I will meditate on these things.

cheers warwick.

I am a descendant of William P. DeFee who would like to read the articles he submitted to early publications. Could you give me any advice on how to go about this?

Thanks,
Steve Watson

Some years ago, while trying to help the disadvantaged, I was approached by a crazed and violent man who, in his rampage, suddenly saw me and came at me. Stopping two feet ahead of me, he said, carefully but very angrily – “Prepare yourself because are about to die”. He looked me right in the eye as he said it.

Taking him at his word, I did prepare to die. I told myself that I would not die terrified or afraid, but that I would die feeling peace and love – nothing more. He picked me up by the shirt and threw me to the ground – and this next part is hard to believe, but true – I fell in slow motion and came to rest gently on the ground, as if I had been laid there by a different power. The attacker seemed to get angrier, but I remained at peace and feeling nothing but love. Not love for him or love for me but simply love. He leaned over to slug me in the face, but his fist gently graced my chin, and it forced my head to turn to the left.

I remained at peace, and I heard a voice in my head saying “Turn the other cheek”. So I did that. The man ran away terrified of me.

This has happened more than once. I avoided a rape using the same technique. I am not alone in testing the teachings of Jesus in this way.

The Peace Pilgrim was not raised as a christian, but she was curious about whether or not Jesus was telling the truth. Could someone leave the house, taking nothing with him/her, and survive for a season? So, taking up the challenge as an interesting experiment during her retirement, she left her home and began walking the Appalachain Trail. By the time she returned home months later, she knew that jesus was telling the truth. If we have faith that we will be provided for, we will be provided for. She gave away all that she owned and started walking – teaching people about this beautiful message and the power of peace.

She walked for the next 30 years or so, always talking about peace, so she became known as the Peace Pilgrim. She sometimes found herself in unsavory parts of town and she too faced violence without fear. She too learned that Peace is a protective power. She learned that Jesus was telling the truth.

As I considered my experience and the book “Peace Pilgrim”, I was torn by the contrast between what I was learning in church and what I learned by virtue of turning the other cheek. I came to understand why Christians prefer the teachings of Paul to the teachings of Jesus. It brings up a question that is so impossible a contradiction that all of Christianity would fail if it were known.

So I stopped going to church, I picked up my KJV Red Letter Edition New Testament, and I spent nearly a year focusing on nothing but the Sermon on the Mount. (It took that long before I actually got it). I needed to stop going to church, because I was intent on asking God – not other people – who or what God was, and how to understand Jesus.

As I finally summoned up the courage to ask the heretical question that no Christian is ever allowed to ask, the truth became more and more obvious. It is not possible for Jesus to have died on the cross. In fact, the same book that gives us the Sermon on the Mount proves it.

If you will recall the balcony scene, it says that Jesus and Barabbas were brought out. The crowd chose to save Barabbas and send Jesus to the cross. But what I never learned in Sunday School was that Barabbas means “son of my dad” (Bar = son & Abbas = father in the form of endearment rather than reverential). Somehow, the story had been twisted. Barabbas WAS the protagonist of the Christ story!

Suddenly, Judas wasn’t the demon any more. Judas was part of a conspiracy to teach the people about the power of peace. Even in those dangerous times, if Jesus were to be arrested, the power of peace would protect him – and so it did.

Wondering how such a thing could happen – books being rewritten to change the very story of the one who taught such a profounly empowering message, I learned that Constantine rewrote the books in order to stamp out the followers of the faith (and other pagan religions) who would not bow to any authority – thus were a threat to his reign.

I began learning about other religions to see if theirs also had strange contradictions, and learned that the story of Jesus birth and life mimics both Mithraism and the birth of Krishna. Mithra was born on 12/25 and martyred on Black Friday – but he arose from the dead and ascended into heaven (the sky) on EASTer SUNday to be with his father, the sun, where he would be the intermediary between God (the sun) and Mithra’s followers. Krishna lived a life of miracles, where he walked on water and fed a crowd of 500.

The more I learned about the history of Christianity and its contradiction with the teachings of Jesus (Barabbas), the more my life was transformed.

There is a reason why Jesus told his disciples to go to very distant towns – walking through desert to get to them – taking no food, water, or extra clothing. It’s not that he wanted them to proselytize. It’s that he wanted them to be walking miracles – with people wonderiing how they had survived the trip – which was the best opening possible for teaching about the power of peace to provide. They were walking proof that Jesus was telling the truth. Far different from those christians who consider it an instruction to go house to house threatening people with damnation unless they convert.

Peace Pilgrim says that with practice, one can walk in peace every moment of every day. I have not given away all that I own to follow in her footsteps. But I have learned – with absolute certainty – that “Turn the other cheek” does not mean that I should become a doormat for every crazed lunatic that comes around. It means that in peace, I will ALWAYS be protected, and from within peace, no human or army of humans can threaten me, unless I allow them to by leaving peace.

I did just that after finishing my graduate thesis in engineering in the mid-1990′s. Growing up in the church of Christ there were many things that my preacher, teachers, and elders could not answer without some side-stepping and handwaving. I see that even today in other congregations. What was/is being taught could not get the Scriptures (as a whole) to truly harmonize. After my master’s degree work (about 1996) I turned my studies to those hard eschatological questions I had as a teenager. After about ten years of prayerful study of the Scriptures (various translations…NKJV, ASV, NRSV,ESV,etc.) and with my Greek- Interlinear Bible (with Strong’s Concordance), I came to the reasoned conclusion that most (if not all) of the “Second Coming” passages along with all the book of Revelation came to pass at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple. I could not escape what the Scriptures (Old Testament and New) actually stated.

It was at that time I wondered if anyone else had come to the same (or roughly the same) conclusion. I was excited to find that there were several that had come to the same realization. (Even the famed Foy E. Wallace Jr. of the 1930′s and 40′s and editor of the “Gospel Advocate” stated in his commentary on the Revelation that the Apocalypse was about the destruction of Jerusalem and Judism.) I was a “preterist” even before I knew of the term. I eventually obtained a copy of “the Spirit of Prophecy” and have to agree (at least 95%) with Brother King.

Most will deem what Max King has pointed out as heresy. This is because we today are no better than the Jews of the first century in that we have let our “traditions” create pre-conceived notions as to what the Scriptures say. I can’t help but be reminded of what Paul said to the Corinthians…
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But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Cor. 2:14)
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I see the “Preterist Movement” as the climax to the “Restoration Movement”.

Thank you for your interest in spiritual things. One thing to remember with worship is that it must be done in the manner God has commanded. Jesus said in John 4:24 that those who wish to worship Him must do so “in spirit and truth”. Just because we feel that it is respectful to God doesn’t necessarily make it right. Has God commanded us to celebrate Christ’s birthday? I understand that we want to respect God, but we must respect Him by doing His will and not overstepping the boundaries that He has set. If God has not commanded us to celebrate the birth of Christ, we cannot celebrate it as a religious observance.

The “sleep walking” that is being referred to this article is not the physical act of being up and moving while you are unconscious, but a condition of the soul- spiritually being dead, while being “active” seemingly. We must not be spiritually dead (dead in sin), but return from the works of the flesh and be alive in Christ, spiritually.