-Caveat Lector-
I think that one of his most misunderstood quotes was that "religion
is the opiate of the masses". In the context of the time in which he lived
this was very true. Since in most societies then there was no "safety net".
If you were too ill to work, and had no family to help you out, you just
fell thru the cracks. I many places there were still "debter's prisons or
work houses. It was too easy then, to say to a poor starving worker, that it
was God's will that things be that way. That they should accept it and hope
for a reward in heaven. People bore with the most deploreable conditions
because they felt God had deemed it so.
In our time we have so little concept of such a struggle. The
closest we can to this was the great depression in the 1930's. There is a
book "Down and Out in the Great Depression" of letters from common people in
their own language to the President and others describing their situation.
Many families lost their homes for less than $40.00 in back taxes.
Another book is fiction but gives you a sense of what true poverty
is "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair (who by the way happened to be a
socialist).
This comment may be off topic but I think it's related. Like they
say "nothing happens in a vaccuum".
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Man on the Run" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 4:21 AM
Subject: [CTRL] Excluded Jewish prophets?
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> BF>I read the Jewish prophets regularly, not often read straight through
> in Synagogues but in parts. I believe that what they have to say is
> relevant for the world today, including the Christian and Islamic
> worlds. They speak to humanity, and are rightly claimed by the forces
> of social justice as their own. Not included in the Bible, but relied
> on by large numbers of Jewish people, are the predictions of the
> Lubavitcher Rebbe, said to have predicted the fall of the Soviet Union
> and other events. People ignore these teachers at their peril.
> However, definitely excluded from any Jewish canon are four people
> who I believe may qualify as Jewish prophets in some sense. I believe
> that they are controversial, but may be beneficial to an understanding
> of the world.
> They are:
> 1)Jesus of Nazareth
> 2)John the Revelator
> 3)Nostradomus
> 4)Karl Marx.
>
> I am not sure if Nostradomus was Jewish, but it is said that he
> was. Marx may not have been Jewish because of his matrilineal heritage,
> but has been claimed to have been, and I will assume that he was until
> it is demonstrated otherwise. For all practical intent and purpose, I
> will say that these four are Jewish teachers seem to have been excluded
> from the canon for ideological reasons.
> Jesus, claimed to be the Messiah by his followers, predicted the
> fall of the Temple, if events were as written in the Gospels. He also
> made comments on divorce and social injustice that must be taken in to
> account. He challenged conservative male Jewish forces on some very
> valid points. I do not accept the claim that he was the Messiah,
> however whether he was or was not it is more important to honor God that
> man. He said as much himself. Trinitarian Christians should take heed
> of his own words on the subject of God and man.
> John the Revelator seems to have predicted many things in the world
> today. Much corresponds to what is written in the Book of Daniel.
> However, he also predicted the rise of a latter-day Babylon the Great,
> an imperialistic nation that essentially rules over the kingdoms of the
> earth, something the non-apocraphyl books of the Hebrew Bible do not
> seem to mention directly. Much of what he wrote about seems to have
> come to pass in the rising to power of an economic system ruling over
> the kingdoms of the planet. I step back from saying that the United
> States fulfills this prophecy geographically. I would pray it were
> otherwise. However, I cannot dismiss it.
> Nostradomus seems to have a good accuracy rating. Even the 1999
> prophecy may have come true in the form of the JFK, Jr. crash. I do not
> dismiss this possibility, but it is a hard one, and much like seeing
> patterns in the bark of a tree. So much has been claimed about
> Nostradomus that I cannot really say one way or the other. I am
> skeptical about New Age prophets but Ican say that a very few seem
> incredibly accurate. Nostradomus seems to have been incredibly
> accurate.
> Karl Marx is a much maligned name because it is associated with the
> atheistical tyrannies of the former Soviet Union and modern China.
> Erich Fromm and T.B. Bottmore unearthed a more complex thinker by
> searching the archives. He was heavily influenced by the Enlightenment
> and its views on religion, and was no more guilty than other thinkers of
> his time of not believing in God. He had an understanding of the needs
> of labor and the need to overcome the alienation found in modern
> capitalist society, one that might have been partly under Divine
> Inspiration. I do not discount it, even as I do not believe in his
> theories and accept capitalism as necessary.
> Marx understood that monopoly capitalism has a tendency to divide
> between the owners and the proletariat, the politically free workers who
> man the factories of the owners with only their labor to sell. The most
> advanced capitalistic systems, those in which democracy affords the
> worker political power, are still alienated societies. The least
> advanced systems, those mired in feudalism, are societies in need of a
> bourgeois led revolution supported by the workers to "win the battle of
> democracy". Eventually, the workers themselves would overcome
> alienation by taking direct control themselves. A brief majoritarian
> dictatorship would extend democracy to all avenues of society, and then
> abolish the State itself as unnecessary under communism. Some took it
> further than Marx and said that the family and religion would also be
> abolished, however Marx tended to consider these anarchists as infantile
> and immature. Engels was less discerning. Marx failed to predict
> tyrannical Leninism, a bourgeois system, supported as it was by western
> bankers, and should not necessarily be blamed for it.
> Marx predictions have come true less in feudal societies, where
> Communism rose to power, but more in the global capitalism of today.
> Stalinist and feudal regimes have been swept aside by advanced liberal
> capitalism under the rubric of a "New World Order". However, this "New
> World Order" is resembling the old imperialism more and more, as Marx
> predicted. Marx was correct about some things. We have workers and
> owners, our democracy functioning more for the owners. We cannot even
> get national healthcare, and save the family farmer!
> If we had a society for the workers, it would probably be a world
> government and be geographically ruled by India and China, as opposed to
> the current New World Order, the Lion with Eagles Wings (Daniel Ch. 7),
> ruled by England and the United States. Marx had less respect for India
> and China than for England and the United States, seeing them as
> advanced bourgeois democracies having taken great strides in
> overthrowing fedualism, but this would probably be the result of a true
> implementation of his theories, however just or unjust. China and India
> have the greatest population, and would certainly rule a "global
> democracy", demanding re-distribution of the wealth whether earned in
> the free market or earned by monopolistic practices. It would be
> uncomfortable to say the least, though no more painful than the
> discomfort experienced by the billions in poverty today, to be fair.
> Marx was an atheist, but I wonder about whether some of what he
> said was under Divine Inspiration. In all four cases listed, I wonder
> whether God spoke through them, to a degree if not totally.
> Conservative Rabbis might suggest that they were under the "Evil
> Inclination", in other words, Satan's power. Conspiracists have that
> Marx himself was "New World Order". He was not a believer. However,
> when enough of what somebody has said comes true it does give me pause
> for thought.
> MHO, open to correction,
> Bates
>
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DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
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