Rome

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Much of our intuitive and folkloristic understanding of the Bible comes from the traditional church, which is a post-Constantinian Roman institution and has nothing to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ and everything with Roman Imperialism. Subsequently, the traditional church has had very little reason to preserve or even reflect the concerns of the Bible authors, and has always been nearly wholly invested in forwarding the pagan models that keeps flocks conveniently fearful and compliant.

The whore on seven hills

Since its much lamented fall from natural glory at the end of the Bronze Age, in the century of Christ the world's government had slumped the lowest. The non-centralized but highly advanced worlds of the Celts and the Phoenicians had been destroyed, millions or its people slaughtered and its territories turned to waste lands. The democratic experiment of Athens and even Rome's ancient senate (or curia) had failed. Rome's Republic too had become unstable and greedy generals such as Pompey and Julius Caesar had turned it into a tyranny. A milestone in primitivity was reached when Octavian became Emperor Augustus and the suffocated Republic was resurrected as Empire: a governmental zombie without a soul and a true horror; the world's first fascist state.

The Roman Empire was a death machine in which only one man was always right and everybody else a slave. Men were constricted into uniforms and poised into legions, where they were made to obey remote masters (Ephesians 6:12) and serve the currencies of terror and coercion. The world became a vortex that directed mankind's proceeds to Rome where it was converted into concrete and madness by millions of slaves, many of whom died of abuse or suicide. The city of Rome became the greatest altar of human sacrifice the world had ever seen and the death toll among civilians was so high that a continuous stream of fresh citizens was required just to keep its squalor going. The individual counted for nothing and the masses were entertained with death and ignorance. The higher up the social ladder, the more in line with the structure of tyranny one had to be, the more noble one was deemed, and the more one could count on the system's protective machine: the police and judicial courts...
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...Ordinary people had very little claim to such protection, unless their discomfort bore directly upon someone higher up. Rich people could literally get away with murder and rarely suffered a punishment worse than forced relocation. Rome's signature mode of torture — namely crucifixion, which after a day or three led to death by exhaustion — was reserved for uppity slaves and foreigners and specifically designed as a public deterrent. That so many still ended up on crosses shows that a very large segment of Rome's population valued resistance more than their own lives. Ultimately, only very few people really benefitted from Rome and a great many felt imprisoned by it and fought to get out.

Even from before its inception, people from all walks of life, both foreigners and Romans alike, battled this atrocious beast with all their might. The empire's architect Julius Caesar found himself murdered by a large group of senators who called themselves Liberators (namely mankind from tyranny), the last of whom were defeated at the battle of Philippi but whose purpose lived on in anti-Roman zealots as unlikely as Pilate and the Stoic philosophers. In a final bid for life, the Germanians and Illyrians nearly toppled Rome in 9 AD, but Rome prevailed and the world descended further into darkness. An orgy of death ensued...
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The amazing name Mary: meaning and etymology

brakelite said:

When reading that resume, apart from the specific names therein, one could be forgiven for wondering what Rome you were writing about...pagan or Papal.

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ok this maybe is not clear enough, but this is an import from the link at the bottom of post 2, sorry. and I would suggest "both," but I don't want to comment here too much yet, as most of the comments in here so far are or will be addressed by the text, and I don't interpret the same way Mr Ui...the author does

Windmillcharge said:

Folklore understanding of the bible can be discounted as it not likely to be reliable.

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so you say, yes. imo this is addressed in para 1, iow we have a "folklore" understanding right now, and it will be further and repetitively addressed throughout the text too I guess.

For instance do you know where the term "Lord" comes from? Why even question the choice of such a term, right?

Windmillcharge said:

Did ordinary people battle Rome? Not if they wished to live, common people would be exceuted for rebelling.

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and die they did, Wc, as the text makes plain. If you would like to dispute any of the assertions made i'm open

VictoryinJesus said:

Thought you commented back and I read it. Did I imagine it? ...where do it go?

Mary’s virginity. Always the debate. What about the virgin the children of God are born of ...the virgin set apart from the world, untouched by the world? The womb the children of God are born of? The miracle of new birth. The virgins of Revelation...is this not the ‘virgin’ in focus? The virgin which is above and not of this world?

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ya sorry, thought i'd reload there;
The Virgin will be with Child

The Virgin cult which managed to attach itself to Mary was not originally Marian because it stems from deep antiquity. In Biblical times it had its most recent installment in Pallas Athena. The noun παλλας (pallas) means youth or the childlike conditions just prior to the adolescent journey to adulthood, and the verb παλλω (pallo) means to exist in the stationary conditions just prior to a setting off (of a missile being launched, of lots to be tossed)...
The amazing name Mary: meaning and etymology

read this and we'll go from there maybe?

VictoryinJesus said:

The virgin which is above and not of this world?

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bbyrd009 said:

read this and we'll go from there maybe?

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of course all that is presented to us as "cults" and "counterfeits," but we never stop to think that they were not stupid, and may have felt exactly the same way! Really who cares what some Christian cultist whose "church" is melting in front of them thinks? Do we think God cares what they think?

let the blind lead the blind imo and be led by truth, wherever it takes you.
and the test for truth is so easy its a joke; if you hate it, it is truth, basically;
if all it engenders is "meh," then prolly not

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Roman violence was of a barbarism beyond all proportions, and to put that into perspective: The Roman Empire was home to about 60 million people and the total army consisted of between 250,000 to 450,000 men. That doesn't sound like many, but the Roman legion was a trained killing machine that made little distinction between enemy soldiers and enemy civilians. Modern historians (Ben Kiernan) accredit the late Roman Republic with the invention of the genocide. The siege of Carthage (from 149 to 146 BC) ended in the extermination of hundreds of thousands of people, and the ten percent of the population that survived the carnage was sold into slavery. Early Roman historians estimated that on his northern campaigns (50s BC), Julius Caesar had killed 1,000,000 Celts and had enslaved 1,000,000 more (Plutarch: Caes.XV.5, Pomp.LXVII.10; Pliny VII.91), and it was those campaigns that ultimately funded the chain of events that brought about the Empire.

The number of Jews alone who were murdered during the Jewish Wars (from 67 to 136 AD) was a staggering 2,000,000. As in 70 AD the fall of Jerusalem became imminent, Romans would crucify 500 Jewish refugees per day; mostly civilians with their wives and children. Bored legionnaires would catch them when they tried to flee the siege and for sport would whip and torture them and then nail them upside down or sideways to racks and crosses to slowly die. This went on until they ran out of wood for crosses and space to place them, so they resorted to merely chopping off people's hands (JW.5.446 and on).

Imagine the rage, the cries and the mad mass hysteria. Imagine the laughing and the fields of bloody mud. Imagine the industrial scale of this never-ending and inescapable sadistic horror that these devils devised for their victims. No hell was ever imagined more gruesome than this...

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Where once the Word of God was expected to come from the lips of foreigners, the Romans tagged anything non-Roman for acute annihilation. The wisdom that had been tried and accumulated since time immemorial, as a joint venture of the whole of humanity to benefit all of mankind, went up in thin smoke. Stupidity rolled in on fatty billows and the world turned into a smoldering hole. The ancient pathways of discourse became intersected by military highways and iron curtains. The wealth of nations was no longer its freely shared wisdom but the material surplus this wisdom generated. Wisdom can be copied and perpetually dispensed — like water from an eternal well or oil from a jar that never depletes — but gold is finite, and if it can't be earned by lack of wisdom, it would simply have to be taken by force.

They did it to everybody: the Carthaginians, the British, the Germanians, the Celts, the Iberians, the Illyrians, the Dacians. They targeted the intellectual elite, the scholars, druids and priests and killed them all, and burned whatever libraries there were. What was left they annexed and taxed. They reverted entire sophisticated societies to pre-Pleistocene levels of collective comprehension, and dazzled the survivors with luxury and entertainment, which was then as much as now just "part of their enslavement" (in the words of Tacitus; Agricola.1.21). In order to not having to fight them, they made them believe, and for this the wizards who pursued natural law had to die. They destroyed ancient cities beyond recognition and nullified entire cultures as if they had never existed. They were, in the words of a Caledonian commander named Galgacus, "robbers of the world, exhausting the earth with their world-wide plunder. Robbery, slaughter and plunder they lyingly call empire. They create a wasteland, and call it peace" (Tacitus, Agricola.1.30)

Roman spin doctors did a great job in glorifying the Roman effort and discrediting the vanquished, and although they were believed for centuries, in modern times a critical examination of texts and treasures left in the ground reveals that life in the Roman world was a bloody nightmare from which humanity is only recently trying to awake. Whatever nobility the Romans are remembered for they pillaged from cultures they raped and burned. Their true legacy lives on as any government's most enticing refuge and was last most clearly visited by Adolf Hitler. His Intelligenzaktion again targeted the intellectuals. His Ahnenerbe again placed the abomination in the sanctuary. The only real difference between Hitler and Augustus is that Augustus had won. Mankind suffered his darkness until the Renaissance." ibid

brakelite said:

This description of Rome puts into perspective Daniels vision of the fourth beast which arose after Greece...
Daniel 7:7 ‭After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it ‭was‭ diverse from all the beasts that ‭were‭ before it...
‭23 thus he said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces.‭..
8:9 And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant ‭land‭.‭
‭10 And it waxed great, ‭even‭ to the host of heaven; and it cast down ‭some‭ of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them.‭
11 ‭Yea, he magnified ‭himself‭ even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily ‭sacrifice‭ was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down.‭

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i guess v11 is a good description of the little horn, huh? Not too hard to state those elements into even Protestant terms imo

aspen said:

Gosh Byrd, i didn't think you fell for all that anti Catholic stuff

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Ah sorry, I forget myself Aspen. This has nothing to do with Catholics imo, at least per se, and I happen to know the author has nothing against Catholics either.

So I appreciate it if you would continue to monitor here at least, and bam point out anything anti-Catholic, and if you have a dispute of any passages please say so. A lot of work has gone into making that as inoffensive and accessible as possible, you simply would not believe prolly some of the easily verifiable quotes that could have been used but were not for that reason ok.

aspen said:

within the shadows of large institutions like the Vatican and within house churches.

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I hardly think it's fair to conflate these two Aspen wadr, in fact the diff here is an essential point imo,

1 Corinthians 15:24 Lexicon: then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power.

which I know reads diff in a DRB, but is not completely obscured, I see principality in there too right.

And as you say Prot churches are no less culpable here either, believe me this is not going to turn antiCatholic on my account. Catholicism is just another camp to me. Roman Centurion's daughters can be saved too right

aspen said:

Unless we look within ourselves and submit to Christ, we are just pointing fingers and eating the same BS in a different setting.

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Confess your sins, one to another

so amen!

aspen said:

Gosh Byrd, i didn't think you fell for all that anti Catholic stuff....

I guess pointing at the largest target is satisfying on some level....it makes it easy to pretend that the problems of humanity, which are magnified more and more as groups grow in number, are really due to corruption by outside forces like demons and Satan; however, as we all know, people are their own worst enemy and have the capacity to sow rot and corruption within the shadows of large institutions like the Vatican and within house churches. The Catholic Church attempts to hide in broad daylight; Protestants, in the anonymity of small, independent splinter groups; both shelter anitchristians in different ways and for different reasons.

Like I have stated in the past; our solutions to human failure and corruption can be illustrated in this analogy:

“Wow all this processed food is causing major health problems! It is killing us! I know what we can do about it.....let’s have a picnic!”

Unless we look within ourselves and submit to Christ, we are just pointing fingers and eating the same BS in a different setting.

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Oh, I see now, the "virgin Cult" reply to ViJ? Ya, I did not mean for that to come out here, and just forgot in my reply. "Virgin Cult" does not = "bad" to me Aspen, "Cult" is what I am still in at least, and imo just like them I am searching for a better understanding.

Which is essentially imo what "virgin Cult" or I guess at least "the virgin will be with child" even translates to, once the elements are correctly identified.

"The virgin will be with child" would have had a powerful, different impact on those in that era, although I meant this to be a diff thread, the next one.