be possible for me to write a whole book about my life, but that is not my intent here. I want to keep this relatively short.

So, whereas there was a time many years ago when I thought I knew “the truth” and found a teacher who taught “the truth,” I now realize that there is much that I am uncertain about, and I am OK with that, and I still have my faith in God and Jesus Christ. So please realize when I give my testimony here of my faith in God and Jesus Christ I am speaking as a fallible human being based upon what I have come to know and believe in my life.

SEEK AND YOU SHALL FIND

I encourage people to seek religious and philosophical truth, and I even include atheism and agnosticism within the scope of this. If one becomes enthralled by a particular teacher thinking that everything from them is the truth, I urge caution, as this can become a trap that is difficult to escape from as I learned the hard way in my life. But I would encourage people to seek out multiple and opposing viewpoints to the extent that they are comfortable doing this, and to seek God’s help and guidance in their spiritual journeys.

THE GOSPEL

So my Christian witness is going to be pretty brief. Based upon my Christian upbringing, my experiences in life, and what I feel that God has revealed to me through the Bible, I am convinced that I am a sinner, imperfect and subject to much failure before a perfect God, my creator. The promised coming savior of the Old Testament, the seed of the woman of Genesis 3:15, was fulfilled in the birth and life of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as revealed in the New Testament. Jesus Christ died on the cross for the sins of the world, was buried and rose again, and has thereby provided restoration of sinful man to a perfect holy God. Man’s only response is to accept what God has done through faith.

Once accepted, God opens up the possibility for one to live a life pleasing to God, victorious over sin, where God is there to help you through difficulties in life, with peace in your soul even through hardships, and where beyond your life on this earth you will live with God and all other saved creatures forever in happiness.

The fact that Jesus Christ has died for the sins of the world providing salvation is known as the gospel, which means good news.

COMING INTO CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALISM OVER THE LAST TEN YEARS

The way I originally learned the gospel was that if one did not believe in Jesus Christ during their life on this earth, that they would go to hell forever, a place of never ending punishment from God. It took me a long time (approximately the last 10 years) and much study to eventually come to believe that all will ultimately be saved through Jesus Christ, even those who don’t come to faith in Him until after their life on this earth ends. What this means is that punishment beyond this life in a place commonly referred to as hell, is a place of punishment for the purpose of correction and ultimate salvation with God. Many Christians will say that it is heresy to believe that all will ultimately be saved through Jesus Christ. I have even had some tell me I am going to hell because I believe this way. The best I can do in this short testimony is to share some highlights so that those interested can pursue their own further research.

The term I like the best for the viewpoint that all will ultimately be saved through Jesus Christ is Christian Universalism. There are a few other terms, but if you search for this one you will find the others. I had no idea there was such a viewpoint as Christian Universalism until I first became aware of it about 10 years ago. Since then I have read many books and web sites on this subject, of which there are many. I have learned that Christian Universalism is not some New Age belief system that was formulated in recent history, but that instead it can be traced back to some of the earliest Church Fathers.

I am not going to try to prove rigorously that Christian Universalism is true, but I am going to try to show that as a Biblically based viewpoint it should be considered at least on an equal comparative basis with two other commonly accepted Christian viewpoints.

I first learned the following logical analysis from the work of Thomas Talbott as presented in a couple of books, one where he was the sole author and one where he was one of several contributing authors. I will express it in my own words so if you want to see the exact words Talbott used, please consult his work.

The Three Propositions. There are three propositions where all three cannot be logically true at the same time. Any two of the three can be true forcing the remaining one to be logically false. First I will state the propositions.

One

It is God’s will that all will be ultimately saved.

Two

God is able to accomplish all that He wills.

Three

Some will be ultimately lost, i.e. unsaved.

If Two and Three are both true then One must be logically false. This is the Christian theological viewpoint commonly known as Augustinianism or Calvinism. Basically this viewpoint says that it is God’s will that some go to hell forever, i.e. that God predestines some to hell.

If One and Three are both true then Two must be logically false. This is the Christian theological viewpoint commonly known as Arminianism. Basically this viewpoint says that although it is God’s will that all be saved, God is not able to accomplish all that He wills because man’s will supersedes God’s will in this case.

If One and Two are both true then Three must be logically false. This is the Christian theological viewpoint not so commonly known as Christian Universalism. It basically says that it is God’s will that all be saved, and He is able to accomplish all that He wills, and therefore none will be ultimately lost, i.e. unsaved.

You can find scriptures in the Bible which support Augustinianism (Calvinism). You can find scriptures in the Bible which support Arminianism. You can find scriptures in the Bible which support Christian Universalism. In each of these three viewpoints, advocates will seek to harmonize with their viewpoint the scriptures that do not seem to agree with their viewpoint.

I cannot say that I am completely sure which of the three viewpoints is true. I am a fallible human being subject to error. But I can say that Christian Universalism makes the most sense to me and is the most convincing to me, so I can no longer in clear conscience give the gospel by threatening people with never ending punishment in hell if they do not believe in Jesus Christ in this life.

What I can say is encourage them to research the gospel and seek God’s will for their lives and if convinced believe in Jesus Christ for all the benefits that come from this, the sooner the better. But I don’t want to try to rush people into making a hasty decision. This ends up being witnessing for Jesus Christ in a way that resembles “multi-level marketing with Bibles,” a concept I believe I read and/or heard from author and skeptic Michael Shermer many years ago.

From my own experiences in life, I have certainly experienced hell in this life on more than one occasion, and I certainly played a major role in bringing these sufferings upon myself, but God used these things to draw me to Himself, to rescue me in spite of myself, and to bring me to repentance toward the things of God. So this is why I encourage people to seek out God, the sooner the better, but know that God ultimately will draw you to Himself, even if it ends up being after you die. But it is much better to come to know Jesus Christ before you die. And the sooner the better so as to avoid the possibility of having to suffer those hells on earth that can be such horrible experiences.

I am able to read books from many viewpoints, whether within Christianity, or religion in general, or philosophy, or other areas, and I feel I am able to benefit without feeling like I have to agree with everything any particular author says or that I have to know for sure what is true about any or all issues. In many cases I might find myself unable to determine for sure what the truth is on an issue. I am OK with this.

FINISHING COMMENTS

I want to finish my testimony by offering one argument for Christian Universalism based on love, as well as citing some scriptures that are important to me.

The gospel is supposed to be good news. That is what the word gospel means. But is the typical gospel presentation, where one is threatened with never ending torture beyond this life if they don’t believe in Jesus Christ, really good news?

Does God approach man and say, I love you and I want the very best for you, but if you don’t believe in my Son Jesus Christ during your life on this earth, then I am going to put you in a place of never ending suffering? As a man suppose I approached a woman who I was falling in love with and told her of my love and that if she would not return my love I would lock her up and keep her alive and torture her as long as she lived. Would not such a man be considered one of the greatest monsters to ever inhabit this earth? How could God really be like this?

I learned this verse as a child.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16

I also memorized the Christmas story from the gospel of Luke, three verses of which I will quote below.

And the Angel of the Lord came unto them, and the glory of the Lord shown round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the Angel said unto them, do not be afraid, for I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you this day is born in the city of David, a savior, which is Christ the Lord. Luke 2:9-11

How could this be good tidings of great joy for all people if most people are going to ultimately end up in never ending suffering in hell?

One of my favorite verses that supports Christian Universalism.

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. 1 Cor 15:22

If the first “all” is not the same as the second “all” in this verse, then the verse becomes totally meaningless.

Finally a verse of God’s assurance of overcoming anxiety.

Do not be anxious for anything but in everything through prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding shall guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6-7