CHRISTIAN HOLY WEEK

Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry}, Folio 173v
 The Entry into Jerusalem

Holy Week (Latin: Hebdomada Sancta or Hebdomada Maior, lit. 'Greater Week'; Ancient Greek: Ἁγία καὶ Μεγάλη Ἑβδομάς, romanized: Hagia kai Megale Hebdomas, lit. 'Holy and Great Week') is the most sacred week in the liturgical year in Christianity. In Eastern Churches, which includes Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholic and Eastern Lutheran traditions, Holy Week occurs the week after Lazarus Saturday and starts on the evening of Palm Sunday. In the denominations of the Western Christianity, which includes the Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Moravianism, Anglicanism, Methodism and Reformed Christianity, it begins with Palm Sunday and concludes on Easter Sunday. For all Christian traditions it is a moveable observance. In Eastern Rite Churches, Holy Week starts after 40 days of Lent and two transitional days, namely Saturday of Lazarus (Lazarus Saturday) and Palm Sunday. In the Western Christian Churches, Holy Week falls on the last week of Lent or Sixth Lent Week.

Holy Week begins with the commemoration of Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, marks the betrayal of Jesus on Spy Wednesday (Holy Wednesday), climaxing with the commemoration of the Mystical or Last Supper on Maundy Thursday and the Passion of Jesus on Good Friday. Holy Week concludes with Christ's rest in death and descent into Hades on Holy Saturday.

It is believed Jesus rested in death from the ninth hour (3 pm) on Good Friday until just before dawn on Sunday morning, the day of his resurrection from death, commonly known as Easter Sunday. This marks the beginning of the season of Eastertide, with its first week being known as Easter Week (Bright Week).

Holy Week liturgies generally attract the largest crowds of the year. Many Christian cultures have different traditions such as special liturgies or services, floats, sculptures or live reenactments of Christ's life, his arrest and crucifixion (also called the Lord's passion, the Passion of Christ or Passion of Jesus). In Eastern Rite Churches there are also many means to commemorate the Great Feasts and emphasize the theme of resurrection.  Many television stations in Anglophone countries air films related to Holy Week, such as The Ten Commandments, The Greatest Story Ever Told and The Jesus Film.  SOURCE:  Wikipedia

Well...

 Prove It...

I was raised Methodist, attended Episcopal and Baptist for a while but then decided that my faith was more spiritual than institutional and decided I needed to teach myself a thing or two...  so, I read the Bible (cover-to-cover) taking notes and writing down questions... and discovered there was a lot of information that these religious institutions were omitting...  at least not wanting to share with their congregations.

As part of my spiritual journey, I discovered that there were 12 major religions in the world today, so I decided to learn a little bit about each one of them...  I also read the mythologies of countries all over the world, most of which formed the basis for their religious beliefs.

In all these religions and mythologies, I found similarities about:

• Creation
• God/gods
• Heaven/Hell
• Life After Death
• A Great Flood
• Virgin Birth
• Death of Savior
• Teaching Mankind

So... which religion is correct?

Or...  are all of them correct?

Could God have given them a slightly different story based upon their location and circumstances?

As my self-education continued, I became involved with astronomy, cosmology, theoretical physics, quantum mechanics, string theory, and Stephen Hawking's theory of Spontaneous Creation...  all of which underscored the overwhelming magic of our universe and how it it practically impossible for this type of detail to have arisen out of random chaos brought about by expansion from a big bang.

Since, I was not finding anything substantial on which to hang my spiritual beliefs, I got involved with a program entitled ANCIENT ALIENS...  and, the more I watched that show, the more everything about which I was thinking made sense...

There is a God...  and, there were gods...  all of whom were extraterrestrials from another planet in another solar system in another galaxy and quite possibly from another dimention or even a parallel universe...  we are not alone...  and, when they came to visit us, and supply us with knowledge to grow our civilizations we began to think of them as a God or many gods...

Mankind is THEIR CREATION...  we are even perhaps created or genetically modified in their image...  these aliens or extraterrestrials altered our DNA to push us quicker along our evolutionary path...  they gave some of us knowledge in the hopes that it would be shared with others like:  Einstein, Tesla, DaVinci, Von Braun, and Turing among others who had knowledge ahead of their time.

What really strikes me and sometimes causes chills to race inside me is when I think about what Jesus said to Pilot:  "My Kingdom is not of this world."  How profound is this?  Obviously, the world about which he was speaking was EARTH...  so where is his kingdom?  

• Another Planet?  
• Another Solar System?  
• Another Galaxy?  
• Another Dimension?  
• Another Universe?

Why haven't any of our ministers, priests, pastors, or other members of the clergy explained this kingdom of his in terms that made some kind of logical sense other than saving, he was talking about heaven...?

Don't they owe us that much courtesy?

SO...  my faith is based upon my spiritual journey that continues everyday as I search for more clues as to what is really going on...

AND...  one final thought to leave you with...

if we were created on this planet called earth thousands of years ago, why hasn't our eyes adjusted to the sun because many of us still have to wear sunglasses outside when the sun is shining...  and, why hasn't our skin adjusted either because if we are out in the sun too long without protection, we get sunburn...  don't you think evolution would have caused our bodies to adjust to this sun by now?

Those Who Know The Future

What will happen to you tomorrow?

Or, the next day?

Or, the next?

No one living on earth really knows, although there are forecasters who claim that they can predict the weather or the economy or the technological trends that will happen in the brief future of let's say over the next few days, or few months, or few years, respectfully.

Any further out and it is shear speculation and/guess work at best.

But, what if someone knew what you would be like or become in 50 years or even 60 years, 80 years or more...  then, would one's life not become predetermined?

Religious people believe that our CREATOR knows the future and what will happen or not happen to all of us, both the believers as well as the non-believers...  however, there are many people on earth that are not religious and do not believe in a CREATOR...   yet, the evidence is strongly favoring that earth has been visited in the past and is still being visited today by extraterrestrials...  and, of those who believe in ET's, also believe that many of our large structures here on earth were built by ancient aliens or ET's.

Even the religious son of God, the Father, the Creator, said, "My Kingdom is not of this world."

These people also believe that ET's have altered our DNA and have created the species we are today...  and, in some cases have given  or infused others with their knowledge to take the rest of us humans to where we need to be faster than we could have achieved it on our own.

So, these ET's might also be able to know or have seen our future, releasing the knowledge that our lives have been predetermined from the getgo..

Yet...  there are still those who say BULLSHIT to this idea.   There ain't no ancient aliens crawling all over earth spreading their knowledge out to only a few and building monuments.  Man achieved these things by shear will power and determination of that will power.

HOW FOOLISH IS THAT THOUGHT???

The Butterfly Effect

Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics focusing on the study of chaos—states of dynamical systems whose apparently random states of disorder and irregularities are often governed by deterministic laws that are highly sensitive to initial conditions.

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.

Using these two concepts (chaos theory and the butterfly effect) let me propose an idea to you that from the OUTSET will be completely CONTROVERSIAL...

If we have ever attended a Church Service, we have heard quite often that JUDAS betrayed JESUS CHRIST and therefore by default must be considered an evil person and condemned to HELL or worse...

BUT, without JUDAS, there would be no arrest of JESUS, no trial of JESUS, and no crucifixion of JESUS... and, without the crucifixion of JESUS there would be no burial and resurrection of JESUS... and, without the resurrection of JESUS there would be NO CHRISTIANITY that survived decade after decade after HIS death.

This is a PERFECT EXAMPLE of the BUTTERFLY EFFECT... one thing happens because something earlier happened first.

JUDAS had no choice but to betray JESUS... that was GOD'S WILL... and, had to happened so that other events were then set into motion and GOD'S WILL could be accomplished.

JUDAS caused CHRISTIANITY to take place... so, why should JUDAS be seen as EVIL?

MATTHEW 18:20

"FOR WHERE TWO OR THREE

 GATHER TOGETHER IN MY NAME

 THERE AM I WITH THEM..."

This is the passage most often used by the United Methodist Church Ministers with whom I spent my morning on Sundays at the request of my parents, to justify the necessity of attending Church...  but, as you can easily see, NOWHERE is there a command or instruction to be in Church.  If fact, according to this passage, I could be in my vehicle, outside on my deck, on the battlefield in Vietnam, or at Myrtle Beach as long as there were one perhaps two others who were gathering in HIS NAME.

This is a CALL TO WORSHIP...  not to attend CHURCH...

Back in the time of Jesus, the Synagogues (our modern Church so to speak) were located in the cities and not everyone lived in those urban areas and did not have a Synagogue to attend in order to worship...  so, Jesus was telling the people of his day, that they did not need a Synagogue in which to worship but they could do so in HIS NAME where there were two or three present.

And...  while this does not indicate that an individual could worship alone, I am sure that was also possible since Jesus prayed to HIS FATHER all the time when he was alone.  Jesus wanted to encourage gatherings.

Overlooked Matrix Themes

The Matrix is a 1999 American science fiction action film written and directed by the Wachowskis.  It depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside a simulated reality, the Matrix, created by intelligent machines to distract humans while using their bodies as an energy source.  When computer programmer Thomas Anderson, under the hacker alias "Neo", uncovers the truth, he "is drawn into a rebellion against the machines" along with other people who have been freed from the Matrix.

The Matrix is an example of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction.  The Wachowskis' approach to action scenes was influenced by Japanese animation and martial arts films, and the film's use of fight choreographers and wire fu techniques from Hong Kong action cinema influenced subsequent Hollywood action film productions. 

The film popularized a visual effect known as "bullet time", in which the heightened perception of certain characters is represented by allowing the action within a shot to progress in slow-motion while the camera appears to move through the scene at normal speed, allowing the sped-up movements of certain characters to be perceived normally

THEMES:

1. Freedom
2. Free Will
3. Positive Thinking
4. Belief in One's self
5. God as the Matrix Architect
6. Oracle as the intuitive soul
7. Neo as savior Jesus

The special effects of the trilogy of movies overshadowed most of the themes that the movies could have explored but did not, leaving the viewers to simply be amused and amazed and if thoughtful enough explore the deeper meanings that the movie was also trying to convey.  These themes were lost and we as an audience collectively abandoned all of the controversial themes in lieu of being entertained.

Palm Sunday

What is Palm Sunday?

Palm Sunday commemorates the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1–9), when palm branches were placed in his path, before his arrest on Holy Thursday and his crucifixion on Good Friday. It thus marks the beginning of Holy Week, the final week of Lent.

So, this is a religious event...

A religious event for those who believe but not so much for those who do not believe...

What is belief?

Belief is an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.

Simply stated, belief refers to the notion that God exists and that not only did HE create the Universe but that HE created mankind and after HE created mankind HE appeared on earth through the body of Jesus and then allowed HIMSELF to be crucified on a cross to die for the sins of mankind.

The GOD Trinity:  Father...  Son...  Holy Ghost...

These three are one in the same.

The existence of God is a subject of debate in the philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God can be categorized as metaphysical, logical, empirical, or subjective. Wikipedia

The Real Jesus Christ

When I was 10 years old, perhaps 9 years old (after all that's a long damn time ago for me) my parents made me attend Sunday School as well as Church Services with them every Sunday, regardless of the weather and if we had a cold or an upset stomach...  this was their rule even on vacations, except Sunday School was not required.

I stopped doing this only after I graduated from high school or for about 10-12 years...  so, with that amount of exposure to Church and Sunday Sermons, I pretty much remember all the major stories described in the Bible, that ministers typically "preach" about on Sundays...  additionally and probably most importantly, I was given the impression by the ministers that Jesus Christ was indeed Caucasian in his appearance, illustrated by the image on the left side of the image above, when in reality, Jesus should have been portrayed by the right side of the image above.

Why were we not exposed to the TRUTH by these ministers???

Jesus was born in the MIDDLE EAST and as a result should have MIDDLE EASTERN features and yet American ministers wanted to convince us otherwise.

This was the first issue that PISSED ME OFF about institutionalized religions...  but, the other issue that absolutely none of the preachers, ministers, priests, and/or pastors discusses in the pulpit is the fact that Jesus was an extraterrestial...  an alien...

Think about this:

1.  How was Jesus conceived inside Mary's womb???

Certainly not the traditional way...

2.  Jesus made the comment...  "My kingdom is not of this world..."

Not of this world, to me, means not of EARTH...  that's a no-brainer...

3.  Jesus performed miracles...  what other human being has ever done that?  Sure, it was with the help of God, but God for all intents and purposes is another ALIEN as well...

WHAT ELSE IS INSTITUTIONALIZED RELIGIONS HIDING FROM US???