The Bridegroom, His Brides and Christ's Relationship With Individuals

[northwye]

The Bridegroom, His Brides and Christ's Relationship With Individuals

The bridegroom is in the Old Testament, but the bridegroom and his bride are only fully revealed in the New Testament.

"The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
2. To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
3. To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified.
4. And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.
5. And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers.
6. But ye shall be named the Priests of the LORD: men shall call you the Ministers of our God: ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves.............I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels." Isaiah 61: 1-10

Isaiah 61: 1-10 is a prophecy on the remaking of Old Covenant Israel in and by Jesus Christ. Luke 4: 16-21 quotes Isaiah 61: 1-2 by Christ himself and Luke 4: 21 says "And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears."

"For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee." Isaiah 62: 5

"Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet." Joel 2: 16

In his remaking of Old Covenant Israel into the spiritual house of I Peter 2: 5, Christ uses the metaphor of himself as being the bridegroom and those who are in him and he in them as the bride.

"Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom." Matthew 25: 1, the parable of the ten virgins. The word bridegroom is νυμφιου, numphios, Strong's Exhaustive Concordance number 3566, from 3565. Strong's 3565 means a bride, and so bridegroom is derived from bride. The original Greek word numphé, from Strong's number 3567, nymphṓn, meant bridal chamber.

In just a brief look at many New Testament scriptures on the bridegroom and his bride I could find no text talking about the church as the bride of Christ.

And also both the Bride and the Bridegroom are mentioned in Revelation 18: 23, a text which supports the many others on the apostasy among those claiming to be God's people.

"Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him.
29. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled. John 3: 29. This is John the Baptist speaking about the Bride and the Bridegroom, both of which are revealed more fully after Christ begins his mission.

In II Corinthians 11: 2-4 Paul uses the metaphor of the Bride, there the chaste virgin, and Christ the Bridegroom. "For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
3. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. 4. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him."

Paul also teaches on the issue of another Gospel in Galatians 1: 6-9, 13-16.

"I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: 7. Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. 8. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 9. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.........For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: 14. And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.
15. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace,
16. To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood:"

Putting II Corinthians 11: 2-4 together with Galatians 1: 6-9, 13-16 reveals a doctrine of the New Testament. Paul says he has tried to present "you" as a chaste Bride to Christ the Bridegroom, but he fears the serpent in his subtilty may corrupt the Bride by leading her into another Gospel, another spirit and along with this, another Jesus, not the real Bridegroom. Paul then says accepting another Gospel causes the Bride to become accursed. Then Paul says that he once had zeal or the traditions of his fathers (in Old Covenant Israel), that he profited in the Jews' religion while persecuting Christians. But Paul says God called him out of all that by his grace.

The implication is that God had called Paul out of the Old Covenant religion. and that the Galatians or some of them had been deceived into accepting parts of that Old Covenant religion, which Paul says is another Gospel and that being in another Gospel is being accursed..

In Matthew 22: 2-13 there is the parable of the wedding dinner, where a guy tries to crash the wedding dinner without having on the proper garment, and he is thrown out.

"And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived." Revelation 18: 23

The voice of the Bridegroom and of the Bride is heard no more in Babylon. What is Babylon? Its Mystery Babylon the Great,the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth in Revelation 17: 5 Babylon is religion, but religion that is false.

Since the voice of the Bridegroom and of the Bride is heard no more in Babylon, God calls those who belong to him out of Babylon. "And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." Revelation 18: 4

Finally, ""Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. 8. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. 9. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God. 10. And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." Revelation 19: 7-10

"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. 2. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God." Revelation 21: 1-3

The New Jerusalem is the completion spiritually of the Jerusalem in Galatians 4: 26 which is above, is free and is the mother of us all, that is, of the elect, including Paul. There is no separation of Israel and the church either in the Jerusalem of Galatians 4: 26 of in the New Jerusalem of Revelation 1-3. Jerusalem in Galatians 4: 26 is not literal, physical Jerusalem, but is the lively stones built up into a spiritual house of I Peter 2: 5. And the New Jerusalem is not a literal building of the new earth and new heavens but is the Bride of Christ.

Christ said in John 10: 10, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." And when in Luke 9: 54-56 James and John wanted Christ to call down fire from heaven to kill people in a village, Christ "...rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them."

The bridegroom gives spiritual life to his brides, and Luke 9: 54-56 implies the bridegroom also gives life in the flesh to his brides, though the spiritual life he gives them is most important.

 

[northwye]

Those who want to make the ekklesia, the meeting, assembly or congregation into the Body of Christ, the elect, and the ekklesia, the Capital C Church into the Bride of Christ may quote Ephesians 5: 24-31:

""For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
24. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
25. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
26. That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
27. That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
28. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
29. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:
30. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
31. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh."

Then, going on, those who want to make the Capital C Church the elect and hence the accepted brides of Christ as in the parable of the ten virgins of Matthew 25: 1-11 may say that the Jerusalem of Galatians 4:26 is the Church, and not Israel remade in Christ as a spiritual house (Jeremiah 8 1-6, I Peter 2: 5).

"And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it....O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord." Jeremiah 18: 4,6

"Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house,acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." I Peter 2: 5

The Jerusalem of Galatians 4: 26 is Israel after God remade it into a spiritual house.

"Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar.
25. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
26. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
27. For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband." Galatians 4: 24-27

Paul is following the Old Testament in Galatians 4: 25-26 - II Kings 21: 13 - in using Jerusalem to mean Israel. And the Jerusalem in Galatians 4: 25 is Old Covenant Israel, while the Jerusalem in Galatians 4: 26 is New Covenant Israel, called Jerusalem. In Galatians 4: 27 he says that Hagar, the bondwoman, who represents Old Covenant Israel, is desolate, though she has more children than the one who has a husband, who is Christ.

Hagar,which Paul uses to represent Old Covenant Israel, is desolate in Galatians 4: 27. In Matthew 23: 38, Jesus says of Old Covenant Israel that "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate."

"But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:
8. How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?
9. For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:
8. How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.
10. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.
11. For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious." II Corinthians 3: 7-11

Again, in II Corinthians 3: 7-11 the Old Covenant is said to be the ministration of death and of condemnation and the New Covenant as the ministration of the Spirit is glorious and is the ministration of righteousness.

In part, Christian Zionism insists that the church, from ekklesia, the meeting, assembly or congregation, must be the Body of Christ, and the elect, in order for the Church (with a Capital C) to stand alongside Old Covenant Israel which Christian Zionism says still exists as the chosen people of God because of their physical bloodline.

The bride of Christ, including virgins of the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25: 1-11, is the Body of Christ, which is the elect. Ekklesia is used in the New Testament most of the time to mean a local congregation or several congregations. The falling away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4 and the several other texts which support it, along with the parable of the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13: 24-30, and the leavening of the kingdom of God in Luke 13: 21 do not teach that the congregations are always made up only of the elect and in fact, the elect in the congregations would be expected to become fewer and fewer as the falling away goes on.

In view of what is said about Old Covenant Israel in Galatians 4: 27, in II Corinthians 3: 7-11, in Matthew 23: 38 and in some other places like Romans 9: 6-8 how can the doctrine that Old Covenant Israel now exists as a people of God alongside the Church be true in scripture?

"And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12. That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." II Thessalonians 1: 10-12

 

[northwye]

in Matthew 25: 1-12, in the parable of the ten virgins, not all the virgins were accepted by the bridegroom and went into the wedding with him.

"And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.
3. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them:
4. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps." Matthew 25: 2-4

In Matthew 25: 2 foolish is from μωραι, morai, a form of moros.

http://biblehub.com/greek/3474.htm

"3474. móros ►
Strong's Concordance
móros: dull, stupid, foolish
Original Word: μωρός, ά, όν
Part of Speech: Adjective
Transliteration: móros
Phonetic Spelling: (mo-ros')
Short Definition: stupid, foolish
Definition: (a) adj: stupid, foolish, (b) noun: a fool.

3474 mōrós (the root of the English terms, "moron, moronic") – properly, dull (insipid), flat ("without an edge"); (figuratively) "mentally inert"; dull in understanding; nonsensical ("moronic"), lacking a grip on reality (acting as though "brainless").?"

The five foolish virgins were spiritually dumb. Not having oil in their lamps is metaphoric for not being able to see, not being led by the Holy Spirit.

The result of this spiritual dumbness is seen in Matthew 25: 10-12, "And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.
11. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. 12. But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not."

The parable of the ten virgins does not necessarily mean that one half of those who believe they are of the elect are, in fact, the elect. It means that not all were accepted to go to the wedding and become brides of Christ.

The falling away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4 is the reason why some of those thinking they were brides of Christ were not accepted into the wedding, "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 4. Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God."

In II Thessalonians 2: 3-4 a falling away is from αποστασια, apostasia, an apostasy. Paul does not give the specifics of when this apostasy will occur, if it is a one time apostasy or occurs more than once in history, and the man of sin sitting in the temple of God is metaphoric. Acts 7: 48, Acts 17: 24, I Corinthians 3: 16-17 and I Corinthians 6: 19 all say in the New Covenant there is no physical temple of God, and that now believers are the temple of God. In Christian Zionist end time prophecy the falling away of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4 is always future and that it happens only when the Christian Zionist man anti-Christ appears.

Remember that there are several other prophecies about an apostasy, such as Luke 13: 18-21, I Timothy 4: 1. II Timothy 3: 5, 7-8, II Timothy 4: 3-4 and there are those prophecies about the false prophets, such as Matthew 24: 11, and II Peter 2: 1-3, which imply for sure that there is an apostasy. The parable of the wheat and the tares of Matthew 13: 24-30 shows that there is to be tares as well as wheat, which, when combined with Luke 13: 21, saying that the leavening of the kingdom of God increases in time, can mean that the tares at some point can outnumber the wheat.

 

[jamie]

For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation. And as many as walk according to this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. (Galatians 6:15-16)​

 

[jamie]

Then you shall say to Pharaoh, "Thus says the LORD, Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me. But if you refuse to let him go, indeed I will kill your son, your firstborn." (Exodus 4:22-23)​

Passover. The firstborn saved by the Passover blood.

 

[northwye]

Christian Zionists want to say that their Capital C Church, in which the
clergy class act as "lords over God's heritage," is the Bride of Christ.
But whenever an elite rules over the people, what results is often some
form of a collective. Individuals with Christ in them, and led by the Holy
Spirit, are not a collective as are people under the control of an elite of men.

The Protestants in the Western world have emphasized to some extent an
individual's personal relationship with God, as Jesus Christ the Son. The
West has affirmed the individual and his spiritual rise above the mere
flesh of man through Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Protestant Christianity, more than Roman Catholicism, maintained that the
individual, without supervision by a clergy class, could understand the
word of God and act upon it. This sounds like the old Southern Baptist
doctrine of the priesthood of the individual, which was done away with when
dispensationalism or Christian Zionism took over the Southern Baptist
Convention. I am not necessarily holding up all the doctrines of the
Southern Baptists as followed before the sixties of the 20th century.

Under the leadership of W.A. Crisswell, at the 1988 Southern Baptist
Convention meeting in
San Antonio, a resolution was passed critical of the Baptist belief in the
"priesthood of the believer" and promoted the authority of the Baptist
clergy over the doctrines of the church members. Crisswell told a group of
pastors that "the man of God who is the pastor of the church is the ruler."

The priesthood of the believer means that the believer has the authority
from God to bring Christian doctrines and morality to the world - and also
to be his own "priest" in interpreting the word of God. To be your own
"priest" or preacher you must first know the truth from Scripture and have
a strong love for it. Otherwise, the believer as "priest" simply accepts
for himself some set of false doctrines and tries to make others believe
the false doctrines.

Since Crisswell was a dispensationalist and dispensationalism is taught and
maintained within a church system in which the preacher is the authority
and rules over the beliefs of the members, he opposed the doctrine. The
older pre-dispensationalist Southern Baptist priesthood of the believer
does not work within the dispensationalist church system which rules over
the beliefs of the members to make sure they follow dispensationalist
doctrines.

W.A. Crisswell and others in the sixties led the Southern Baptist
Convention to become a totally dispensationalist denomination. They fired
the professors in their seminaries who were not dispensationalists and
apparently over the next years got rid of the preachers who were not
dispensationalists.

There is a hierarchical Capital C Church organization of command and
control over the doctrines of the Church members in the Roman Catholic
Church, which would point it toward becoming a collectivist organization.
Protestant Christianity. was for some time more individual oriented But
Christian Zionism, in dominating many evangelical denominations, with its
clergy class who seek to control the doctrines of the church members as
lording it over God's heritage (I Peter 5: 2-3), has pointed protestant
Christianity more in a collectivist direction. The individual Christian's
relationship with Christ is given lip service in Christian Zionism, but yet
Christian Zionism does not focus as much on that spiritual relationship of
Christ to individuals as it does on Old Covenant Israel, as a collective
and the Capital C Church as another collective.

In Ephesians 2: 5, Paul says to "Let this mind be in you which was also in
Christ Jesus.. Paul says in Colossians 1: 27 that God will make known the
glory of the mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." And in
Romans 12: 2 Paul teaches hat we should not be conformed to this world, but
to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. It is Christ who puts
something of his mind in individuals, not just in an abstract concept of a
collective. God will make known to individuals, not the multitude, not the
collective, that which is the glory of Christ in those individuals. Christ
transforms individuals as they are born again of the Spirit in him.

Christ reaches down from above to individuals to change them with his
Spirit. But as it turns out man made theologies of this age focus upon the
multitude or the collective and not the individuals of the remnant of God.
And the Capital C Church with its clergy class lords it over the doctrines
of the collective. The other main founder of Transformational Marxism,
Antonio Gramsci, wrote about the long march through the institutions - and
the Church was seen as being one of those institutions - along with
education and the media - to collectivize,

I Peter 5: 2-3 says "Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the
oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre,
but of a ready mind;
3. Neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the
flock."

I Peter 5:2-3 says that what we call priests and preachers are to feed
God's people, but they are not to constrain the people of God, are not to
make money from feeding the people of God, and are not to be lords over
them. This identifies how the priests and hierarchy of the Roman Catholic
Church redefined the ekklesia (Greek), the Ecclesia (Latin) and the churche
(early English) so that the priests and religious hierarchy could rule over
the people.

William Tyndale in his 1526 New Testament translated ekklesia consistently
as congregation, except for Acts 14: 13 where he used churche,
meaning a pagan place of worship. Tyndale broke with Catholic tradition and
used congregation for ekklesia, something which might have contributed to
his being strangled at the stake by the Catholics.

Then, Church was used by Theodore Beza in 1556. Beza took over Calvinism
after the death of John Calvin at Geneva. More than did Calvin, Beza
believed in the church as being an institution that rules over the
doctrines and to some extent the behavior of its members, in a hierarchical
form of church government and the church run by a clergy class. So, Beza
used church for ekklesia instead of congregation as William Tyndale
translated ekklesia in his 1526 New Testament. William Whittingham's
Testament of 1557 followed Beza's usage of church and was actually the
first edition of the Geneva Bible, supposedly a revision of the Tyndale New
Testament. The King James Version followed the Geneva Bible in translating
ekklesia as church.

And so Theodore Beza pointed the Calvinist Capital C Church in the
direction of a top-down rule over the congregations.

Dean Gotcher has pointed out the influence of Tranformational Marxism upon
American institutions, such as education, the media and Christianity.
Because many churches consider it theologically incorrect to claim that
Transformational Marxism has influenced Christianity, Dean Gotcher is
rejected by many churches, especially those in the mega church movement.
By Transformational Marxism is largely meant what is called the Frankfurt
School. In the U.S. Theodore W Adorno and Herbert Marcuse were the best
known Transformational Marxists, who led some native born American change
agents.

"In the eyes of the dialectical philosophy, nothing is established for
all time, nothing is absolute or sacred." (Karl Marx)

Benjamin Bloom, who wrote the two volume book on the Taxonomy
of Educational Goal Objectives, by which all teachers must be
certified, said "“We recognize the point of view that
truth and knowledge are only relative and that there are no hard and
fast truths which exist for all time and places.” (Benjamin Bloom, et
al., Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Book 1, Cognitive Domain)

"Once the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the
heavenly family, the former must be destroyed (annihilated), in theory
and in practice." Karl Marx, Feuerbach Thesis #4

In his 1950 book, The Authoritarian Personality, Theodore W. Adorno said
that Christianity and the family both cause fascism and must be done away
with. The family in the West is made up of small groups, but when it was
cohesive as small groups under the father, the family made conformity to a
collectivist regime less likely. This is way Marx himself said the family
must be destroyed in theory and in practice.

“The individual accepts the new system of values and beliefs by
accepting belongingness to the group.” Kurt Lewin in Kenneth Benne
Human Relations in Curriculum Change

The type of group that Kurt Lewin, the flounder of Group Dynamics, is
talking about is a collective, unlike the cohesive family under the father
figure.

"And on the basis of this individual growth of each in our conditions a new
type of mighty socialist collective will in the long run be formed, where
“I” and “we” will merge into one inseparable whole. Such a collective can
only develop on the basis of profound ideological solidarity and an equally
profound emotional rapprochement, mutual understanding."
Nadezhda K. Krupskaya a, Letter to A. M. Gorky

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/György_Lukács

"György Lukács*,1885–1971, was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher
aesthetician, literary historian and critic. He was one of the founders
of Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed from the
Marxist ideological orthodoxy of the USSR ."

See: https://www.marxists.org/subject/frankfurt-school/

Gyorgy Lukacs was one of he founders of the Frankfurt School in 1922.." In
1931/32 a number of psychoanalysts from the Frankfurt Institute of
Psychoanalysis and others who were acquainted with members of the Institut
began to work systematically with the Institut. These included Franz
Borkenau, Erich Fromm, Wilhelm Reich, Karl Landauer and Heinrich Meng."

The Frankfurt School mingled Marxism with psychoanalysis and later with
American personality-social psychology.

See: http://schillerinstitute.org/fid_91-96/921_frankfurt.html

Lukacs emphasized the importance of the individual in the culture of
Western Europe and the U.S., which he saw coming out of Protestant
Christianity..

Lukacs "...emphasized exactly the uniqueness and sacredness of the
individual." He saw that "At its core, the dominant Western ideology
maintained that the individual, through the exercise of his or her reason,
could discern the Divine Will in an unmediated relationship. What was
worse, from Lukacs' standpoint: this reasonable relationship necessarily
implied that the individual could and should change the physical universe
in pursuit of the Good; that Man should have dominion over Nature, as
stated in the Biblical injunction in Genesis. The problem was, that as long
as the individual had the belief—or even the hope of the belief—that his or
her divine spark of reason could solve the problems facing society, then
that society would never reach the state of hopelessness and alienation
which Lukacs recognized as the necessary prerequisite for socialist
revolution."

Marxism affirms the
collective, the group. and hence the phrase "It takes a village to
raise a child" of Hillary and other Marxists.

"The task of the Frankfurt School, then, was first,..... the"abolition of
culture" (*Aufhebung der Kultur* in Lukacs' German); and, second, to
determine new cultural forms which would *increase the alienation of the
population,* thus creating a "new barbarism."

Theodore W. Adorno, along with Herbert Marcuse, became the most influential
Frankfurters in the U.S.

"The Adorno-Benjamin analysis represents almost the entire theoretical
basis of all the politically correct aesthetic trends which now plague our
universities."

"When the local Women's Studies or Third World Studies Department organizes
students to abandon classics in favor of modern Black and feminist authors,
the reasons given are pure Benjamin...........If. these campus antics
appear "retarded" (in the words of Adorno), that is because they are
designed to be. The Frankfurt School's most important breakthrough consists
in the realization that their monstrous theories could become dominant in
the culture, as a result of the changes in society brought about by what
Benjamin called "the age of mechanical reproduction of art."

Political Correctness came out of the Frankfurt School - as a new barbarism
and a retarded doctrine. It has been used in a dialectic or oppositional
way to make the masses feel guilty so they can be more easily controlled.

And this Frankfurt School Political Correctness has been effectively used
within a new developing collectivist society, in which there are
potentially powerful opponents, if well led. Political correctness has
been successful in diminishing that individualist Protestant Christian
doctrine which had encouraged the individual to be led by Christ through
the Holy Spirit and to remain relatively free of a more top-down control by
the clergy class which moves toward a collectivist Capital C Church.

 

[jamie]

TMI, bite size would be better.

And I have no idea what "Christian Zionism" is or means.

 

[ramdani]

Merci

 

[northwye]

If you go to www.google.com and type in Christian Zionism, you get "About 251,000 results." If you type in dispensationalism, you get "About 480,000 results." For postponement theology, you get "About 186,000 results." For separation theology you get "About 10,400,000 results." And for rapture cult you get "About 506,000 results."

The theology of John Darby, C.I. Scofield, Lewis S. Chafer, Charles Ryrie, Jerry Falwell, Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye, John Walvoord, Billy Graham, Thomas Ice, Chuck Missler, Jack van Impe, Grant Jeffrey and many others may not always be meant by separation theology, or postponement theology on Google. But Christian Zionism, dispensationalism and rapture cult are more likely to always refer to the theology promoted by these guys.

Dispensationalism might be made to refer only to this theology before 1948 and Christian Zionism to the theology after 1948 when the nation called Israel in the Middle East is said by the theology to be God's chosen people by the physical bloodline.

 

[meshak]

TMI, bite size would be better.

And I have no idea what "Christian Zionism" is or means.

It seems that their core belief is all Jews will be saved without accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior.