Do the dead now know the truth ?

Originally posted by wotsup: ↑

"45,000 Christian denominations."

Considering the Advocate, Comforter, Spirit of truth subject (one in the same here), who is the God and Father who would be teaching ALL in his word, your numbers above should be sounding ALARM bells to all Christians, clearly the Spirit of Truth has/is void for most.

So logic and common sense should tell one, that there must be a common link and sure enough, all roads lead to Rome, going back as far as the 100's.

When the Bibles first come out, most said scholars pointed to Rome as being the seat of satan, as per Rev.
Hence a plan of action in many ways had to be created, to take peoples eyes off them.
The key one is, to get people to think of the physical and literal aspects, like focus on that bit of dirt in the mid east, Israel, come up with a false spin of a prophesy of a 3rd Temple (not in prophesy), etc, etc.
All instead of the Spiritual times that began with or soon after Jesus.

All OT physical events, were foreshadows of the now Spiritual, hence many passages in the NT, have dual meanings.

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I'm not too clear on your point here.
Be that as it may, the Advocate, Comforter . . . . is the founder of a new religion. He has been called the return of Christ. It is not directly God, or His active force, the Holy Spirit. It is a Teacher like Christ empowered with the Holy Spirit as Christ was.

As for a common link, well yes, all Christian religions have a common link, that being Christ.

I don't think any plan of action was developed to counter the CC, it came as a kind of natural revulsion of the excesses of the CC. Yes, there have been major breaks with the CC because of their corruption and in the case of the Church of England it was corruption seeking its own will against the prevailing church because of a despotic Henry.

I think the truth is that religion is a hotbed for the development of rampant egos and exploitation and many of the religions that splintered off from Christianity were as a result of egomaniacs determining that they knew the truth better than others.

Many passages in the Bible have multiple meanings because religious belief flows from 100% abstraction, God. So scripture uses a language of poetry, allegory, metaphor, symbolism, etc, to convey a sense of meaning rather than an absolute meaning. There can not be absolute meaning in religion, it will always be a relative truth, never an absolute truth.

Also Jewish tradition has its own cultural style one example being Midrash in which the past and the present are blended. That's why parts of the OT come into the NT. Parts of Gilgamesh end up in the OT. A lot of Jesus back story is lifted from parts of the OT. Midrash also goes beyond the text, it goes behind the text, goes back to root words, etc. So today it's all but impossible to know exactly what the Bible scribes truely meant because it was their age, their time and words had a meaning pertaining to their time.