The Gospel of John was written by his followers after he was sent to Patmos. The author of the Book of Revelation said he was John writing from Patmos, but this claim would have been a literary gimmick for publishing, which was common at that time. No one could publish from Patmos. The prisoners had one eye gouged out and one foot cut off and were chained to a ball. They would not have been given writing materials. But it doesn't really matter, because the moral truth of Christianity (and other religions) was a group effort by prophets who knew exactly what the truth was; and to a large extent, they were using the same material from earlier cycles of the universe with very little modification. See History of the Universe.

The Gospel of John is characterized by the purpose of clarifying philosophical points which develop as a result of false versions of Christianity. The first few sentences have the purpose of clarifying who Christ was. It says, "In the beginning was the Word; the Word was in God's presence, and the Word was God. He was present to God in the beginning. Through him all things came into being, and apart from him nothing came to be. Whatever came to be in him, found life, life for the light of men."

The purpose here is to counter the myriad of misrepresentations of who Christ was. When it says Christ was in God's presence and was God, isn't this a contradiction? This is the Trinity question. Can there be three Gods in one? Here's some philosophy on that question:

If you look at words and entities (spirits), they don't match up well. But look at what actually exists and what is relevant. God is more than a person; God is a standard and a result. When more than one spirit interacts to produce that result, they collectively represent God.

What humans need to know is the proper standard and result, which is morality and life. Conversely, corrupters promote some falsehood and say it has to be fact because God says so. They don't know what entity is saying what. The test of God is "is it morality and life?", not "is it my favorite power monger?"

By this criteria, Paul was a lying fraud. God is not a demon who is pleased by Christ's murder. God does not say sacrifice is not what he wants, and then promote the sacrificial murder of Christ (Isaiah 1:11-20)(Jer 7:22)(Hosea 6:6)(Psalms 40:7, 50:8-15)(Mat 9:13, 12:7)(Mark 12:33). Every bit of Paul's theology is a contempt for everything Christ taught. Someone saying so doesn't turn falsehoods and contradictions into fact.

Christ's resurrection was a symbolic representation of his rising out of a pit which the spirit cannibals created in an ancient spirit world. When he rose out of the pit, he took the stolen spirit substance away from the spirit cannibals, which stripped them of their power, and used it to create a cluster of galaxies. This is why the prologue of John's Gospel says, "Through him all things came into being, and apart form him nothing came to be."

Corrupters then say, "Who says so?" Knowledge is not a quote. Quoting without knowledge is how frauds railroad reality and lives into a pit. Christ taught knowledge. The Bible stresses the importance of knowledge from beginning to end. Quotes are nothing but small bits of information which are highly prone to misinterpretation and misrepresentation. Knowledge is the size of the universe. It needs to build in minds over a lifetime. A few words cannot represent it.

Some of the major lines of reality through this subject are these: Matter had to be created by God out of spirit substance; it cannot create itself. Material life has the limited purpose of overcoming sin, and it is abandoned after sin is overcome. Satan and evil spirits are spirit cannibals who acquired their characteristics in an ancient spirit world (The serpent in Genesis already knew what spirit cannibalism was.) Humans brought sin with them into the human society due to billions of years of history in the spirit world. Paul reduces this whole subject to a dispute with God claiming flesh is the cause of the problem, as if material life had no purpose, and God was as incompetent and corrupt as the demons who created the religion of sacrifice.

Born Again

John 3:1-8 A Pharisee named Nicodemus approached Christ saying that his miracles indicate that he is from God. Christ's answer was, "...no one can see the reign of God unless he is begotten from above (or born again)." Catholics say "begotten from above," and Protestants say, "born again." Both phrases both mean the same thing in translation, but the theologies are opposite.

Catholics say there is a long and slow process to overcoming sin, which Christ taught and referred to as a path which is hard to find and follow (Mat 7:14). Protestants (nowdays called fundamentalists) say being born again is an instantaneous experience which they have in life, and afterwards they do the infallible work of the Holy Spirit.

Paul's theology is used to rationalize away a process. Supposedly, the saving was done on the cross, because the only problem is a dispute with God, and faith is ending the dispute. Fundamentalists will admit that they are corrupt, but they say that it's impossible to overcome the corruption, and God is going to save them anyway, because he changed his mind due to Christ's crucifixion.

If fundamentalists are admittedly corrupt, why are they trying to take over the government, schools and institutions of society? They say that after being born again, everything they do is the infallible work of the Holy Spirit, even though they are corrupt. It's all just a question of getting on God's wavelength.

Why is none of that anything resembling Christ's teaching? They say there is no contradiction between Paul's theology and that of Christ, but they never explain. It's like robbing a few banks and saying it's no contradiction with the way banking is normally done.

Water and Spirit

John 3:4-8 When Nicodemus asked how a person can be born again, Christ said, "...no one can enter into God's kingdom without being begotten of water and Spirit." The water is usually assumed to mean baptism. Supposedly, a ritual is needed to get saved. Exceptions are often made, so it's not an absolute requirement. Nothing about a ritual is mentioned on judgment day, where feeding the hungry, etc. is the only criterion for getting saved (Mat 25:31-46).

Perhaps, a different interpretation of "water" is needed. Usually, water is a metaphor for truth, reality or words. Perhaps that is what it should represent during baptism, because salvation requires a lot of truth. The prologue above says Christ is the word. Christ said his entire purpose in appearing was to "testify to the truth" (John 18:37).

But the born again experience of fundamentalists is totally stripped of words or truth. As dependent upon words as fundamentalists are in their literalist quoting of the Bible, they aren't using the words to get saved; they are using the words to prove that nothing much is needed to get saved.

Then the question becomes, does anyone get saved without increasing their knowledge through words or truth. As a generalization, the answer is no—increasing knowledge is a large part of overcoming sin and getting saved. The new spirits which God creates develop their souls in animal bodies where they cannot be touched by sin. In the human society are spirits which have already been exposed to sin due to billions of year of history in an ancient spirit world. Some correcting is needed to solve their problems, and it cannot be done without a lot of truth and knowledge.

Then there is the question of all of the babies who die before they can accomplish much, or illiterates in primitive societies. Catholics synthesized a concept of limbo for them, but it's not credible. The truth is that more than one lifetime is usually required to get saved. Most people spend at least one lifetime just getting a grasp of what reality is.

There is much evidence in so-called "alien abductions." Naysayers claim that such stories are just a brain chemistry problem. But they say the same thing about God, Christ and religion. Their chemistry says the big bang created everything out of nothing in submicrons of space, and now chemicals in the brain think without leaving any evidence of which ones or how.

The reason why alien absuctions are a reality and not imagination is because large numbers of persons independently describe similar elements of it. Furthermore, the information contains a large amount of reality which is consistent with knowledge about evil spirits and their characteristics.

Evil spirits create alien abductions by removing certain types of persons from their bodies spiritually and transporting them to a synthetic environment for a work-over. It allows them to do things to people which they can't do in material life. They also draw in alien spirits called "greys" and "whites." These are spirits which have not been in a human society in billions of years, and they forgot everything they ever knew. The evil spirits convince them that they can acquire the knowledge and emotions of humans by hybridizing with them. So they set up every imaginable form of sexual perversion and molestation under the pretext of helping the aliens acquire human intelligence by breeding with humans. Thousands of humans have undergone and described such experiences in approximately the same terms.

What this says about evil spirits is nothing new. It's approximately what they do with less success in the human society. The most informative part of it is in the alien spirits. They became so ignorant over time in the spirit world that they assume hybridizing will give them intelligence and emotions.

This is why material life is needed: so people can develop their minds more realistically. The absence of stabilized realities in the spirit world causes minds to deteriorate. So people spend more than one lifetime in material life learning what objective reality is and how it defines morality.

Water from the Well

John 4:1-24 Shortly following the story of Nicodemus, we find Christ at a well, where he has quite a bit more to say about water. Christ told a Samaritan women (nonJew) that he provides "living water" (John 4:10), and "...whoever drinks the water I give him will never be thirsty; no, the water I give shall become a fountain within him, leaping up to provide eternal life" (John 4:14). Water provides eternal life. Water is knowledge and truth. Knowledge and truth create eternal life.

Christ explains further: "You people worship what you do not understand (sacrificing to the demons), while we understand what we worship; after all, salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22). Christ says understanding is one of the differences between God's religion and the religion of the demons.

He then says, "...authentic worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth...God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth" (John 4:23, 24). Compare this to the message to Nicodemus: "...no one can enter into God's kingdom without being begotten of water and Spirit" (John 3:5). "Spirit and truth" vs. "water and Spirit." Water and truth seem to be somewhat interchangeable, because water is a metaphor for words and truth. Only with the water of words, knowledge and truth does anyone enter God's kingdom. See Truth Sets People Free

Curing at Bethesda

John 5:1-15 Bethesda is where helplessly sick people would be immersed in water, for whatever value that was. Christ cured a person there by saying, "Stand up! Pick up your mat and walk!" (John 5:8). Later Christ found him near the temple and said, "Remember, now, you have been cured. Give up your sins so that something worse may not overtake you" (John 5:14).

Arguers claim that getting saved is simply God forgiving people, which has nothing to do with overcoming sin. Extending from that line of argument is the claim that sin is nothing but an offense against God, and it doesn't exist after being forgiven by God. Another related argument is that Christ cured diseases by healing the spirit and removing sin.

The story of Christ healing at Bethesda shows that healing the person did not remove sin or the responsibility for sin, because afterwards, Christ said, "Give up your sins..." It also shows that sin influences the problems people have in life, as in "...so that something worse may not overtake you."

This shows that sin is something in subconscious minds, consisting of forces and warped realities, not just a conflict which can be redefined out of existence.

Curing on the Sabbath

John 5:16-47 The Jews hated Christ for curing on the sabbath (John 5:16). Christ's response was, "My Father is at work until now, and I am at work as well." It means God cannot stop feeding the birds or creating rain on the sabbath, and Christ's work is so much like God's work that he cannot set it aside on the sabbath either.

But wasn't the whole purpose of the creation story in Genesis to create a seven day week with rest on the sabbath? Yes, but only for piddling little humans, not God. God only rests from the large things, like creating planets, not feeding the birds. It would be like humans not breathing on the sabbath, because it's too much work.

So the Jews thought Christ was a piddling human who should not be doing things on the sabbath. But their corrupt motives show through. Christ was doing some monumental things which they were not doing. He was curing diseases and teaching God's wisdom.

The problem here is that the Jews were hung up on trivial rules which run into conflict with the realities of life. All laws have a set of relationships, which starts with the most basic and builds upon them with less basic laws and realities. The less basic ones are less important, because less depends upon them. So you cannot sacrifice the trivial things for the more important things. The trivial rules which the Jews were hung up on sacrifice more important things for unimportant things.

One of the implications of petty rules, and this includes the over-literalness of fundamentalists, is that objective realities are trivial and should be over-ridden by rules coming from God. The error is in assuming God would be in conflict with objective realities. God created the objective realities of material life for a purpose—to create knowledge and truth as a basis for morality and life. He wouldn't sacrifice that purpose for some other purpose and create chaos in the minds, lives and religion of humans.

Faith in Christ

John 5:24 Christ said, "I solemnly assure you, the man who hears my word and has faith in him who sent me possesses eternal life. He does not come under condemnation, but has passed form death to life." To Paul's rationalizers, this statement is interpreted to mean it is faith that saves, not works, just as Paul said.

The above statement by Christ does not say whether faith is the starting point or end point of salvation, and it does not say works are left out. This in itself might look more rationalistic than Paul's theology. But there is a total context to Christ's words creating a large amount of knowledge on this subject, while there is nothing but conflict for Paul's claims with no knowledge possible.

Adding the knowledge which Christ taught to his statement above, he is describing a goal which moral persons easily meet and which define an element of truth about morality and salvation. Relatively moral persons have enough faith to accept what Christ says, and a lot of truth is defined by this fact. But the faith doesn't come from nowhere, as Paul and his followers claim. Sin destroys faith, and therefore, faith is an end result of morality, not a whim that can come out of nowhere for salvation.

Surely Christ must have known that his statement above was going to look a lot like Paul's theology of salvation through faith without works. Christ certainly would have realized this. But instead of avoiding that question, his purpose was to replace a corrupt teaching on faith with a correct version of the subject.

Christ challenges ignorance by making statements which he knows will be misinterpreted as a method of exposing corruption—like saying "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will rebuild it" (John 2:19-22). This shows that Christ isn't afraid of someone misinterpreting his words, when he has produced oceans of background truth on the subject.

Choosing a Devil

John 6:70 Christ said, "Did I not choose the Twelve of you myself? Yet one of you is a devil." Christ knew how corrupt Judas was; and isn't it surprising that Judas was managing the money bag and stealing from it (John 12:6).

There is a major philosophical problem in this area. Sin creates strife. Strife creates the assumption that everyone is trying to defeat enemies, all the time, and every way possible. Therefore, whatever God allows, must be what he wants. If God isn't defeating satan, he must not want satan defeated. If God is allowing sin to occur, he must want it to occur. If God didn't want skunks to exist, why would skunks exist?

This logic creates a major corruption in theology, where it is absolutized to say God would not allow something to exist in the bible if it weren't unquestionable truth. A more correct analysis is that God does not keep corruption out of the Bible any more than he keeps skunks out of the woods. So the question is why. The short answer is—for the same reason. It wouldn't solve the problems.

The long answer is this: Consider what the problems are which God needs to solve. He doesn't need to purify the molecules; they are not an end in themselves—they are tools. God needs to solve a sin problem in peoples' heads.

At the origins of Christianity, there were twelve apostles and one imposter working for satan. They produced several churches and documents. The world decided to follow the imposter and murder the others. Of course God could have erased all of Paul's churches and documents off the planet. But then what? Back to square one and still a lot of sin.

What we see throughout the Bible and the rest of life is that God starts where people are at and works from there through a process of forward evolution. This was evident in Genesis, where the made-up stories had the purpose of showing that people had no way to determine right-from-wrong, and they needed moral instructions. So the Ten Commandments were issued through a law-giver. But they were not enough either; so someone had to teach the totality of the subject.

Here's another example: For thousands of years, the demons controlled humans through a ritual of sacrifice as a method of testing allegiance. In isolated areas, people would have to murder their children on an altar to get the blessings of the demons. In more civilized areas, animals could substitute for human sacrifices. When God started to develop his religion and chose Abraham, the automatic assumption of Abraham was that God would want him to sacrifice his son on an altar as a test of allegiance. This incident had the purpose of showing where human religion stood at the time God got into the religion business.

You're supposed to wonder why God let things get so far out of hand. Was he asleep at the switch? God had to do a lot of preliminary work before his religion could get rolling. Evil persons don't have any preliminary work to do, because destructivity has no complexity. This effect is noticed everywhere. Destroyers rush in and take over everything, and only after the dust clears can constructive persons try to accomplish anything.

So God allowed the world to synthesize its own form of Christianity. With Christ's teaching clearly established, any corruptions would be a hard sell. This not only got the world involved in his religion, it showed what their corruptions were.

What this means is that even if God told Paul to do something (Paul could not produce a consistent story on what instructions he got.), he certainly didn't tell Paul to corrupt theology or contradict Christ. That was Paul's own doing.

We can assume that God allowing Paul to do something is the equivalent of telling him to do something. But purifying what Paul did or said was not possible and is not how God does things. It took two thousand years to convert the Jewish religion from a demonic ritual of sacrifice to a religion based on morality, because it had to start where people were at, and the purifying could not be done all at once. Similarly, Christianity had to start with the sin and ignorance that existed in the world and correct it through a slow process of evolution of truth.

Compare this analysis to fundamentalists assumptions based on Paul's theology. Supposedly, God created human life to glorify himself, but satan tripped over a vine and created a conflict. Now the fix is in for the chosen one's, and it is their duty to restore God's world to its original state of purity.

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