How to Believe in Christ According to the Gospel of John

How to Believe in Christ According to the Gospel of John

Victor Pierobon

Copyright 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 Victor Pierobon

All Rights Reserved

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Published by Smashwords ISBN: 9780463256954

Previously published under my pseudonym as Herndis Macri

Version/Edition October 2021

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Why John Is The Best Source

Why You Should Not Read This Book

The Christian Beliefs, Events, and Definitions

The Gospel of John

Gospel of John Conclusion

First Epistle of John

Second Epistle of John

Third Epistle of John

Appendix

Questions for Modern Christianity

Questions for Modern Spiritualism

Problems in Science

Problems in Ordinary Consciousness

Techniques for Listening to God

End Notes

About The Author

INTRODUCTION

I wrote this book to understand Christ for my own salvation. But I also only hope that it will be of some benefit to others, and pray that it is not in any way a hindrance, since all true knowledge should be obtained internally by your own subjective effort and conscious realizations from the Holy Spirit of Truth, Christ, God and not just by reading academic worldly arguments. If it were not so, Christ would have written copious works for us to be saved with just an easy read.

I am not adding or removing any part to the Kings James Version, I am only writing a commentary and analysis, trying to understand, just as many others before me. We should all thank John and all be humbled by John's exquisite writings.

This book and The City of God, the Bride of Christ, and the Second Death According to Revelation of John have been amalgamated into "The Way, the Truth, and the Light According to the Gospel and Revelation of John". This book will not be updated since all updates will be done in the amalgamated new book. If you have read these books, you may find some sections to be exactly the same since these sections cover common aspects of John's teachings. They have some shared commentary sections in common. you will find the two books sharing the following sections:

Why John Is The Best Source (the next chapter)

and the APPENDIX sections at the end of the book:

Christian Beliefs, Events, and Definitions

Questions for Modern Christianity

Questions for Modern Spiritualism

Problems in Science

Problems in Ordinary Consciousness

Techniques for Listening to God

End Notes

About The Author

I amalgamated these two books because they shared too many sections and it became difficult to synchronize these common sections in both books. I highly recommend that you download The Way, the Truth, and the Light According to the Gospel and Revelation of John, since this book will not be updated anymore and may become deactivated.

WHY JOHN IS THE BEST SOURCE

I believe that the works of John the Beloved probably have the best possibility of reflecting the teachings of Christ. There are more early older copies of John's Gospel than the other Gospels. After all, John did not abandon Christ and lived many years after Christ left. The Gospel of John has nuances that ring true to me, and more so by the contrasting human frailty, ignorance, and misunderstandings in his Gospel, and is not always in agreement with the other Gospels. As a pastor once told me, John's Gospel stands alone. One should expect the many witnessed accounts of a single set of tragic events to be full of contradictions due to human errors concerning any significant event. Likewise, one should not be surprised by the disagreements and mismatches between the four Gospels.

In other non-Christian religious tales or belief systems, their divine heroes are often depicted as spotless, without any candid humor or story contradictions, and their tales are surely not surrounded with clueless, shallow, petty participants and disciples. But unlike other religious belief systems, the Gospels are unique, simply by having Christ surrounded with clueless, shallow, petty participants. There are some subtly humorous quotes attributed to Jesus, in the many times he reluctantly had to rephrase answers with a variety of analogies, metaphors, and parables, often repeatedly showing his frustration on how clued out the public was, and even on his close followers. The Gospels show all the complexities of real events involving very contemporary-like foibles and dynamics. The numerous recollections of very extraordinary psychic miracles are amazing, and perhaps more amazing is how much pettiness is shown by the masses, leaders, and Pharisees who, by their unimaginable shallow envy, greed, and pride, sought to deny and kill Jesus.

John was given a special task. Sadly, the other disciples were all martyred and only John was spared and allowed to live on to write about it (see John [21:23]). John was the only apostle among the twelve apostles that stood undeniably faithful to Christ. John was the only disciple to attend Christ’s trial and Christ’s crucifixion. Because of his full faithfulness, as decreed by the resurrected Christ at the end of the Gospel, and much to the angst of the other disciples, especially Peter, Christ said "If I will that he [John] tarry till I come, what is that to thee?". John was spared martyrdom. John is also the first male disciple to arrive at the tomb after the Resurrection. He is the apostle who wrote Revelation, a unique work of prophecy while in exile.

The Gospel of John contains a belief system that is continued in his Revelation - John's prophetic vision. Unfortunately, the Gospels are secondhand written down documents, multi-translated descriptions, multi-copied, so caution has to be taken by the reader since any worldly-wise materialistic interpretation will always be wrong. You can bet on it that my book will be wrong as well and will likely be full of misinterpretations. Having said that, I think it is still worth reading this book and my effort to understand John's belief system. You should avoid being an Armageddon-ist, and also avoid extracting any believable physical prophetic timeline of events, for your worldly gain or survival.

Salvation in John's Revelation:

John presents in Revelation, a cohesive continuation of his belief system from his Gospel. In fact, the Gospel of Matthew [13:30-40] also lays out Revelation's plot and provides most of the keys to the mysteries: "Let both [the good and the evil] grow together until the harvest: ... He that sows the good seed is the Son of man; The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire [, the second death's lake of fire in Revelation]; so shall it be in the end of this world, [before God creates a New Earth and New Heaven]. Matthew [13:30-40] is similar to Revelation [22:10-12]; it states: Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. [11] He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. [12] And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be." It describes a God that even tolerates and allows evil to remain unchecked in Heaven and on Earth until the Judgment, this is seldom admitted by Christians.

So you can see that the Revelation plot is not an oddly isolated fanciful plot solely dreamed up by John. The Revelation plot, in a parable, was indeed mentioned in the Gospels by Christ before the writing of Revelation. The proposition that evil, demon seeds, empty husks or weeds, what may seem conscious and with some inner Light, or potentially good, both good and bad must exist unhindered to reincarnate and to repeat their evil or good free will till the end of time's Final Judgment. Both good and bad are allowed to prove themselves before the final harvest and separations, for some of them to enter into the City of God. This makes perfect sense, as an explanation for why Christ's physical death did nothing to prevent the recurrence of sins, horrors, homicides, and abuses that he witnessed in his time and to this date and God's allowance for evil to continue to be in our present world. In fact, it gets much worse as Judgment approaches since the good are harvested first, thus allowing the density of pure evil to increase on Earth. They are identified in Revelation as those who destroy the Earth.

Christ and God did not forgive all our sins, as some think he promised, but God has provided a narrow venue for salvation, encouraging us to be the good seed sowers, as sons of Man, to listeners of God, Christ, and invite the Holy Spirit of Truth within us. Only the good are allowed to exist and be in harmony in Heaven with their own kind. Christ did not bring God's Kingdom on Earth to exalt the land of Israel or some other sacred land, as some worldly Jews expected.

Atheists use these seemingly unfulfilled promises as a shallow excuse for justifying their disbelief in God. Some atheists state: I refuse to believe in a cruel unforgiving God that allows so much suffering and injustice to exist. God is not a puppet master. He allows us to be good voluntarily and to be placed among only those just like us.

WHY YOU SHOULD NOT READ THIS BOOK

Why did Christ not write a book on how to believe in Christ and be saved? Why did Christ speak in parables to us but spoke plainly and direct only to his disciples only just before he was crucified? John’s Gospel [14:26] Christ states: But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you… and later on in [16:29] John states, "His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb". It was only after the Holy Spirit of Truth baptized them into seeing the divine reality all around. Thereafter they had a dramatic spiritual growth, by dashing off all fears about death, became healers and prophets of the divine nature of Christ! This facilitated their understanding of the plain truth dialogs with Christ. It was like a near-death experience (NDE) experience transforming fear into the pursuit of love and kindness.

So this is my frail attempt to try to understand Christ rather than only God on a personal level via some purely logical written word analysis of the bible and John’s works. I have a vague hope that those who like to be convinced solely via common worldly logical arguments may be convinced enough to study Christianity and search for the Kingdom of Heaven. But I realize that no matter what words I write with these erroneous logical arguments and half-truths, I and many will be misled into a wrong understanding of Christ and our divine reality. I will therefore point out examples of my errors in my arguments within this book and similar worldly logical errors committed by other semi-spiritual leaders.

Where logic goes awry when addressing unknown experiences is when one applies common experience from one dimension or level of creation or level of consciousness or divine awareness to other divine realms. Even by just having an extrasensory means or even lacking one makes it impossible to convey to anyone without matching background in senses or experience. One cannot apply how this world works as being related to other worlds. Ideally, the sons of God and God exist on all levels simultaneously and communicates with each other simultaneously regarding all levels of creation. God is omniscient of all existence from Hell up to the throne of God. God is all-knowing at all levels and coordinating at all levels to realize thy kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven so that all realms will provide the same level of divine peace and cooperation as exists in Heaven eventually.

If we try to apply mundane decomposition analysis which is the most common way to study causality in this material world where one assumes that objects are composed of parts and in turn, parts are composed of finer parts, all the way down to atomic units of space, time and energy may not be applicable across all divine levels or realities. It’s a divide-and-conquer methodology to try to reduce interactions that can be easily modeled by simple linear mathematics. Consciousness can move across these realms while retaining the same divine I am identity across these many forms of existence. Christ refers in parables to the same composition analysis in the abide in when stating that the Holy Spirit of Truth abides in Christ as well as God abides in Christ as well, does not really imply true composition but could just be simply the coordination of their will regarding the realization of God’s plans.

A simple example and proof of this would be the experiment of someone who has sight trying to explain to someone who has been always blind over a voice-only phone call how to make a turn in any special direction without referring to their left or right side of their body or referring to objects that may be left or right of them. Voice and non-stereo mono hearing which is 1 dimensional alone cannot communicate anything 2 or 3 dimensional, such as tactile or visual information for body parts or relative locations. So like the "blind leading the blind" this book of mine is just that! So many religions persecuted and fought over whether Christ and God and the Holy Ghost are one entity or not, which is silly since they are fighting over mundane words, concepts, and identities that do not apply to divine reality. By trying to understand the divine via some arrangement of words is naïve since mere words only represent this world's objects and their abstractions. We don’t have words developed among multi-realm beings sharing a common reality, so any logical arguments arranging these words are useless in deriving new knowledge by the use of our human pure logic’s deductive rules or manipulations of our erroneous axiom's assumptions to build up some divine system of causality.

Orthodox religions and even occultism try to be the science or descriptors of these divine laws or miracles. They seek their own self-centered Power and Glory that result in the suffering of others by this. Rather than seeking to see the individual needs, sins, and fates so that they can assist our brothers in their redemption here on Earth. We as flesh and blood cannot derive a divine model to help us navigate through all of God’s creations with just these Earthly non-divine experiences. Any attempt will result in getting yourself lost and more bound into this world, it will not release or realize yourself into a divine realm to enable you to self-sacrifice and help others. You can’t just think yourself into salvation with some internal thought sequences or verbal dialogues. You have to be subjectively transformed within your pure consciousness or awareness in the presence of the realm of God, Christ, Spirit of Truth, and the divine. You must open up to listening to the Holy Spirit of Truth or Holy Ghost to teach you. Your divine existence and other holy and good divine beings, which are referred to as divine guardian angels, helpers, and divine souls.

All one can hope by studying John is to try to understand is how Christ’s disciples slowly overcame their human fears, unbelief, and confusion into fearless believers and witnesses of the kingdom of God all around them, being transformed by the baptism by the Holy Spirit of Truth, providing them with the truth to make them truly FREE in mind, body, and soul, transforming them into Christ’s divine helpers in spreading the belief in what Christ said and did for us.

Many wrong assumptions or interpretations in Christianity’s past have caused much suffering. By dropping the teaching of reincarnation or the resurrection of the soul in the 4th century Christianity, Martin Luther tried to practice the disciplinary and devotional practice of flogging oneself with whips or other instruments that inflict pain on the assumption that if one has only one lifetime or reincarnation to prove oneself to be worthy of salvation then one must make as many sacrifices, have all the virtues, none of the deadly vices, and suffer as much as Christ did on the cross. Martin soon realized that one lifetime of self-punishment is not enough time to accomplish this, so as result dropped all these attempts and simply stated that salvation is solely done by the grace of Christ and by what Christ sacrificed and suffered on the crucifixion to pay for our all sins. By this, Christ’s and James’s emphasis on doing good deeds as sons of Man and becoming listeners to God’s will as sons of God is woefully ignored. Martin pointed out the same logical irrationality in the Roman Catholic Church’s selling Indulgences for a guaranteed entry into Heaven, for a price, while ignoring its logical corollary that if the church has the divine power to guarantee Heaven to any soul then the church should therefore print an infinite amount of indulgences to ensure Heaven for every soul that ever existed as any good Christian would do if one had such a divine power to do so. Although Martin was able to uncover the Church’s logical error or their hypocrisy, Martin failed to catch his own above-mentioned assumptions and subsequent errors in his logical deduction.

Martin assumed that a soul has only one lifetime and does not reincarnate many times, which implies that a new soul is created with every birth or lifetime since it is a 1-to-1 relationship between a single lifetime and a soul. This same assumption or restriction also highlights the atheistic argument against God by the apparent injustice of stillbirths or the births with deformities, or even implying that we should have an urgent obligation to be creating as many new souls or children as possible for God. But again, Christians have forgotten what Christ told them. Christ said in John [3:13] "And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." In other words, the body return to dust but the soul return to Heaven from where it came from, and the soul does not go to Heaven for its first time! In other words, the soul is created by God in Heaven and returns to Heaven. God can send a soul just once into a body or may send the same soul many, many times to many different bodies in many, many different timelines or eras. Christ also mentioned in John that He laid down his life and raised it many times before. In what other lifetime or incarnation did Christ lay down his life? As stated in John [1:10] "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.", in other words, Christ states that he had an active hand in our history. Some new translations of John [1:10] have watered down it by stating that the world was made through him rather than actively by him. Melchizedek, Joseph of Jacob, and God’s cherished Job were very similar to Jesus the Christ.

Blaise Pascal was a great mathematician who became a monk. He proposed that if the Christian God does exist, the agnostic gains eternal life by believing in him and loses infinitely by not believing.in God. But we know that belief is more than just saying you believe in God. Blaise Pascal assumed that his God was the true God and the word equivalent of God in other languages and regions around the world was not the same true God. How can I assume that I have not made the same wrong logical deductions as so many intelligent luminaries have done in the past? That is why I say that you should not read this book but only seek the truth from the Holy Spirit of Truth by listening to God with your whole body, mind, and soul.

I am not a holy man. I am a sinner who has sinned in all possible ways in thought. I am writing this book trying to vainly convince atheists or agnostics to look into Christianity in a scientific way and eventually to be swayed into trying to look deep inside into any spiritual path. For those in doubt, to seek the possibility of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit to help them. Ask them and your higher self questions and then with faith wait and listen. Answers will come in patience and faith. Let’s not seek answers for our own Power and Glory but seek to see the divine Power and Glory working through the trials and redemptions in ourselves, our brothers and sisters so that we too can do the good deeds to help them.

CHRISTIAN BELIEFS, EVENTS, AND DEFINITIONS

We must keep in mind the dangers of dissecting truth from dead written words, but they can become questions for you to ask your Spirit of Truth or Holy Ghost to teach and guide you into true understanding. Note that LORD in all capitals letters refers to God, while Lord with only the first letter in capitals refers most often to Christ within the Bible.

God:

God is, as God states: "I am that I am, I am a jealous God, God is light; in him there is no darkness at all., God created the heavens and the earth., Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God., God of gods., LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God".

God, the "I am that I am", has no material face or a physical representative image, but Christ from God has God in him to allow us to see the Light, the divine consciousness, or the face of God through Christ and not perish. From the personality of Christ, one can derive the persona of God, as the light and life → love.

God as a creator: If God is the creator of reality or the stream of traceable determinism, then emergent material consciousness does not apply to Him, being the creator of darkness (the void non-living material and non-material universe in darkness), matter (all the physical realities in all Earths and Heavens), and consciousness (the Light, God is light; in him there is no darkness at all."). So, no created material concept, experience, existence, concepts, or consciousness can represent God. The consciousness of Christ and God is not identifiable within anything in the materialistic or spiritual worlds, any relationships within these worlds, or any of the emotions, thoughts, concepts, or ideas. Having no darkness in God, as beyond the pure Light like Christ, the darkness or worldly-wise cannot comprehend or properly obey or do His Will, love, and to glorify and appreciate God and all His creations with full conscious acceptance. All souls with the Light, humbly worship God around his throne in the conscious realization that without God, they and all of creation would cease to exist, except by every word that comes from the mouth of God. - Matthew [4:4].

God as a destroyer: since no one can see the face of God and survive, the face or gaze of God is used to destroy the old earth and heaven, and in the last judgment's final death, the second death (John [1:18] "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.", John [4:12]No man hath seen God at an time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us., Revelation [20:11-15]"...from whose face [of God] the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. [12] And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out...[by] books [ and ] book of life: …. according to their works...were cast into the lake of fire...the second death … whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.", Proverbs [9:10] The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom..., and Matthew [10:28] "... fear him [God] which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." This is the second death. Also God, as the Gardener, God is presented as the creator of Adam which later is the same as the redeemed Christ by stating in John [15:1] "... my Father is the husbandman [Gardener]. 15:2 Every branch in me [Christ] that beareth not fruit he [Gardener- God] taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he [God] purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. 15:3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. 15:4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. 15:5 I [Christ] am the vine, ye [us] are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. 15:6 If a man [cannot sup with or be in each other or] abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned [by the Second Death solely by God and not Christ]. 15:7 If ye abide in me [Christ], and my words abide [or our deeds are in agreement with your deeds as sons of God] in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." So God is the creator and destroyer, making Adam and Christ, and the lineage of the sons of God [that abide in Christ and God] and sons of Man [of Adam as the good seeders]. Christ is our only peer that has no sin and is the purest Son of God and our Lord and our final Judge on Earth, Heaven, and Hell. For only He who has no sin, let him judge us! While God’s WILL creates everything, it is his pure eye or consciousness or "gaze that undoes his creations. Similarly in QM (Quantum Mechanics), it is our own conscious act of observation that collapses the QM superposition of multiple possibilities or potential values into a classical state of a single value or one outcome probability, I. e. our conscious eye" consumes God’s created QM information.

God as a personal God: Since John mentions quite often that God resides in Christ and Christ with all his three aspects, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, can also be in you, as a son of God, a son of Adam, and a son of Man, who seeds the good seeds. As a personal God, Mark in [12:30] states "... thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. In other words, cease to be like Adam, repent your evil judgments and deeds, and cease blaming God for your faults, as was done by Adam in Genesis [3:10-12], Adam states I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. ... [then God asks] ...Who told thee that thou wast naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat? ... [ then Adam replied ], "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate. In this passage, immediately after consuming the ability to make judgments for himself as to whether something is Good or Evil, Adam judges God's creation of Adam and Eve and his nakedness (creation and what is missing and the unacceptable lack of clothes and who knows what ever else Adam judges as wrong or missing in God’s creation and God in turn) and in being naked" and becomes fearful (the beginning of Man's "weeping and gnashing of teeth"), hides his self-condemnation, lies to and blames God, and then blames another, the Woman ("The woman whom You gave to be with me,). By this, Adam ceases to have a personal God by his own act of distancing himself from God, by judging God. Jesus was Christ by having God within (abiding in) Jesus. Jesus also has the Holy Spirit of Truth, as John calls the Holy Ghost. Sadly, Adam did not repent or admit to sin, nor prayed to God to ask God if he could eat the apple", but instead of that, Adam trusted Satan, a stranger, and his companion Woman, and also Adam sought to become like a God without the wisdom or the all-knowing ability of God (and possibly the Holy Spirit of Truth). Adam and Eve sought for their own absolute Godly free will without the knowledge of God regarding the future consequences of their will or actions (-the typical immaturity of juveniles and criminals who are oblivious of the consequences of their impulsive actions). The Spirit of Rebellion in Satan infected Adam and Eve to want a different Universe or reality to be created based on their shallow understanding of everything around them. By this desire to be independent and separate they lost their personal relationship with God (have you?). The concept of having an intimate personal relationship with God is unique in the Christian New Testament in contrast to some of the Old Testament’s frequent portrayal of God as a jealous and stern LORD of laws.

God as a child: God is never presented by Christ as an old bearded overbearing patriarch often depicted in modern Christian paintings, but instead presents a Heaven populated with the pure minds of babes. The Gospels repeat the notion that one must be a babe, reborn again anew, to enter Heaven, have God in us, and to have the knowledge of the Spirit of Truth. God is the raw creative imagination or force most often seen in our very young children's imagination. God is sinless and pure like a child and His Son, Christ. The unimaginative manipulating rich, worldly-wise, judgmental, violent, and liars among us are not allowed to corrupt Heaven and be with God, but God allows babes, children, pure in heart, forgiving, accepting, joyful, and positive souls, similar to God, to reside with and in God (the Light), Christ (the Way), and the Spirit of Truth/Holy Ghost (the Truth). Children are asexual in nature like the angels in Heaven.

References regarding these creative pure in heart babes: in Matthew [11:25] Jesus states I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes., in John [3:5] Jesus states "...unless one is born of water [from Christ] and the Spirit [of Truth], he cannot enter the kingdom of God.", in Luke [17:1] Jesus says it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones., and lastly in Matthew [18:3] Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. and Matthew [19:13] Jesus states "Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven."

In these ways, Christ portrays the creative ability