The "Gospel" Of John

I would like to read your argument.I would say that the ego, the deliberate conceptual functioning of our organism, imagines it is a separate entity, and hence separate from the world, the universe, and God. But there being no actual entity there is no separation only the illusion of separation.lfen

There is nothing original in my thought. I'm just representing Buddhist and Advaitist teaching and also non dualist of many persuassions including a few contemplative Christians and Sufis. If that line of though interests you there are lots of resources to explore it further.lfen

Har Har! er, um , Hear, Hear. It's a tough job and I thank you Admins all for doing it, better you than me.lfen

Jar,Whenever I bring this up I'm utterly ignored but I keep wondering. Paul and the Gospel authors report an expectation of the return of Jesus within the lifetime of at least some of the people living then. I wonder the effect on the church as the years stretched on.I also note one thing about fundamentalist as they turn to a solely Bible based religion they expect Jesus to return in their lifetime, I suspect because that is what they are reading in the Bible, that was how the religion seems to have been represented.I suspect the Catholic church made changes in doctrine in part because they had to fill in for an absent Jesus. It appears that Christianity wasn't expected to last long. No need to marry etc because the world was ending any day. That may have also been a factor in the matyrs?Well, just curious about this.lfen

Jar,Interesting thanks. There was Jewish and Greek interest in the end times during this period though I don't know how common it was.Wasn't the notion of the Messiah in some way tied to an end time? And if so then if there was a claim that Jesus was the Messiah then wouldn't the second coming be in part an attempt to explain why his first coming hadn't resulted in a fulfillment of the End Time prophecy?lfen