Thank You, Rick You pretty well delineated what I was talking about, in a lot more detail.
When Constantine made the sect that became the Roman Catholic Church the "official" Religion of Rome in the early 300's, the Roman records show that they went on a rampage of destruction to obliterate any group that was in opposition to their belief. There were numerous sects all calling themselves "Christian" with differing beliefs. In these records it is said that even the Roman officers were amazed at the savageness of the designated Christians against the other sects and the Pagans. Priests and Priestesses were killed, documents were destroyed, and temples razed to the ground with their own built on the site of the old one.
If documents such as the Dead Sea scrolls and the Naj Hamadi documents (The Gnostic Gospels) had not been hidden, they would also have been destroyed. Christianity made this standard practice all over the world everywhere they encountered a "Pagan" culture. They had to save the souls of the disbeliveers even if they had to kill them to do it.
Some try to divorce the actions of the Crusaders and other Christian Conquerors by saying that they were not doing Christian things. I can't accept that since at the time they were doing what the Church wanted them to do. If that does not agree with what we would like to believe they should have done, we cannot go back, retroactively, and change it. At that time it was accepted Church policy - therefore it was Christian whether we like it or not.
I do not worry about having to vindicate my actions to "God" since I believe that the Spirit is eternal and will return in another body to continue it's learning - Reincarnation, if you will. It is amazing that 80% of the world's population do not believe in Christianity, yet a small percent of those that do think that the rest of us are wrong.
My personal library consists of about 3000 books, mostly History and Religion, with not over a dozen of them classed as fiction - unless you include the 14 different Bibles (including Catholic) - all of which I have read COVER TO COVER, and a LOT of books written by Christian apologists all based on the Bible. I think that those who use the Bible as a basis of how we should act should read ALL of the book, not just the GOOD portions.
I recently read that someone had tabulated the number of people who were killed directly by "God" or at "God's" direction. The number exceeded 2 1/2 Million. Those killed by Satan totaled 10 - Job's sons and daughters. And Satan at that time was the Adversary, working at "God's" direction to test Job's devotion, so these can be added to the list killed by "God.
Someone once said "Beware the man who carries only one book." Bill Eade -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
