Category Archives: Art and Ideas

Did Medieval Rabbi Forecast Future Of Jerusalem?

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The internet is circulating a prediction about Israel, supposedly made by Judah Ben Samuel, a 12th century rabbi:

Ben Samuel was often called “Light of Israel.” Even bishops came to him for advice. If anyone asked him where his wisdom came from he would answer, “The prophet Elijah, who will precede the Messiah, appeared to me and revealed many things to me and emphasized that the precondition for answered prayer is that it is fueled by enthusiasm and joy for the greatness and holiness of God.”

But to recap the astonishing predictions: In AD 1217 this scholarly and pious rabbi prophesied that the Ottoman Turks would rule over the holy city of Jerusalem for eight Jubilees. Now, keep in mind, he made this prediction 300 years before the Ottoman Turks seized control of Jerusalem in 1517. If indeed 1217 and 1517 were jubilee years as Judah Ben Samuel believed, then his prophecy was exactly right, because exactly 400 years after the Turks took control of Jerusalem they were driven out of the city and the holy land in 1917 by the Allied forces under the command of General George Allenby – on Hanukkah, by the way.

But it gets more interesting still.

The rabbi also prophesied that during the ninth Jubilee Jerusalem would be a “no-man’s land.” This is exactly what happened from 1917 to 1967, due to the fact that the Holy Land was placed under British Mandate in 1917 by the League of Nations and literally “belonged” to no nation.

Even after Israel’s war of independence in 1948-49, Jerusalem was still divided by a strip of land running right through the heart of the city, with Jordan controlling the eastern part of the city and Israel controlling the western part of the city. That strip of land was considered and even called “no-man’s land” by both the Israelis and the Jordanians.

It was not until the Six Day War in 1967 when the entire West Bank of the Holy Land was conquered by the Israeli army that the whole city of Jerusalem passed back into the possession of Israel. So once again the prophecy made by the rabbi 750 years previously was fulfilled to the letter.

It certainly would be significant if both 1917 and 1967 were Jubilee years, considering the significance of what happened in Jerusalem on those years. But it gets even more interesting, because Judah Ben Samuel also prophesied that during the 10th Jubilee Jerusalem would be under the control of the Jews and the Messianic “end times” would begin. If he’s right, the 10th Jubilee began in 1967 and will be concluded in 2017.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/12th-century-rabbi-predicted-israels-future/#3FaZmsvhvW9GtlOy.99

Trying to figure out where and when this “ancient prophecy” emerged as yet another spin-off from Jubilee year prognostications, I came across this skeptical analysis by another end-timer:

Since Jack Van Impe has broadcast this “prophecy”, and has also put his own ending on the “prophecy” for all the world to believe, I thought a little more balance was needed on the Internet about this “prophecy”. Otherwise, the next crop of turnips may just sell the farm and rot on a hilltop waiting for the Rapture.

I am not going to just repeat everything said in the “prophecy” like everyone else. Read the Israel Today article that I linked to if you want to read the original source. Basically, the “prophecy” is based on Jubilees and the land of Israel. The claim of those referring to this “prophecy” is that two prophecies were already fulfilled as written, so the third prophecy falling on 2017 AD would also take place.

The last Jubilee fulfilled is said to be 1967 and the next Jubilee in the prophecy would take place in 2017. We know what happened in 1967, it is when Jerusalem was returned to the Jews. Ludwig Schneider, actually only said in his article, that it is possible that 2017 or 2018 could be a decisive year for Israel. Joseph Farah said he would leave what would happen in 2017 to our imagination. F. M. Riley thought it meant that Jesus would return in 2017 and the tribulation would start in 2010 (apparently we are missing it). Jack Van Impe thinks it means the 70th week of Daniel and tribulation start in 2017. However,  no where in the Israel Today article is the speculation of Riley or Van Impe even suggested.

I have come up with six criticisms of the prophecy and what Van Impe suggests. (I think the criticisms made in the article that I linked to above are better researched and are better than the criticisms that I list, so you might read that article.)

1.  Other than what Schneider wrote, I have no reason to believe that Rabbi Judah Ben Samuel ever even gave such a prophecy. Should I just believe that this Pentecostal pastor even saw and could even translate such a document from the 13th century? Where is the document and any peer review of such a significant fulfilled prophecy?

I would not even be able to translate English properly from 800 years ago, so how does this pastor translate whatever language this was written into modern English with any accuracy? There are over 5000 ancient manuscripts of the Bible, most dating from near the same era and they do not totally agree with each other, but I should just believe that one document from one Rabbi of the 13th century was recorded and has been translated without error?

Why do I have the sneaky feeling that pastor Riley constructed his thesis in hindsight to make whatever it is that he may have read to come out the way he thought it should be? This Pentecostal pastor may have just thought that he had divine help that makes his translation and backdating inerrant. We can’t be sure what was said by Rabbi Judah Ben Samuel, without the documentation, and pastor Riley offers none in his article. I am surprised that Israel Today even published something that could not be documented.

2. We really do not even know that a Jubilee is 50 years. Many scholars believe the Jubilee cycle is 49 years because they believe the 50th year is also the first year of the next Jubilee cycle. If a Jubilee cycle is 49 years all the claims of fulfillment would be false.

3. Why would God reveal to someone who rejects Jesus as the Messiah the prophetic timing of the end? For what purpose? What good will this 13th century “prophecy” do for the Jews living in the past or for the Jews existing just prior to the last seven years? If the “prophecy is for the Church to know the timing of the end, than why use an unbeliever to give revelation to the Church?  It simply is not logical that God would reveal the future to an unbeliever blinded by Satan. And as I implied before, Satan does not know the timings set by God.

4. In one of my searches, I read that Rabbi Judah Ben Samuel claimed to have talked directly with Elijah and he claimed to have received his information from Elijah. I do not know if that is actually documented somewhere or not as coming from Rabbi Ben Samuel, but if Ben Samuel talked to Elijah you would think that this Rabbi would have converted to Christianity. Instead, there is a claim that this Rabbi afterward prevented a child from being baptized into Christianity and that this has been documented by the Roman Catholic Church.

5.  The “prophecy” says that 2017 is a Jubilee. Jack Van Impe says he believes this Jubilee year will start the tribulation. It seems to me that the second coming and the thousand-year reign starts with a Jubilee. Therefore, there cannot be a 2017 Jubilee and just seven years later a 2024 Jubilee as well. The concept of a God determined Jubilee starting the tribulation does not even make sense. Some Jubilee!

6. If Jesus announced a Jubilee year around 26 to 30 AD, with the start of His ministry when he announced the acceptable year of the Lord in the Temple (Lk 4 19-21), how can the dates mentioned in this “prophecy” be Jubilee years? For example, forty Jubilees that are fifty years each from about 26 to 30 AD would be fulfilled about 2026 to 2030 AD, not 2017. Likewise, the prior dates in this “prophecy” also would not fit.

Different Strokes

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This past year, I’ve been trying to go to church again.

I used to go to church fairly often in my childhood. Then almost regularly when I was an undergraduate.

Then not at all for a few years.

Later, I went on occasion – at Christmas, Lent and Easter. No more.

Of late, I’ve felt a real desire to go more often.

In the last couple of months, I’ve gone three times. For me, that’s a lot.

One was a Byzantine Rite Catholic church.

Another was Lutheran, which is my family background.

The last was a radical, leftist church.

The leftists had the best music – gospel-type singing and lots of clapping, spontaneous outbursts, and terrific piano-playing. The preacher (pastor?) was funny and referred to his gay partner casually. A woman gave communion. It wasn’t my thing, but it was genuinely infectious and welcoming. No harsh words. The crowd was about 65% gay, a number of black people, some seniors.

The Lutheran church was definitely much more bourgeois and more formal. The priest was stout and cheerful, I remember. The hymns were the old ones and the liturgy was traditional, but not in any way boring. The crowd was mostly white, middle and upper- middle class folk. They went out of their way to talk to me and ask me to come back.

Culturally, they were closest to me.

The Byzantine Rite Catholic church was mostly Eastern European. I understood the service only intermittently by reading the translation. The music was unaccompanied chant and there was a lot of standing and kneeling. My knees hurt. A young man crawled on his stomach the full length from the door to the iconostasis. The women were carefully dressed and their heads were covered. They lifted up the little children so they could kiss the Bible and the crucifix. From every corner,  red candles flickered and the somber faces of ancient saints and angels looked down on the congregation.

 

There was no quick good feeling to be had. No infectious singing.  The chants were spare and medieval.

Yet it was here I was most at home.

Each church offered something.

For those who scoff at foot-thumping, head-nodding services, I say, remember King David.

He danced and sang in exaltation in his worship. He even took off his robes while he sang. Some people pointed the finger and scorned him for it.

For those who mock the stuffy middle-class, remember that Jesus never did. He was at home in the houses of tax-collectors and publicans, drank at their marriage feasts and played with their children.

He didn’t deride their conventions, even when he flouted them. Instead, he kept traditional feasts in the traditional manner.

Tom Sowell: We Need Thought-Control

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Thomas Sowell is often a smart guy. But not always.

You shouldn’t discuss inequality, he says.

[Added: I know that title might not have been written by him and I know that he doesn’t tell you in so many words not to discuss inequality in outcomes, but that is the tendency of this piece and several others on the subject he’s written. All inequalities of outcome are not the result of inequalities of opportunity, he says. Fine. Then he cites basketball-playing and university entrance tests. Well, those are specific areas where native abilities can be shown to play a dominating role. However, what Sowell – and many libertarians – then do is to broaden this argument to a generalization that all unequal outcomes must then be the result of differing capacities, and not of other, sometimes malign, factors.
If you read LRC consistently and see when they trot out Tom Sowell , it’s invariably on race-related issues, when the fact that he is a black man gives the argument more weight.

Sowell would prefer people NOT to look at diversities of outcome but to focus on equality of opportunity. But, if malign social factors come into play, attention to opportunity equality is beside the point and Sowell’s argument becomes diversionary and tool used to keep people looking away from what is indeed often (not always) a very powerful indicator of something amiss.

Well, a philosophy of radical egalitarianism is one thing. Discussing inequalities is another.

Apparently Sowell cannot see the difference between natural distributions of wealth and power and unnatural distributions.

And he doesn’t want you to talk about either of them.

Now,there are people who grow taller than others, because of genes.

And then there are others who are wearing 10 inch high boots.

And still others are actually standing on the second floor of the house.

Sowell thinks that differentiating between these people is counter-productive to wealth creation.

Oh really?

How much wealth has Thomas Sowell created, as a think-tank book-writer?

 

 

Hey,Hey, Ho, Ho, Western Civ Has Got To Go!

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Remember that famous chant Jesse Jackson led on campus, “Hey,hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go”?

It was directed against the centrality of Western classics in the University curriculum. They were to be replaced by more multicultural texts.

Ever since then, the mud people of the third-world, on whose behalf the meddlesome Jackson claimed to be speaking albeit uninvited, have been blamed for the death of Europe.

No one considered that there was a higher power that had a more malevolent and deep-rooted agenda than a mere revamp of the college canon.

From Jewish Answers:

Whether or not a particular person or nation is a biological descendant of Esau is obviously impossible to determine and not really important; what is essential to understand is that the World view of Esau has been passed down as a cultural inheritance throughout history from Edom, to the Roman Empire, to the Catholic Church, to Modern Europe and most recently to the United States and its ‘empire’ – in other words, Western Civilization as a whole. This World view has obviously been in a constant state of evolution throughout the generations – America, the land founded on tolerance has been a most fertile land for the Jews – Europe, on the other hand, was a nightmare; this dichotomy in Esau’s personality is brought out by our Sages in these two seemingly contradictory sources; on the one hand the Medrash states:

The name Esau has the same numerical value as Shalom (Peace)” (Kalla Rabati,3)

On the other hand, the Talmud analyses a verse in psalms:
” ‘Do not remove his bit…’(Psalms 140:9) – said Jacob to the Holy One: Master of the Universe – do not allow Esau his hearts desire…this refers to Germany of Edom, for if they were to be allowed loose, they would destroy the world! (Talmud Megilla, 6a-6b)

 

Rabbi: Europe Must Die Before Messiah Comes

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Some Rabbis equate Europe, as Christian (at least, in heritage), with Edom, the sworn enemy of Israel in the Old Testament.

This equation is applied especially to Italy and Germany.

Before the Jewish Messiah can arrive, Edom must be destroyed.

The migrant/refugee crisis is the tool to destroy Edom so that the Messiah can establish himself.

Now, one can understand Jade Helm….

 

 

The Return Of The Star Of Bethlehem ?

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I missed this while I was away this summer:

CNN, July 1, 2015:

Tuesday night, Jupiter and Venus will culminate a month-long dance with what astronomers say will be a dazzling display, appearing just a fraction of a degree apart from one another in the night sky — a show that some astronomers say could account for the “Star of Bethlehem” mentioned in the Bible.

“To the eye they’ll look like a double star,” Sky & Telescope editor Kelly Beatty said on the magazine’s website.

To see the lineup, look to the west-northwest shortly after sunset.

This isn’t a particularly rare event; such conjunctions are fairly frequent, thanks to how Earth and the two planets line up in the solar system, according to Sky & Telescope.

iReporter Lonna Ours took these photos of Venus and Jupiter on June 21. The two planets are moving closer together throughout the month of June and will eventually appear to converge.

iReporter Lonna Ours took these photos of Venus and Jupiter on June 21. The two planets are moving closer together throughout the month of June and will eventually appear to converge.

But the combination of how close the planets will appear — one-third of a degree — the viewing angle at many latitudes and the time of day make this a particularly special event that ranks “very highly” among conjunctions, Rice University astronomer Patrick Hartigan wrote on his website.

Although the planets will appear to draw near one another in August and again in October, the next such event to rival Tuesday night’s won’t happen until 2023, he said.”

This report was plastered all over the Internet in July, along with the “Shemitah” judgment on America.

But pay attention to the “wiggle-room” words in the article: “some astronomers says could.….”

Pay attention also to the admission – tucked away deep in the article- that this phenomenon is not uncommon and not extraordinary at all.

That’s also true of the much-hyped “blood- moons,” that, along with the “Shemitah” cycle, is being used to scare American Christians into going along with the various New World Order charades being enacted on the national and international stage.

Even more tellingly, the real Star of Bethlehem that heralded the birth of Jesus, was not simply a Jupiter-Venus conjunction.

The Jupiter-Venus conjunction was only one of many powerful and unusual astrological events that took place in the time before and after  September 11, in 3 BC, when, by the preponderance of historical, astronomical, and prophetic evidence, Jesus was born.

[9/11 – ring a bell?]

Besides a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, there were also multiple conjunctions of Jupiter (the planet of kings) with Regulus (the star associated with rulership) in the constellation of Leo (the sign associated with the House of Judah).  Every one of the planets were involved in some unusual event in the time around Christ’s birth.

The most revealing astrological evidence is actually already in the Biblical text, in the Book of Revelation.

Contrary to the belief of many Christians, Revelation is not solely a prophetic or forward-looking scripture.

It is a prophetic revelation.

Revelation indeed is the meaning of the word, apocalypse (which is the sub-title of the book).

And what is revealed is not only the future, but the past and the present as well.

In Revelation, the birth of Jesus is described in terms of the configuration of the stars (including the planets).

Here is the relevant passage, Rev. 12: 1:

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.”

At the time of the birth of Jesus in the month of September, the constellation of stars on the horizon would have been Virgo, a sign depicted as a young woman.

The sign of Virgo would have been the twelfth part of the zodiac in which the sun would have risen, hence the text says,  “a woman clothed with the sun.”

The woman also has the “moon under her feet” and a crown of twelve stars to give us a more accurate picture of the exact configuration in the sky at the time of Jesus’ birth.

The arguments back and forth about the exact time and date are too many to include here, but there are multiple “signs in the skies,” of overwhelming aesthetic and spiritual significance.

In contrast, the relatively common “Jupiter-Venus”  conjunction that took place at the end of June 2015 is very far from a return of the “Star of Bethlehem.”

 

 

Teachers and Prophets of the East

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“A Hymn of Praise For the Teachers and Prophets of the East”

by Saint Nicholas Velimirovich

All the prophets have from the beginning cried out to my soul, imploring her to make herself a virgin and prepare her­self to receive the Divine Son into her immaculate womb;

Imploring her to become a ladder, down which God will descend into the world, and up which man will ascend to God;1

Imploring her to drain the red sea of sanguinary passions within herself, so that man the slave can cross over to the promised land, the land of freedom.2

The wise man of China admonishes my soul to be peaceful and still, and to wait for Tao to act within her. Glory be the memory of Lao–tse, the teacher and prophet of his people!

The wise man of India teaches my soul not to be afraid of suffering, but through the arduous and relentless drilling in purification and prayer to elevate herself to the One on high, who will come out to greet her and manifest to her His face and His power. Glorious be the memory of Krishna, the teacher and prophet of his people!

The royal son of India teaches my soul to empty herself completely of every seed and crop of the world, to abandon all the serpentine allurements of frail and shadowy matter, and then – in vacuity, tranquility, purity and bliss – to await nirvana.  Blessed be the memory of Buddha, the royal son and inexorable teacher of his people!

The thunderous wise man of Persia tells my soul that there is nothing in the world except light and darkness, and that the soul must break free from the darkness as the day does from the night. For the sons of light are conceived from the light, and the sons of darkness are conceived from darkness. Glorious be the memory of Zoroaster, the great prophet of his people!

The prophet of Israel cries out to my soul: Behold, the vir­gin will conceive and bear a son, whose name will be – the God–man.3Glorious be the memory of Isaiah, the clairvoyant prophet of my soul!

O heavenly Lord, open the hearing of my soul, lest she become deaf to the counsels of Your messenger.

Do not slay the prophets sent to you,4 my soul, for their graves contain not them, but those who slew them.

Wash and cleanse yourself; become tranquil amid the turbulent sea of the world, and keep within yourself the counsels of the prophets sent to you. Surrender yourself entirely to the One on high and say to the world: “I have nothing for you.”

Even the most righteous of the sons of men, who believe in you, are merely feeble shadows which, like the righteous Joseph, walk in your shadow. For mortality begets mortality and not life. Truly I say to you: earthly husbands are mis­taken when they say that they give life. They do not give it but ruin it. They push life into the red sea and drown it, and beforehand they wrap it in darkness and make it a diabolical illusion. There is no life, O soul, unless it comes from the Holy Spirit. Nor is there any reality in the world, unless it comes down from heaven.

Do not slay the prophets sent to you, my soul, for killing is only an illusion of shadows. Do not kill, for you can slay no one but yourself.

Be a virgin, my soul, for virginity of the soul is the only semi–reality in a world of shadows. A semi–reality – until God is born within her. Then the soul becomes a full reality.

Be wise, my virgin, and cordially receive the precious gifts of the wise men from the East, intended for your Son.

Do not glance back toward the West, where the sun sets, and do not crave gifts that are figmental and false.”

Europe Is Dead, Christ Is Alive

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From St. Nicholas Velimirovic, imprisoned at Dachau concentration camp, where he died:

[Lila: I take “Pope” to refer to the worst tendency in Catholicism – which is to be as Nimrod, all powerful; and I take “Luther” to be the worst temptation of the Reformation, which is to be as Faust, all-knowing. Both are attributes only characteristic of God. ]

What is Europe?

It is greed and intelligence. Both human: human greed and thirst for human knowledge. And these two are best embodied by the Pope and Luther.

What is therefore Europe? Pope and Luther. Culmination of human greed and thirst of human knowledge. The Pope is the embodiment of human greed for power. Luther the European human determination to learn all through intelligence; Pope as ruler of the world and the scientist as the master of the world.

This is the essence of Europe. The former means throwing mankind into the fire, the second means throwing mankind into the sea. And both mean the alienation of man from God.

For the first means denial of faith, and the second denial of Christ’s Church. In this way, the evil spirit has manifested in Europe for centuries. Who can it ward off this terrible evil spirit? No one but He who is known in the history of mankind as only power capable to fight against demons. It is Jesus Christ, the Messiah and Saviour of the world, one born of the Virgin, killed by Jews, resurrected by God, showed by heaven, glorified by angels and acknowledged by saints.

As long as Europe has followed Christ, “Sun of Righteousness,” and apostles, martyrs, saints and His innumerable pious and righteous followers, she resembled to the market lit by hundreds and thousands of lights. But when greed and human intelligence opposed Christ as two storms, lights before people faded away and darkness engulfed the market. According to human greed, every nation and every human being seek power, pleasure and glory just after image of the Pope of Rome. According to human intelligence, each nation and every human being consider themselves the most intelligent, saying that they are entitled to all the wealth on earth. How wouldn’t these lead to wars between nations and between people? How wouldn’t these cause madness and anger among people? Or epidemic, drought, floods, disease, revolutions, and wars? And these are supposed to happen, however, as to protrude pus from infected wounds as to disperse the stink of impurity and lawlessness.

Papacy uses politics as a means to gain power. Lutheranism uses philosophy and science, because it believes they will help attain knowledge. So greed started war against knowledge, and knowledge against greed. This is the new Tower of Babylon, this is Europe. But in our time arose a new European generation who brought, through atheism, greed and intelligence together and denied and discarded the Pope and Luther. Now no one hides greed and no one praises intelligence. Human greed and human intelligence are nowadays brought together through one marriage that is neither Catholic nor Lutheran, but clearly an openly satanic. Europe today is neither Papist nor Lutheran. She is outside these and beyond.

She is entirely earthly, without any desire to ascend to heaven. She cannot ascend to heaven by using infallibility “passport” or Protestant intelligence scale. She renounced the journey to heaven. She wants to stay here. She wants its tomb where the cradle was. She has not known the other world. She does not feel the heavenly fragrance. She does not see in her dream angels and saints. She does not want to hear of Mother-of-God. Fornication strengthens the hatred against virginity. The whole market is covered in darkness. All lights are off. Oh, what a terrible darkness! Brothers kill each other believing they are enemies. Father denies his son and the son his father. The wolf is a more faithful friend to wolf than man is to man.

Oh my brothers in Christ, don’t you see this? Didn’t you experienced for yourselves antichristian Europe’s darkness and iniquity? You want to go with Europe or with Christ? With death or with life? Ask yourselves. Lighten up. Decide. Death or life. These two Moses put before his people. And we put before you. Be aware: Europe is death, Christ is life. Choose life, to be alive forever. Amen.

Transl. from www.ortodoxiatinerilor.ro

 

From Analytical Philosophy To Krishna Consciousness..

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CORRECTION

[I have made one correction to the piece below  – changing Cambridge to Oxford. Mr. Sudduth also informs me that he has now left Vaishnavism for Zen. I will add a link later.]

ORIGINAL POST

Michael Sudduth, an Oxford analytical philosopher, researcher in paranormal phenomena, and devout Christian, on his journey to Vaishnavism and the truth that the paths to God are many:

My movement into Christian inclusivism was partially responsible for my eventual departure from the Calvinistic Baptist tradition around 2004, after 18 years of affiliation with this tradition.  The movement was gradual and actually began shortly after attending Santa Clara University.  While fellow church members “tolerated” my attending a Catholic university (primarily because I had the pastor’s support), criticisms mounted while I was in graduate school.  Many of my fellow church members were suspicious of my course of study.  They were, like most of the Calvinistic Baptists I have met over the years, clearly not fans of philosophy.  But there’s at least one thing worse than philosophy, and that’s Roman Catholicism.  Indeed, I was often under the impression that some Calvinistic Baptists hated philosophy because it was something Catholics did so well.  My increasing positive appraisal of different aspects of Catholic theology and enthusiasm for the work of St. Thomas Aquinas intensified “concerns” about the “spiritual effects” of my education, and these concerns eventually evolved into frequent vicious criticisms that served only to alienate me from this particular theological tradition.

It’s worth noting that the unpleasant dynamics of rigid Christian exclusivism I experienced among Calvinistic Baptists were not a mere local phenomenon.  I found more of the same, and sometimes worse, intolerance and narrow-mindedness towards Catholicism and other forms of Christianity in at least six different Calvinistic Baptist churches I attended between graduate school and the first five years of my teaching career.  The lack of respect for philosophical inquiry, rigid exclusivism grounded in a highly parochial conception of Christianity, distaste for self criticism, and a moral outlook and practical theology that was intractably stuck in a perpetual time warp, circa 18th century New England, each contradicted many of the intuitions forged through my own spiritual experiences and intellectual reflections.  These each alienated me from participating in the life of the tradition, which I terminated around 2004.

The Journey to India

A bolder venture into inclusivism developed after 2004 when my Christian inclusivism evolved into an inclusivism of world religions. The regular teaching of courses in world religions, the nature of religious experience, and philosophy of religion at this point in my career provided me with an opportunity to dig deep into eastern philosophy and religious practices. This exploration resulted in my growing appreciation of eastern approaches to God, as well as an assimilation of aspects of eastern thought to my own developing philosophy of religion.  Never personally detached from matters of intellectual interest, my attraction to eastern spirituality eventually manifested in my own spiritual experiences and practices, which became increasingly oriented towards the mystical and philosophical heritage of the devotional or bhakti traditions of India.

In 2011 I converted to Gaudiya Vaishnavism (also known as Bengali Vaishnavism), an eastern stream of devotional theism that may be traced to the teachings of Caitanya Mahaprabhu in sixteenth-century Bengal and the sacred Vedas of ancient India. On its philosophical axis, Gaudiya Vaishnavism is a school of Vedanta, which seeks to systematically elaborate the teachings of the Upanishads, Brahma Sutras, and Bhagavad Gita –principal sacred texts of the Indic traditions.  On its religious axis, Gaudiya Vaishnavism is a monotheistic mystical tradition centered on bhakti (love and devotional service) to Krishna as the Supreme Personality of the Godhead.

My conversion to Gaudiya Vaishnavism gradually emerged over a three-year period as the result of major shifts in my religious and philosophical perspective that were facilitated in part by my more mature reflections on core questions in the philosophy of religion, my deeper engagement with Vedanta philosophy, and my study and teaching of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the great sacred texts of eastern philosophy and spirituality.  My inclusivist attitude helped remove obstacles to understanding other traditions and inspired the pursuit of the wisdom contained in those traditions, but ultimately it was only one element among a variety of interrelated philosophical and experiential factors that led me to the wisdom of India.

After a near fatal automobile accident in March 2011, I experienced a deep personal transformation that drew me closer to the teachings and spiritual practices of the Gaudiya tradition. My associations with Swami Tripurari Maharaja and the devotees at Audarya (the Vaishnava ashram in northern California) provided me with a unique opportunity to more authentically explore the philosophical and spiritual tradition of Gaudiya Vaishnavism.  Most importantly, it served as a catalyst for my own experience of  Krishna consciousness, which brought profound clarity to different aspects of my personal life and spiritual journey. Already long convinced on philosophical grounds that God may be experienced in different ways through diverse spiritual practices and traditions, each yielding its particular form of spiritual attainment and relation to God, I see my movement eastward as the natural development of my personal devotion to God that began in the summer of 1984.  It’s not surprising that devotion should be dynamic and evolve in a way that reflects changes in our psychological dispositions, aesthetic sensibilities, and intellectual outlook.

Now, 37 years later, I reflect on that brief exchange with my mother when I was a young boy. “Which God?” my mother cynically responded, “the God of the Jews? Jesus? Allah?”  “There is only one,” I replied.  I believe the intuition back then was correct. There is only one Absolute being. Indeed, there are philosophical reasons for supposing that there could not be more than one Absolute being.  What I know now theoretically and experientially, and didn’t see back then, is why the One appears as many. “