Should Christians believe in Miracles?

Sunday Mass 9th June 2013 Say, Todays Gospel Reading is from Luke 7:11-17. It is about the widow of Nain whose only son had died and was about to taken out of the house for burial. Jesus felt sorry for the widow, told her not to cry. Jesus resuscitated the dead man, who then sat up and began to talk. Jesus gave him back to his mother. Let me say that in my view that Luke had written with some literary licence, when we consider that he is not one of the 12 Apostles, and cannot write as an eye-witness. This miracle is only accounted in the Luke Gospel. This miracle is in a different category from the raising of Lazarus (his best friend and brother of Mary and Martha) from the dead. Lazarus is a key and pivotal figure and was present throughout Jesus ministry, at the Last Supper, at his capture by the High Priest, at the open tomb, at the resurrections and till the end when Jesus affirmed his special place to John If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? After all, in my opinion, Lazarus is the real author of the John Gospel attributed to John; as is evident in the penultimate paragraph This is the disciple who testifies of these things, and wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true. This does not mean that I do not believe in miracles. I do. Bit many of the said miracles are just fictitious embellishments after Jesus death. Logic tells me that if Jesus professed through his parables, his ministry would not be based on an open exhibition of magic and miracles. Such a modus operandi would build up false hope and expectation of what Jesus can invariably do, to show that he is God, to alleviate the suffering and oppression of the Jews by the Romans and his own ordeal at the hands of the Roman soldiers. I prefer the version of him as a simple man on Earth, a meek teacher and a messiah who suffered the scourge of Jewish hatred and died in absolute torture and pain. There is after no way that we can follow Jesus in performing miracles; so it would make irony and ridicule of The Way. If the parables are the Truth then many of these miracles are by inference obvious fiction. If you are not dead to this world how can you be resurrected in the spirit? So why resuscitate a dead body to suffer again worldly afflictions of the son of man? If anything the actual event in this miracle reported by Luke probably got lost in the translation or reporting over the years. What was a white cat became a black hound of Baskervilles. If we however picture a loving Jesus feeling total compassion for the aggrieved desolated mother, who had a sole son; consoling the mother and explaining to and assuring her that at that instant her only son is now with the angels in heaven and shall suffer no more; we will see that she is the one that is healed, the one that is brought back to life; the reality of worldly life in the realm of Jacobs Ladder. Would not she be joyful that her son is enjoying eternal life with Jesus Father in Heaven? Why? Because Jesus, the one people call a Prophet, said so. This because she had faith in Jesus and Jesus had confirmed what she had hoped

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for her only son total bliss and happiness in eternal life in heaven. Her son would not have this coming back to life to work and toil on Earth! True faith in the spirit as in filial piety to the Spirit Father is not predicated on seeing to believe like Doubting Thomas or witnessing miracles before you will believe. It was because Adam when he was a spirit doubted the instruction not to touch the Tree of Knowledge that he got conned by the Serpent. Adam had to see to believe! True believers would have believed when they heard the parables and understood in the spirit. If you did not understand the parables then miracles are of no utility. Why so? This is because when you are reborn again the spirit, which is what Jesus said had to happen first, which Nicodemus did not understand, which simply means in modern English to be awakened with a spiritual mind and a spiritual heart of universal love and compassion for self and all, friends and enemies and everything under the sun and in the cosmos, miracles are not miracles and that is why they are called miracles! Please pause, and read what I have just written again. Maybe do it a few times. It is like I am Not I and that is why I am called I. Otherwise in this world of separation as in sin, there will be no you or I, and Satans conception of a web of deceit would be useless as an entrapment! It is in the duality of separation that we understand that there is no spiritual absoluteness; that I is empty, that Ego is empty, that there is no You or I. In absoluteness there are only sheep and no goats! I hope you understand so far, please do, to demonstrate that you have had your sudden awakening. Without the sudden awakening you cannot proceed to the next stage which is prolonged gradual practice. It has to be this way or else otherwise Jesus do not make sense in instructing that we first be baptised by water *dealing with MORALITY+, then second be baptised in the spirit *sudden awakening to spiritual WISDOM+ followed finally by gradual practice *of the spiritual teachings in his parables, which we would not be able to understand unless we are reborn in the spirit], which requires MEDITATION or contemplation. Given that we reap what we sow in the realm of Jacobs Ladder *Genesis 28:12+; it is not a miracle that a dead man may come alive like a dead battery restarting. Worldly science will soon get there when we restart Frankenstein every day of the week. But it would still be a miserable recycling up and down Jacobs Ladder! And depending whether you have a Samsung or an Iphone type battery! It is however a true miracle, the type that Jesus is really all about in his assurance I am the Way the Truth, when son of man *goat+ is resurrected as the spirit son of God *sheep+. For when you are outside the realm of Jacobs Ladder, when you get off Jacobs Ladder, you are outside the clutch of Satan the Evil One, outside the tribulation of the evil spirit and his more deadly seven companions [Matthew 12:43-45]; and more importantly you are back in eternity with the Spirit father and beyond cycles of birth and death. You have eternal life! Say, we have to enlighten both [1] the Piya Tans of this world and their misconceived evangelism to teach fraudulent Buddhism and their teaching Buddhism as a blind faith and religion [2] the RomanGreco Christians of this world and their misconceived evangelism to teach fraudulent Christianity and their teaching Christianity as a blind faith and religion. If you can, please read the Gospel of Thomas for Page 2 of 4

spiritual insight. It is because Thomas was a doubter that it is paramount that we have ears for him. In his doubt, he probably considered all possibilities or plausibility before relenting to the truth. The simple point is that each individual, according to his own capacity and capability, as we do not know at which rung of the Jacobs Ladder, the individual is currently on, must endeavour to train himself to be skilful enough to reflect and contemplate [MEDITATION] on humanity [MORALITY] and spirituality [WISDOM]. As Jesuits we call this meditation prayer contemplation; and we contemplate on humanity and spirituality by reflecting on the Jesuit mantra See God in everything, and see everything in God. Obviously one has to retreat into the highest transcendental spiritual state to arrive at the answer and when one does he will not be able to explain it fully in human terms! And that is why Jesus spoke in parables! Blind faith and religion are the insidious conspiratorial tools and devices and agents of Satan to divide and conquer, just as he had in separating Adam from God the Spirit Father [the ORIGINAL SIN] through the device of the false self-ego *the goat+. We have to reverse the flow, turn back the tide, and swim back upstream to the source [the Spirit Father who is waiting for his lost spirit Prodigal Son]. That is why we reverse the separation by the doctrine of (1) Loving God *Spirit Father+ with all your mind body and soul and (2) Loving your neighbours [fellow spirit siblings] as yourself. Separation is eradicated and the reuniting is completed by the doctrine of the Holy Trinity the Father, the Son(s) and the Holy Spirit! And that is what is meant by the metaphor or parable of the separation of the goats from the sheep on Judgement Day. Until we remove what divides us and separate us as humanity by way of faiths and religions we will never make anything sensible out of interfaith dialogues. Until we are interconnected as one first, in spirit and in kind, we cannot be saved or return home to the Spirit Father. Please think carefully. Adam was and is a plural! We were not created one by one. When we still think selfishly of I being saved, of I going to heaven, we will still have the Ego of the Fallen Adam of the Original Sin. Think! We are goat son of man and sheep spirit son of God as one in the totality of our being! There are no billions of sheep in spirit heaven nor are there billions of goats in the world of man. This is the foolishness of Greco-Roman Christianity! When you are dead and buried or created you are gone physically. There are no sheep or goats in the dead bodies or ashes! The sheep or goats are in the beingness, and that can only be when you are in your worldly and your spiritual consciousness. If this were not the case, there would be no necessity for Jesus to discourse on the Jacobs Ladder or the re-birthing or reincarnation or re-transmutation of the evil spirit and his more deadly seven companions [Matthew 12:43-45]. We are therefore all lost as One or all saved as ONE, as a common spiritual destiny! This is how we are all saved as ONE the Father, the Son in the Spirit! Start off, step by step, from common footprints, first as humans common in our humanity, then as spiritual humans common in our spirituality. When we get to that stage together, we will understand in common what God is. Until then why drown ourselves in difference, in separation and in division of what is my view, my faith and my God. Cannot we see that we are back to the arrogant goat Ego, the visage that Satan want us to have, standing in the way, and blocking or blurring our spiritual view as spirits. If we understand that the I that we think we are is Not-I then the God that we think is God is Not-God. God is unthinkable, Page 3 of 4

ungraspable and inconceivable with a goat son of man mind! God can only be thought of, grasped and conceived with a sheep spiritual mind; when we are all ONE, in the Holy Trinity, in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! That is why Jesuits say contemplate - See God in everything, and see everything in God. God Bless! It is mentally tiring. I start off writing conventionally with an idea or a title in a worldly sense; and then when I start typing, something takes over me or my mind like as if I am in a trance, and then words just spill out involuntarily and unconsciously. I feel like as if I am possessed! Let us hope it is all good and not something demonic. Chuan 9/6/13

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