No Sense In Arguing
I use my various blogs and Facebook page to inspire thoughts and share my findings when it comes to world religions, philosophy, cosmogony, myths, astrotheology, science, physics, psychology, metaphysics, and ancient pagan Wisdom.
Most of my life I have always had an interest in these subjects. In fact, I use to read encyclopedias instead of magazines. Kind of crazy, but I learned a lot about many subjects. But for the last 12 years or so, these topics have become an obsession. I spend hours a day, every free moment, studying and researching everything that I can. I study everything from Egyptian Mysticism to Greek Mythology, Christianity to Buddhism, Islam to Zoroastrianism, Sufism to Hindu, and everything in between.
I have amassed some 10,000 documents, hundreds of books, hundreds of ebooks and PDF’s, and even a library of audio recordings from various sages and teachers. My iPad and iPhone go with me everywhere and both store most of my research as well as multiple cloud storage just in case. All of my studies have brought me to the place where I am today, spiritually. And it is far different than it was when I began my journey.
As a child, I was raised Greek Orthodox, went to Greek School to learn our language, was an Alter Boy, went to Catholic High School, and was Youth Group President at church twice. I spent a lot of time around Christianity, and read my Bible often. I watched all the Bible movies and as I got older … my focus turned to music. My life became music. I was in several bands, sang, played drums guitar and piano every chance I got. I was convinced that I was going to be a professional musician. Then I fell in love, got married, started a career in radio, and made a couple of babies.
During different phases of my radio career as a DJ, I went back to my studying. Something was calling me back. I use to stay up late and watch Dr. Gene Scott. I loved this guy. He was nuts, but he knew scripture and he fascinated me. My wife Maria and I, bounced from church to church, mostly for the kids and a good influence and foundation. We left the Orthodox Church over financial requirement that I could not afford, and we tried every conceivable denomination and non-denominational Bible church. We stopped short of the snake handlers … thank God.
Years passed, and one day we got a flyer in the mail about a new church meeting in a movie theatre by our house that had an ex-Rock Star Pastor, live band, and positive message sermons. We went, and really enjoyed it. Ultimately, the Pastor (Rick Pinette) and I became very good friends, I joined the Worship Team Band as the drummer, and eventually my daughter Alenah took over as Worship Leader singing every Sunday. No condemnation, fear, or guilt. No eternal hell fire and brimstone. Just positive Bible based sermons that were applicable today. It wasn’t so much about DID it happen, as much as it was about DOES it happen.
It was a time of transformation spiritually. My journey had been renewed. But I still questioned so much about the basic teachings of Christianity. Things that went against my Spirit and intuition. How can a man become God Almighty. How could God be everywhere to all people and be in some guys body wandering the hills of the Galilee? How can dead tissue be reanimated after 3 days? How can water be magically turned to wine, man walk on water, calming winds of the storm, still the seas, etc. I believed the philosophical allegorical parables and the hidden meaning in the stories, but I had a very hard time with the literal and historical interpretation of scripture.
My wife Maria would watch TBN, we would go to Bible Study at the Holy Land in Orlando, Maria would watch Jack Van Impe, John Hagee, Jessie Duplantis, Charles Stanley, Perry Stone, and so many other doomsday prophets on TV. One day, this guy Joel Osteen came on and I thought well there’s a guy who’s got a positive “Good News” message. I had been so worn out with the 7 year Tribulation, Rapture of The Saints, last days, Anti-Christ, and all the other gloom and doom, that I set out on a new mission. No of this stuff had I grown up on in Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Where did it come from? Who started it and was it Biblically sound?
To say the least, I became obsessed. Church history, conspiracy theories, Illuminati, Masons, Secret Societies, Jesuits, the Black Pope, Bible history and translations, monuments, geography, cartography, Myth, Fables, Folklore, Legends, Power struggles, corruption, banking, Zionism, Hebrew vs. Jew, Hebrew symbolism and my Greek language background that was necessary for studying in the original language of the OT and NT texts. What I found was a firestorm of discrepancies, missing texts, mistranslations, rewrites, editing, plagiarism, and flat-out forgeries. Between the Sinai Bible of the 1100’s and the King James of 1611 … just around 500 years … there were over 18,000 discrepancies. Something was becoming terribly evident. And it was disturbing at best. Highly disturbing.
The deeper I would dig for Truth, the more layers of lies, deceptions, and illusions I would find. An entire system involving the faith of almost 2 billion people was filled with dark history, killing, poisoning, massacre, rape, pillage, theft, mass murder, and cover-ups. Millions had been slaughtered in the name of religion … all of it. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All three Abrahamic faith systems were warring factions and brutal terrorists. What kind of God was this? Who would allow so much bloodshed of millions of people?
I kept digging, so deep I thought I would need an oxygen tank and a decompression chamber. I continued to discover revolting and hideous torture by priests aimed at non-believers, witches, and non-Roman Christians, Hebrews, and Mohammedans (Islam). I set out to disprove the rapture teachings as manufactured deception designed for fear tactics and millions of dollars in tax-free ministry income. I found the Roman Catholic Church to be one of the richest entities in the world with bank upon bank filled with gold bouillon and and literally millions of acres of real estate and investment holdings in banks, the stock market, and secret societies.
I loved my Pastor. He is like a brother to me. How was I to tell him I wanted out. Entirely out. I had no desire to be a part of such an evil empire as Christianity. No matter the good some of it’s followers were up to, the historical evil was unmistakable. Even Pope John Paul II publicly apologized in the year 2,000 for the atrocities committed by the Catholic Church during the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Dark Ages. The witch hunts and the blatant misleading of it’s sheep. How could this be possible? And yet … no one wanted to hear about what I had found. People I had considered to be friends called me an apostate, a heathen, and told me I would burn in hell fire for eternity. Yet, Pastor Rick knew I was seeking Truth, and never once condemned me for my new found disbelief. He said God told him to catch the fish, not to clean them. That was God’s job.
I had learned so much positive information from Rick about motivation, spiritual struggles, life’s experiences, and long chats about life and it’s challenges. How could I leave? How could I bail? Then on December 28th, 2012 my pacemaker main catheter lead broke inside of me. In the past I have had 9 cardiac procedures due to a birth defect. Even still, this was terrifying. I died in the first ambulance and then was resuscitated with the paddles, and medevac downtown to be rushed into emergency surgery since I am 100% pacer dependent. After the surgery, a stay in the Heart Center of Florida Hospital, home recovery, and then another procedure worse than the one I had just had was needed three months later. On March 1st 2013, back in to finish the job. Fifteen days of screaming pain in ICU, Morphine, Oxycodone, and God knows what else and yet, still tremendous pain. Back home for more recovery. I never returned to church, Pastor Rick and his family moved to Missouri, and the church problem was solved.
While waiting for my 2nd procedure on March 1st, it was cold in pre-op. 55 degrees to keep any bacteria out. As I lay there on the stainless steel gurney waiting to go in, I didn’t know if I would be coming out or not. I called to Jesus, I called to God, I called to any supernatural heavenly being and heard silence. Deafening silence. The kind where it’s so quiet you can hear the pulse in your ears. There was nothing there. Just me. A void. Darkness and timelessness. For the first time in my life I understood that God is life. God is the void. In the beginning the earth (matter) was formless and void. It was from the unseen void of Source Energy / God where the limitless and boundless potentiality came from.
Suddenly I began to see God all around me. The nurses, the Doctors, the Cleaning Crew, the curtains, the tools, the gurney I lay on, the assistants, the people taking legal statements. And finally, the Cardio Thoracic Surgeon Dr. George Palmer III and the anesthesiologist and the nurse who gave me my first cocktail. THEY were God. I was God. Everything that exists was God. This source of eternal energy within all things was what this whole God thing was all about. It wasn’t some egotistical Old Testament mountain god with an attitude wiping out civilizations, animals, children, and cities. These were metaphors … they were allegories. The stories were myth. Presented literally but never having been. It was what was IN the stories that was the Truth. It was the lesson, WHAT was taught, not HOW it was taught.
During my recovery time at home, I continued my quest for the Truth. I shared what I had found yet most people wanted nothing to do with it. To them it was nonsense and I had lost my senses. Too many pain meds. I must be delusional. How could there not be a physical Jesus and physical and literal 12 Apostles? How could this story have been told thousands of years before Jesus with 16 identical saviours all based on the Zodiac, 12 months surrounding the Sun of God. It was all celestial planetary Gods as above, so below. WE were the Christ. We have the Divine spark of God within us because WE are made of star stuff and came from the same point of origin as Source/God itself. The entire universe comes from within … not at us but from us. We experience ALL of life in our minds … inside our heads/temples.
But how could I get the people I knew to listen to what I had found? To change their lives from religious slavery to spiritual freedom and liberty? That we are ALL one. There are no “things” … just one thing, the universe and we are all a part of the whole (holy). I AM is what we say before our name … and it is the great I AM that sent us. We are all the Christ. We are all eternal energy having a physical experience to expand our consciousness and raise our awareness. To learn right from wrong. To help each other. To make a difference in the world through oneness and caring for each other because we are one.
But few want to hear it. They’re stuck where they are and content in their beliefs. No matter what I say, they will not sway. I can only present my findings and wait for the Truth to rise to the surface. Truth needs no defense, it merely needs to be presented. So when I participate in debates on my blog and on my Facebook page, my intent is not to argue any points. My intent is to merely present the fact that there is MORE than what they have been taught from the pulpits. If Jesus truly was here, and truly died for the sins of humanity, then he is either a failure … or there’s something more to the story that requires our involvement. The world has much trouble. Jesus is quoted as saying to US “you will do greater things than I.” If he existed, and no one can be sure, his message was clear. Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.
It is LOVE that moves the universe forward. And of God is love, then love is God. I respect your belief system. All i ask is that you respect mine. Perhaps, we can learn more from each other when we are joined in harmony, than when we are arguing. Religion as a word come from the Latin meaning “to bind, or to be held captive.” Jesus’ words were “you shall know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH will make you free.”
Be a seeker of Truth. Respect each other. Love each other. Have compassion for all creatures. Everything is us, and we are everything.
Just a thought …
~Justin Taylor, ORDM., OCP., DM.
