My question clarified:
http://rochester.indymedia.org/newswire/display/20757/index.php
Does anyone remember when RPD tased a young girl?
Author
Anonymous Poster
na
I was wondering if anyone remembered when the RPD tased a little girl because she supposed had a knife or something. I think she was like 12 or something. I couldn't find anything about it on the internet. Stories like that seem to get lost.
Another side point, does anyone remember Staff Sgt. Alberto Martinez?
There's some info posted here at the URL below.
Anyway, that's another news story that seemed to disappear as soon as it was released.
Related
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/index.php?s=6df2e3a85afc75b8083626fa14003354&showtopic=19049&st=1420&
Comments
Re: Does anyone remember when RPD tased a young girl?Current rating: 0
02 Oct 2007
by Anonymous Poster
Reply to this comment
No, they actually shot the 13 year old girl many times when she supposedly charged a police office w/ a knife. The mother had called 911 because her child had threatened to kill herself.
Even though community activists compelled the RPD to get a task force to especially deal with "emotionally disturbed/mentally ill people" after a previous incident where a grown man was tazed to death after he ran through the now deserted Driving Pk Wegmans in his underwear, yelling "Jesus is Coming."
I forwarded around email asking people to attend press conferences & rallies that a local activist was sponsoring around what happened to that little girl. A local public defender and Metro Justice board member told me that the local progressive community wouldn't work with the activist because she was a "crazy, irrational nig-er." Rochester Indymedia has repeatedly supported and defended that public defender, in fact blaming me for breaking the public defender's "confidence" by sharing the email with others.
After Joyce Powell, the activist in question, threatened a "sit-in" at the public safety building after an elderly lady was killed under similar circumstances, the RPD framed her and convicted her without ANY evidence accept connecting her to an assault, aside from the uncredible testimony of a witness who was in "recovery" from crack-cocaine addiction and was a convicted forger and welfare fraud.
There were many printed stories (and television) about all these cases. Lawrence Rogers, Lashedica Mason and Patricia Thompson, as well as Joyce Powell. I actually met the girl of whom you speak and brought her free groceries from Friends Helping Friends.
Set the record straightCurrent rating: 0
03 Oct 2007
by Anonymous Poster
Reply to this comment
Just for the record:
The author of a personal email has the right to ask us to remove his or her writing if it has been made public against his or her wishes. It is not supporting or defending the contents of an email to oblige that request, but is respecting our site users right to privacy.
RIMC editors
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
“And it was light on the first day.
The clouds are as white as those in the painting of Christ’s Ascension into Heaven at Sunday school. That was how I saw God when I was a child. As something big, something white, as if God were an empty space above the clouds. Now I don’t often think about God any more, but at that time I’d never been above the clouds, never been in the clouds. I’d always wondered what it would feel like. Standing on the ground with my head tilted, watching the aeroplanes leaving their braided signatures across the sky. Now I know what it feels like. Now I know what it feels like to be in the clouds.
Like nothing. Like death. Like light. Like everything.
Strange that clouds which are so flat from underneath can be rugged peaks above, or perhaps not peaks. It is more like floating through a milky way of cakes. Coconut slices. Pieces of meringue. Stale cream full of lumps. I take it as an omen. America is not a smorgasbord. It is one enormous cake dish.”
Someone's always coming around here
Trailing some new kill
Says "I've seen your picture on a
Hundred-dollar bill"
What's a game of chance to you,
here is one Of real skill
So glad to meet you, Angeles
Picking up the ticket shows there's
Money to be made
Go on, lose the gamble that's the
History of the trade
Did you add up all the cards left to play
To zero
And sign up with evil, Angeles?
Don't start me trying now
Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh
'Cause I'm all over it, Angeles
I can make you satisfied in
Everything you do
All your secret wishes could right
Now be coming true
And be forever with my poison arms
Around you
No one's gonna fool around with us
No one's gonna fool around with us
So glad to meet'cha, Angeles
The clouds are as white as those in the painting of Christ’s Ascension into Heaven at Sunday school. That was how I saw God when I was a child. As something big, something white, as if God were an empty space above the clouds. Now I don’t often think about God any more, but at that time I’d never been above the clouds, never been in the clouds. I’d always wondered what it would feel like. Standing on the ground with my head tilted, watching the aeroplanes leaving their braided signatures across the sky. Now I know what it feels like. Now I know what it feels like to be in the clouds.
Like nothing. Like death. Like light. Like everything.
Strange that clouds which are so flat from underneath can be rugged peaks above, or perhaps not peaks. It is more like floating through a milky way of cakes. Coconut slices. Pieces of meringue. Stale cream full of lumps. I take it as an omen. America is not a smorgasbord. It is one enormous cake dish.”
Someone's always coming around here
Trailing some new kill
Says "I've seen your picture on a
Hundred-dollar bill"
What's a game of chance to you,
here is one Of real skill
So glad to meet you, Angeles
Picking up the ticket shows there's
Money to be made
Go on, lose the gamble that's the
History of the trade
Did you add up all the cards left to play
To zero
And sign up with evil, Angeles?
Don't start me trying now
Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh
'Cause I'm all over it, Angeles
I can make you satisfied in
Everything you do
All your secret wishes could right
Now be coming true
And be forever with my poison arms
Around you
No one's gonna fool around with us
No one's gonna fool around with us
So glad to meet'cha, Angeles
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
The original freak-folk
I was at this show:
Love is a real thing and love is beautiful. Believe in love. Don't make love illegal! PDA's have always been frowned upon in school, but these idiots are terrorists against love!
23rd Turn Off
Marc Bolan
Pearls Before Swine
Josephine Foster
Water Into Wine Band
The new flower children
I was at this show:
Love is a real thing and love is beautiful. Believe in love. Don't make love illegal! PDA's have always been frowned upon in school, but these idiots are terrorists against love!
23rd Turn Off
Marc Bolan
Pearls Before Swine
Josephine Foster
Water Into Wine Band
The new flower children
Monday, October 01, 2007
god is love
These are the last days. The end is near.
Rexroth on Blake, Stendhal and Marx
all that is solid melts into air
The Book of Revelations and the Communist Manifesto are parallel works
The spectre of communism is the four horsemen
Psymatterialist's Mysticism
NATURE AND COMMUNIST REVOLUTION
1. The "ruin of all classes"
The revolutionary communist uses the hypothesis of the revolution not the negative assumption, of which even Marx spoke, of the "ruin of all classes".
This does not mean to say that we deny such a possibility out of hand, it is just, and surely this much is obvious, we can't count on just a simple negation. This is especially so as we are in a phase of history in which bourgeois thinking does everything possible to portray reality as resolvable into 'nothingness': this negation is one of hatred towards life in general, a denigration, with nothing but the crises in life represented.
We have always refused to play the role of mere analysts, or that of aspiring grave diggers or 'decadence'. The attitude of the revolutionary is not to see things in black and white, nor indeed in black alone as occurs among the unhinged ideologies of the contemporary 'strong' and 'weak' schools of thought. The recognition of the dialectical nature of reality excludes sophistical dialectics in that the latter is openly eristic and rhetorical.
The theoreticians of Entropy like to represent natural and social reality as a closed system for conveniences sake, whilst the supporters of 'neutral' science do so supposedly unencumbered by any debt to so-called 'subjectivist intrusions'. In the present work, we still show why we are convinced that it is not a closed system, but is instead a reality which is open and infinite, before which official science is impotent because of its preference for the comfort of the secondary, artificial nature of the laboratory; in other words, nature's negation.
Regarding physiology for instance: it is hunger which sharpens the mind! The spirit depresses it. It is the hungry classes putting pressure on the well-fed which is the motor of history; though this doesn't have to mean that the hungry automatically overthrow the state of the sated ones.
The latter notion is in fact a simplification made by the priests, a banner unfurled from the exalted heights of their millenary experience aiming to put the dominant classes on their guard about the possible dangers! But, precisely because hunger does sharpen the intelligence, the latter cannot then be a natural, spontaneous product. Historical and social experience shows that intelligence, (theory), is equivalent to the mind and brain, that is, dialectically accumulated experience with all its attendant highs and lows. Such accumulation requires an explanation, and we make the assertion that this process is explained by the history of the struggle of classes as outlined by historical and dialectical materialism.
Even when bourgeois ideology, with its more passable geniuses like Nietzsche, discloses the value of physiology and the poverty of the spirit and philosophy, it never moves beyond the individual hero, thereby ending up merely providing a figure who can easily be mystified by shopkeepers unable to understand such acrobatic capers which only a dancer like Nietzsche could achieve... though not without breaking his neck in the process!
Only the historical and dialectical materialism of revolutionary communism can propose the advent of a really profound physiology on a social level, that is, the unitary, non-verbal, spiritual reality which we call Gemeinwesen. "The true human nature is the true Community (Gemeinwesen) of the human being", Marx.
2. The fetish character of the commodity
As far as psychoanalysis is concerned, fetishism is a neurotic pathology which derives from the child's exasperation at being attached to its mother's skirts. In that case then, in what does the fetish character of the commodity consist? To whose skirts has the bourgeoisie been over-attached since childhood? Yes, its plain! those of Mother Nature, not seen in her dialectical expression though, but in her metaphysical and abstract expression.
Thus we have the allegedly natural economic laws of the classical economists (though not the feeble economics of the epigones!) which, despite all evidence to the contrary, sees laws as fundamentally static and insuperable.
The commodity becomes a fetish because the bourgeoisie hypostatizes the "Great Mother", and every time it sees her degraded and caused offence (by its own hand) it claims that to violate her is an impossibility (the immaculate conception). It is as if to say: the commodity is sacred, there is no other alternative.
We have hinted at the pathological and unhealthily neurotic nature of such an attitude, but we must also underline the phenomenological aspects of this state of affairs: in what way exactly does the bourgeoisie hang onto the petticoats of the commodity fetish? We answer that it is in considering the market regime as the boundary and the one instrument for the stabilization of social energies: In actual fact though, because of its congenital incapacity, the market is the negation of the species economy, and the bourgeoisie is incapable of founding a truly great economy that is equivalent to arriving at a genuine physiology – a knowledge of the body – because it renounces the theory of 'corporeality' as they consider it an abstraction. The true knowledge of the body lies in resolving the interchange between mankind-nature according to a reciprocal integration that is equivalent to, in material terms, the "naturalization of man and the humanisation of nature".
3. Mystical Body
On the other hand, past prefigurations of communist societies (classist ones that is!) are ideologically inverted expressions of the need for communism. The allusion to the 'mystical body' (leaving aside the spiritist interpretations of the dominant classes) indicates the requirement, remaining ever unsatisfied, of the species to provide for itself together according to the communist formula "to each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities".
Only communism manages to perceive in the dialectical process of class struggle the necessary lever for the attainment of the regime of social species; a regime in which individual and society form a coherent unity without all the contradictions of bourgeois society and indeed of all class societies. In class societies, the most we can expect is a symbolic communal meal, but not a genuine physiological reality of the mystical body, meaning literally a body which sees without eyes like the Greek Mistes, the soothsayer who sees better than ordinary sighted mortals.
4. Communist mysticism
It follows from this that the one society capable of mysticism is communism.
But far from the jaded interpretation dreamed up by the schools of bourgeois analytical thought, this doesn't signify confusion or undifferentiation, but rather Gemeinwesen, namely order existing in fact (i.e. not abstract order). That is to say, the reality of the species, realised and still expanding, in which life is really capable of producing and reproducing itself according to a plan, not as and end in itself but as an actual way of living. The species is mystical because it is able to see itself without finding a contradiction between the hic et nunc, though more often than not this is taken as meaning the survival of class society and its future as the 'natural' development of its premises, rather than the sun which is yet to rise.
We have always claimed that the one reality which can live this projected kind of life (and tries it out) during the domination of class society, is the party.
Therefore it is in this sense that the party has its own "mysticism" understood in the sense of the ability to see... with closed eyes; its ability to see more than the individual eye of single militants, to live out this way of life in its internal relations.
The party has the advantage of a general and total vision, the party is communism unfolding before our eyes.
5. From the truly great economy to the truly great ecology
From the differentiation of the laws of development of bourgeois society to socialism.
Capitalist society has shown itself incapable of conceiving of a really great economy, it can neither make it happen nor can it locate its dialectical laws, and it is a blasphemy when it claims to be tracing out a plan for a large-scale ecology with the imagery of an alleged 'breath', of a great rhythmical breath that allegedly corresponds to the Sanskrit: to be = to breath = living being which breaths to its fullest extent. Only in communism does high philosophy and being converge into an organic circuit that connects eating (today considered trivial and unworthy of the spirit) with the breath of spirit, conceived sublimely as truly worth of the complete being, that is God.
It is not for nothing that the word God in Italian, 'Dio', is equivalent in etymological terms to living being or one who breathes eternally.
(...)
Rexroth on Blake, Stendhal and Marx
all that is solid melts into air
The Book of Revelations and the Communist Manifesto are parallel works
The spectre of communism is the four horsemen
Psymatterialist's Mysticism
NATURE AND COMMUNIST REVOLUTION
1. The "ruin of all classes"
The revolutionary communist uses the hypothesis of the revolution not the negative assumption, of which even Marx spoke, of the "ruin of all classes".
This does not mean to say that we deny such a possibility out of hand, it is just, and surely this much is obvious, we can't count on just a simple negation. This is especially so as we are in a phase of history in which bourgeois thinking does everything possible to portray reality as resolvable into 'nothingness': this negation is one of hatred towards life in general, a denigration, with nothing but the crises in life represented.
We have always refused to play the role of mere analysts, or that of aspiring grave diggers or 'decadence'. The attitude of the revolutionary is not to see things in black and white, nor indeed in black alone as occurs among the unhinged ideologies of the contemporary 'strong' and 'weak' schools of thought. The recognition of the dialectical nature of reality excludes sophistical dialectics in that the latter is openly eristic and rhetorical.
The theoreticians of Entropy like to represent natural and social reality as a closed system for conveniences sake, whilst the supporters of 'neutral' science do so supposedly unencumbered by any debt to so-called 'subjectivist intrusions'. In the present work, we still show why we are convinced that it is not a closed system, but is instead a reality which is open and infinite, before which official science is impotent because of its preference for the comfort of the secondary, artificial nature of the laboratory; in other words, nature's negation.
Regarding physiology for instance: it is hunger which sharpens the mind! The spirit depresses it. It is the hungry classes putting pressure on the well-fed which is the motor of history; though this doesn't have to mean that the hungry automatically overthrow the state of the sated ones.
The latter notion is in fact a simplification made by the priests, a banner unfurled from the exalted heights of their millenary experience aiming to put the dominant classes on their guard about the possible dangers! But, precisely because hunger does sharpen the intelligence, the latter cannot then be a natural, spontaneous product. Historical and social experience shows that intelligence, (theory), is equivalent to the mind and brain, that is, dialectically accumulated experience with all its attendant highs and lows. Such accumulation requires an explanation, and we make the assertion that this process is explained by the history of the struggle of classes as outlined by historical and dialectical materialism.
Even when bourgeois ideology, with its more passable geniuses like Nietzsche, discloses the value of physiology and the poverty of the spirit and philosophy, it never moves beyond the individual hero, thereby ending up merely providing a figure who can easily be mystified by shopkeepers unable to understand such acrobatic capers which only a dancer like Nietzsche could achieve... though not without breaking his neck in the process!
Only the historical and dialectical materialism of revolutionary communism can propose the advent of a really profound physiology on a social level, that is, the unitary, non-verbal, spiritual reality which we call Gemeinwesen. "The true human nature is the true Community (Gemeinwesen) of the human being", Marx.
2. The fetish character of the commodity
As far as psychoanalysis is concerned, fetishism is a neurotic pathology which derives from the child's exasperation at being attached to its mother's skirts. In that case then, in what does the fetish character of the commodity consist? To whose skirts has the bourgeoisie been over-attached since childhood? Yes, its plain! those of Mother Nature, not seen in her dialectical expression though, but in her metaphysical and abstract expression.
Thus we have the allegedly natural economic laws of the classical economists (though not the feeble economics of the epigones!) which, despite all evidence to the contrary, sees laws as fundamentally static and insuperable.
The commodity becomes a fetish because the bourgeoisie hypostatizes the "Great Mother", and every time it sees her degraded and caused offence (by its own hand) it claims that to violate her is an impossibility (the immaculate conception). It is as if to say: the commodity is sacred, there is no other alternative.
We have hinted at the pathological and unhealthily neurotic nature of such an attitude, but we must also underline the phenomenological aspects of this state of affairs: in what way exactly does the bourgeoisie hang onto the petticoats of the commodity fetish? We answer that it is in considering the market regime as the boundary and the one instrument for the stabilization of social energies: In actual fact though, because of its congenital incapacity, the market is the negation of the species economy, and the bourgeoisie is incapable of founding a truly great economy that is equivalent to arriving at a genuine physiology – a knowledge of the body – because it renounces the theory of 'corporeality' as they consider it an abstraction. The true knowledge of the body lies in resolving the interchange between mankind-nature according to a reciprocal integration that is equivalent to, in material terms, the "naturalization of man and the humanisation of nature".
3. Mystical Body
On the other hand, past prefigurations of communist societies (classist ones that is!) are ideologically inverted expressions of the need for communism. The allusion to the 'mystical body' (leaving aside the spiritist interpretations of the dominant classes) indicates the requirement, remaining ever unsatisfied, of the species to provide for itself together according to the communist formula "to each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities".
Only communism manages to perceive in the dialectical process of class struggle the necessary lever for the attainment of the regime of social species; a regime in which individual and society form a coherent unity without all the contradictions of bourgeois society and indeed of all class societies. In class societies, the most we can expect is a symbolic communal meal, but not a genuine physiological reality of the mystical body, meaning literally a body which sees without eyes like the Greek Mistes, the soothsayer who sees better than ordinary sighted mortals.
4. Communist mysticism
It follows from this that the one society capable of mysticism is communism.
But far from the jaded interpretation dreamed up by the schools of bourgeois analytical thought, this doesn't signify confusion or undifferentiation, but rather Gemeinwesen, namely order existing in fact (i.e. not abstract order). That is to say, the reality of the species, realised and still expanding, in which life is really capable of producing and reproducing itself according to a plan, not as and end in itself but as an actual way of living. The species is mystical because it is able to see itself without finding a contradiction between the hic et nunc, though more often than not this is taken as meaning the survival of class society and its future as the 'natural' development of its premises, rather than the sun which is yet to rise.
We have always claimed that the one reality which can live this projected kind of life (and tries it out) during the domination of class society, is the party.
Therefore it is in this sense that the party has its own "mysticism" understood in the sense of the ability to see... with closed eyes; its ability to see more than the individual eye of single militants, to live out this way of life in its internal relations.
The party has the advantage of a general and total vision, the party is communism unfolding before our eyes.
5. From the truly great economy to the truly great ecology
From the differentiation of the laws of development of bourgeois society to socialism.
Capitalist society has shown itself incapable of conceiving of a really great economy, it can neither make it happen nor can it locate its dialectical laws, and it is a blasphemy when it claims to be tracing out a plan for a large-scale ecology with the imagery of an alleged 'breath', of a great rhythmical breath that allegedly corresponds to the Sanskrit: to be = to breath = living being which breaths to its fullest extent. Only in communism does high philosophy and being converge into an organic circuit that connects eating (today considered trivial and unworthy of the spirit) with the breath of spirit, conceived sublimely as truly worth of the complete being, that is God.
It is not for nothing that the word God in Italian, 'Dio', is equivalent in etymological terms to living being or one who breathes eternally.
(...)
One of my poems was published here: http://www.purpledream.com/pub71/71232.shtml
Soothsayers are radical
Syracuse peace council organizes huge antiwar demo.
Anarchists were there and still alive.
Oh but red and black are so drab.
Why couldn't the anarchist colors be rainbow? Why did the gays steal it?
Police state:
The Red and Black Scare Is Alive And Well
RPD is antigay
RPD tased a 12 year old girl I'm pretty sure. I couldn't find any articles on it on the internet. Any info? post it here
Soothsayers are radical
Syracuse peace council organizes huge antiwar demo.
Anarchists were there and still alive.
Oh but red and black are so drab.
Why couldn't the anarchist colors be rainbow? Why did the gays steal it?
Police state:
The Red and Black Scare Is Alive And Well
RPD is antigay
RPD tased a 12 year old girl I'm pretty sure. I couldn't find any articles on it on the internet. Any info? post it here
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Ephesians 6:12:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New American Standard Bible (©1995)
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
GOD'S WORD® Translation (©1995)
This is not a wrestling match against a human opponent. We are wrestling with rulers, authorities, the powers who govern this world of darkness, and spiritual forces that control evil in the heavenly world.
King James Bible
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
American Standard Version
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places .
Bible in Basic English
For our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against authorities and powers, against the world-rulers of this dark night, against the spirits of evil in the heavens.
Douay-Rheims Bible
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.
Darby Bible Translation
because our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against principalities, against authorities, against the universal lords of this darkness, against spiritual power of wickedness in the heavenlies.
English Revised Version
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Tyndale New Testament
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood: but against rule, against power, and against worldly rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly things.
Weymouth New Testament
For ours is not a conflict with mere flesh and blood, but with the despotisms, the empires, the forces that control and govern this dark world--the spiritual hosts of evil arrayed against us in the heavenly warfare.
Webster's Bible Translation
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
World English Bible
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world's rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Young's Literal Translation
because we have not the wrestling with blood and flesh, but with the principalities, with the authorities, with the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, with the spiritual things of the evil in the heavenly places;
I submitted the article below to this page.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New American Standard Bible (©1995)
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
GOD'S WORD® Translation (©1995)
This is not a wrestling match against a human opponent. We are wrestling with rulers, authorities, the powers who govern this world of darkness, and spiritual forces that control evil in the heavenly world.
King James Bible
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
American Standard Version
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places .
Bible in Basic English
For our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against authorities and powers, against the world-rulers of this dark night, against the spirits of evil in the heavens.
Douay-Rheims Bible
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.
Darby Bible Translation
because our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against principalities, against authorities, against the universal lords of this darkness, against spiritual power of wickedness in the heavenlies.
English Revised Version
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Tyndale New Testament
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood: but against rule, against power, and against worldly rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly things.
Weymouth New Testament
For ours is not a conflict with mere flesh and blood, but with the despotisms, the empires, the forces that control and govern this dark world--the spiritual hosts of evil arrayed against us in the heavenly warfare.
Webster's Bible Translation
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
World English Bible
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world's rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Young's Literal Translation
because we have not the wrestling with blood and flesh, but with the principalities, with the authorities, with the world-rulers of the darkness of this age, with the spiritual things of the evil in the heavenly places;
I submitted the article below to this page.
ok, this is some heavy biblical-theology shit so infidel-atheist beware. I'm gonna get religious on yalls asses.
The other day I saw John 3:16 written on the wall of a public bathroom stall. It was written in bold, black permanent marker... but then next to it humbly in gray it said "+17" which was significant to me. Here's what John 3:16 says: "GOD so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,
that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have
Eternal LIFE." This is the scripture that many Christians use to scare people into joining their own particular brand of religion because it implies that if you don't believe in the "Son" then you will perish (or go to hell as some of the more sinister sects interpret it). But many people don't read on.
John 3:17 says: "For God did not send his Son into the world
to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."
This scripture is often used to support the doctrine of Universalism - essentially that all will go to heaven because God loves the world and does not judge.
I used this argument with an evangelical one time. But then she incited me to read on. John goes on to say in vs 18 and 19: "He who believes in Him is not judged;
he who does not believe has been judged already,
because he has not believed in the name of the only
begotten Son of God."
This well meaning Christian womyn was saying that other religions are wrong because they do not accept Jesus Christ.
The KJV translates the same passage this way:
"3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
3:17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
3:18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
3:19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."
John goes on to say:
"3:20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
3:21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God."
John Calvin has this to say on John 3:16: "He has employed the universal term whosoever, both to invite all indiscriminately to partake of life, and to cut off every excuse from unbelievers. Such is also the import of the term world which He formerly used [God so loved the world]; for though nothing will be found in the world that is worthy of the favor of God, yet He shows Himself to be reconciled to the whole world, when He invites all men without exception [not merely 'without distinction'] to the faith of Christ, which is nothing else than an entrance into life."
At a glance it appears as though he is supporting the doctrine of unlimited atonement, but in fact this part leads us to believe otherwise: "He has employed the universal term whosoever... to cut off every excuse from unbelievers."
John Calvin also says of John 1:29 where the "lamb of God takes away the sins of the world": "He uses the word sin in the singular number for any kind of iniquity; as if he had said that every kind of unrighteousness which alienates men from God is taken away by Christ. And when he says the sin of the world, he extends this favor indiscriminately to the whole human race."
Okay, so it appears that in Calvin's belief John was saying that atonement is based on one's faith in Christ, but not based on one's sins. However, John 3:19 and 20 speak of doers of "evil deeds" as not inheriting the blessings of the light.
Ron Rhodes expounds further: "John 3:16 cannot be divorced from verses 14-15, wherein Christ alludes to Numbers 21 with its discussion of Moses setting up the brazen serpent in the camp of Israel, so that if "any man" looked to it, he experienced physical deliverance. In verse 15 Christ applies the story spiritually when He says that "whosoever" believes on the uplifted Son of Man shall experience spiritual deliverance."
Martin Luther had this to say: "Christ is not cruel exactor, but a forgiver of the sins of the whole world....He hath given Himself for our sins, and with one oblation hath put away the sins of the whole world....Christ hath taken away the sins, not of certain men only, but also of thee, yea, of the whole world...Not only my sins and thine, but also the sins of the whole world...take hold upon Christ."
So what of the sins of those who have not heard of the Christ? Are their sins also atoned for by the ransom sacrifice?
Here is an excerpt from the UNIVERSALIST'S BOOK OF REFERENCE 1853 Edition by E.E. GUILD: "Eph. 1:9, 10, "Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself: that in the dispensation of the fulness of times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him."
OBJECTION 1. "This gathering in Christ, is spoken only of believers; and no reference is had to any others than believers in him."
ANSWER. Believers are already gathered in Christ, and as the text speaks of this gathering as something which is in process of accomplishment, but will not be consummated until "in the dispensation of the fulness of times," and as none only unbelievers have any need of being gathered in Christ, and as the phrase "things in heaven, and things on earth " was used to signify all created intelligences, hence, the text teaches the final ingathering of all lapsed intelligences in Christ; and reference is had in the text not simply to those who were, or would become, believers in this world, but to all mankind, whether believers or unbelievers...
1 Tim. 4:10, "For therefore we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe." By believing that God is the Saviour of all men, the believer enjoys a special salvation which the unbeliever knows not of. But God could not be said to be the special Saviour of the believer, unless he is the Saviour of all mankind. For, if God is the Saviour of none but believers, there would be nothing special about their salvation; that is, nothing by which it would be distinguished from the salvation of anybody else, as nobody else would be saved."
So according to Universalist theology God will destroy all His enemies and the last enemy will be death. After death is destroyed then all are saved, but the believers will inherit a special kind of salvation that the unbelievers will not be eligable for.
For more resources on Biblical Universalism visit http://www.christian-universalism.com/links.html
The other day I saw John 3:16 written on the wall of a public bathroom stall. It was written in bold, black permanent marker... but then next to it humbly in gray it said "+17" which was significant to me. Here's what John 3:16 says: "GOD so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,
that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have
Eternal LIFE." This is the scripture that many Christians use to scare people into joining their own particular brand of religion because it implies that if you don't believe in the "Son" then you will perish (or go to hell as some of the more sinister sects interpret it). But many people don't read on.
John 3:17 says: "For God did not send his Son into the world
to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."
This scripture is often used to support the doctrine of Universalism - essentially that all will go to heaven because God loves the world and does not judge.
I used this argument with an evangelical one time. But then she incited me to read on. John goes on to say in vs 18 and 19: "He who believes in Him is not judged;
he who does not believe has been judged already,
because he has not believed in the name of the only
begotten Son of God."
This well meaning Christian womyn was saying that other religions are wrong because they do not accept Jesus Christ.
The KJV translates the same passage this way:
"3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
3:17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
3:18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
3:19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."
John goes on to say:
"3:20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
3:21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God."
John Calvin has this to say on John 3:16: "He has employed the universal term whosoever, both to invite all indiscriminately to partake of life, and to cut off every excuse from unbelievers. Such is also the import of the term world which He formerly used [God so loved the world]; for though nothing will be found in the world that is worthy of the favor of God, yet He shows Himself to be reconciled to the whole world, when He invites all men without exception [not merely 'without distinction'] to the faith of Christ, which is nothing else than an entrance into life."
At a glance it appears as though he is supporting the doctrine of unlimited atonement, but in fact this part leads us to believe otherwise: "He has employed the universal term whosoever... to cut off every excuse from unbelievers."
John Calvin also says of John 1:29 where the "lamb of God takes away the sins of the world": "He uses the word sin in the singular number for any kind of iniquity; as if he had said that every kind of unrighteousness which alienates men from God is taken away by Christ. And when he says the sin of the world, he extends this favor indiscriminately to the whole human race."
Okay, so it appears that in Calvin's belief John was saying that atonement is based on one's faith in Christ, but not based on one's sins. However, John 3:19 and 20 speak of doers of "evil deeds" as not inheriting the blessings of the light.
Ron Rhodes expounds further: "John 3:16 cannot be divorced from verses 14-15, wherein Christ alludes to Numbers 21 with its discussion of Moses setting up the brazen serpent in the camp of Israel, so that if "any man" looked to it, he experienced physical deliverance. In verse 15 Christ applies the story spiritually when He says that "whosoever" believes on the uplifted Son of Man shall experience spiritual deliverance."
Martin Luther had this to say: "Christ is not cruel exactor, but a forgiver of the sins of the whole world....He hath given Himself for our sins, and with one oblation hath put away the sins of the whole world....Christ hath taken away the sins, not of certain men only, but also of thee, yea, of the whole world...Not only my sins and thine, but also the sins of the whole world...take hold upon Christ."
So what of the sins of those who have not heard of the Christ? Are their sins also atoned for by the ransom sacrifice?
Here is an excerpt from the UNIVERSALIST'S BOOK OF REFERENCE 1853 Edition by E.E. GUILD: "Eph. 1:9, 10, "Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself: that in the dispensation of the fulness of times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him."
OBJECTION 1. "This gathering in Christ, is spoken only of believers; and no reference is had to any others than believers in him."
ANSWER. Believers are already gathered in Christ, and as the text speaks of this gathering as something which is in process of accomplishment, but will not be consummated until "in the dispensation of the fulness of times," and as none only unbelievers have any need of being gathered in Christ, and as the phrase "things in heaven, and things on earth " was used to signify all created intelligences, hence, the text teaches the final ingathering of all lapsed intelligences in Christ; and reference is had in the text not simply to those who were, or would become, believers in this world, but to all mankind, whether believers or unbelievers...
1 Tim. 4:10, "For therefore we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe." By believing that God is the Saviour of all men, the believer enjoys a special salvation which the unbeliever knows not of. But God could not be said to be the special Saviour of the believer, unless he is the Saviour of all mankind. For, if God is the Saviour of none but believers, there would be nothing special about their salvation; that is, nothing by which it would be distinguished from the salvation of anybody else, as nobody else would be saved."
So according to Universalist theology God will destroy all His enemies and the last enemy will be death. After death is destroyed then all are saved, but the believers will inherit a special kind of salvation that the unbelievers will not be eligable for.
For more resources on Biblical Universalism visit http://www.christian-universalism.com/links.html