This is how...(in response to Sohail)

Submitted by Rajesh (India), Sep 20, 2006 at 01:40

In response to Sohail:

You quoted from 1 John 4:15: "If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God." You go on to say: "This means that God lives in the devils and the devils live in God," since the two who were possessed with devils cried out saying:"What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God? Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?"

If only you properly considered what you had quoted, there would have been no problem. Just a proper reading of the above would have been sufficient to solve your problem.

I would like to answer by quoting the Papal Preacher from his book "The Ascent of Mount Sinai" from the chapter "Knowing God is to acknowledge him" commenting on Romans 1:18-21: There are two modes of knowing: a Greek mode which we might call classical and philosophic, and a biblical mode. The modes have been authoritatively described as follows. For the Greek, knowing is similar to seeing, to gazing at the object, motionless, at a distance. From the object, the Greek seeks to extract its form, that is to say, its essential qualities, and by seizing on these to master the reality of the object itself. The known and the knowing remain separate; there is no interaction between them; for this would otherwise disturb the objectivity of the knowledge. For the biblical character, contrariwise, knowing means being interested in it, being involved with it. To sum up then, for the Greek, knowing God means contemplating the ultimate reality, Being in its changeless essence; for the Jew it means acknowledging God in his works and obeying his commands. The first mode is simple knowledge of God, the second is ac-knowledge-ment as well.

If you read all the four gospels and all the passages where the Son of God encounters the devils, you will find that the devils do call Him the "Son of God" but never give Him the title "Lord." On the other hand, the disciples and all the other people who believe in Him, give Him the title "Lord". The devils are simply stating a fact. Jesus is the Son of God. There is nothing the devils, you, I, or anybody else can do about it. You can of course deny it, but that will not change the fact. The earth is round. The grass is green. The sun gives light. Mecca is in Saudi Arabia. These are facts. There is nothing we can do about them. To acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God means to call Him Lord. To call Him Lord means to recognize Him as such and to submit to His Lordship, His Teachings, His Kingdom. And reading the passages you quoted, even you can make out that the devils never acknowledged Him to be Son of God. They simply stated a fact, a fact which by their own admission made them uncomfortable.

You go on to say: But that is not all in Mat 8:31 the devils begged Jesus to send them into the herds of swine and Jesus does, the innocent swine run off to the sea and drown. The real God would never listen to the devils instead he would make them go away. So that is why Jesus cannot be God.

The real God did make the devils go away. He came to save human beings not (innocent) pigs (Virtue, as far as I understand, is attributable only to rational creatures). Even the devils(not innocent but created as rational beings nevertheless) find Hell a horrible place and would rather go into pigs than to Hell. And God is a merciful and just God, why, as the devils said, "torment us before time."

You quoted 1 John 4:15. You should have read from the beginning of chapter 4:"Not every spirit is to be trusted, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets are at large in the world. This is the proof of the spirit of God: any spirit who acknowledges Jesus Christ, come in human nature, is from God, and no spirit which fails to acknowledge Jesus Christ, is from God; it is the spirit of the Antichrist, whose coming you have heard of; he is already at large in the world."

And 1 John 2:22:Who is the liar, if not one who claims that Jesus is not the Christ? This is the Antichrist, who denies both the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son cannot have the Father either; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father too."

This was written centuries before Mohammad supposedly received a visitation from angel Gabriel. (Amazing that Gabriel is mentioned, since only in the Gospels does one find his mention...very interesting!).

And again centuries before Islam, St. Paul warned the Galatians in his Letter to the Galatians (1:8):But even if we ourselves or an angel from heaven preaches to you a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let God's curse be on him. I repeat again what we declared before: anyone who preaches to you a gospel other than the one you were first given is to be under God's curse."

St Paul must have had some inkling of what was going to happen a few centuries later. I am convinced that it was not Gabriel but the Other Fellow (people generally represent the other fellow with two horns and a tail between his legs!), who visited Mohammad. After all, the church has always taught that the Angel of Darkness can come pretending to be the Angel of Light, wolf in sheep's clothing.

Shalom!

Rajesh.

Blessed be you, my God, who have set me free from idols

and will have it that I worship you alone,

and not Isis and Osiris instead,

or Justice, or Progress, or Truth,

or Divinity, or Humanity,

or the Laws of Nature, or Art, or Beauty,

or the Void left by your absence. (Paul Claudel)

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