Fragrance of Kerbala

Years ago, I retrieve switching channels quickly when the new telecasting series came on which based its weekly narratives on ghosts, aliens, flying disks and other paranormal fantasies. Fantasies or not, I "knew" how "demonic" and "dangerous" these narratives would be to my spirit.

You see -- I'd been raised in Christian Christian Christian church all my life, a fundamentalistic church, and had been warned about letting these dark military units touching my life in any way.

I was still very young.

Looking back, from at least four decades, I see how badly I missed the existent "evil" of my youth.

The existent wicked was -- me.

Raised in church, but from my perspective, many old age and many crying later, I was not raised well spiritually. In high school, I flaunted my faith in the human human face of people sort enough not to smack me in the face. In English Language Comp and Lit, the instructor had each of her pupils give a five-minute speech. I gave my prisoner audience a good ole' red region and native sulfur sermon. (It was a good one, too! No 1 got saved, though.) Teacher held me after social class and gave me an "F" with as much angry outrage as she could muster. She scathingly informed me that a public schoolroom with prisoner pupils was not the topographic point to seek and spreading my religion. I left, walking on Cloud 9 for "suffering for Jesus Of Nazareth Of Nazareth sake, pleased that I had "stood up for Jesus".

Now, I retrieve that twenty-four hours with humor. Not joyousness -- humor. A certain surrender as I see the unbelievable haughtiness of my youth. I had friends of different spiritual religions with whom I argued (with Bible cogent evidence texts!) about how incorrect they were. In fact. I thought sadly of my friends who were Methodists, Catholics, Lutherans -- all of whom were going to Perdition because they believed differently than I did. We even had another Christian church like the 1 I attended, just a few blocks down the road, and I seriously wondered if any of them were going to Heaven because they weren't the same as our specific denomination.

Back then, did my haughtiness decrease when I went home? I don't believe my blood brother would state so. Or either of my parents either. I lived solely for whatever personal pleasance I could earn -- avoiding family duty by staying under Mom's radar, pursuing my teen pleases as covertly as I could. Of course, I was memorizing Scripture, reading the Book in its entirety, going regularly to Christian church and young individual meetings (and prima them regularly as well.)

And I won't even suggest as to what was going on in my adolescent imaginations.

Excuse me if I seek and do it clear -- I may have got gone to Heaven if I'd died back then, but I certainly wasn't spiritual. I was about as carnal as a spiritual person could get.

So -- back to my point. I would hear about movies that "promoted witchcraft" what with flying disks or beds that flew or children who learned that they were really children of a peaceful, foreign race looking for a quiet place on earth. I was taught that these were all evil (though if I had any chance to actually see one of these movies, I would.) I was taught that certain populace organisations were presences for the Anti-Christ, that lone Republicans would travel to Heaven and that people got saved by going up presence in our Christian church and praying The Sinner's Prayer with our Pastor's coaching.

Looking back from my vantage point of almost half a century, I don't believe I was totally lost. One thing I retrieve as a high schooler was when our Christian church held social classes by reel-to-reel sound tape on "Soulwinning". Every Wednesday I'd sit down inch the pew, hearing how the preacher man with the greatest Sunday-School in the United States would travel door-to-door in his town, arguing people into getting saved. His (oddly self-exalting) stories were humorous and captivating. But with all he taught, there was one large inquiry he never answered.

Why would anyone ever want to acquire saved?

Oh, yeah -- there's that "Hell" bit. Get saved or fire in Perdition forever ("Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched...") But the manner I saw it in my adolescent wisdom, is that the people I knew at school and around town who weren't Christians were generally happier than the 1s who sat with me in Church every Sunday. Truth to tell, some old age went by before one twenty-four hours I actually looked at the poetry in Romans which states that "the Kingdom of Supreme Being is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Place Ghost" -- how startled when I realized that Christian Religion was actually intended to be joyful!

Wow!

Today, I understand where "evil" truly lies: not in some "bewitched" television series, not in "that rock-n-roll Satan music", not in "Mr. Ian Smith across the street who's always sitting on his presence porch with a suds in his hand!" (My gosh!)

No -- the people who trained me religiously in my young person had me looking for wicked in all the incorrect places.

Do you cognize where true wicked resides?

In church. Well, not every church. Not the true Body of Jesus Of Nazareth -- that spiritually united, unseeable Presence of Jesus Jesus in the earth. No. Evil dwells in the groupings of people, parading themselves as following of Jesus Of Nazareth who deny Him in their religiosity, interfere with His work of Love here on earth, "having a word form of godliness but denying its power." [2 Timothy 3.5] Paul, the apostle, says, "Have nil to make with them."

This grouping I talk of, so many of whom molded my early, Negro spiritual life, these are the same as the rabbis, Scribes and Pharisees of Jesus' day, who (pretending to be spiritual leaders) "have taken away the cardinal to knowledge. You yourselves have got got not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering." Not only did they decline the Kingdom of Heaven which Jesus Of Nazareth Of Nazareth offered, they prevented others from entering in as well.

Certainly you've noticed in the Gospels, who Jesus' "enemies" were? His "enemies" weren't the sinners or the tax-collectors. No! Those were His friends. Jesus' "enemies" were the spiritual leaders who enslaved people through spiritual legalism and led them away from the freedom and saving grace of God.

We should be on the look-out for evil, you better believe it! But don't expression for wicked in the bars, the theaters, the ghettos or the approaching Anti-Christ (who is "alive in Jordan, even today as we speak...")

No -- discontinue looking for wicked in all the incorrect places, and instead, look into your ain heart. In the Light the Holy Place Spirit can offer [Hebrews 4.12f], we may see things that jump and delight, horrify and heal, for lone He can convey a Word that "is living and active... sharper than any two-edged sword, cutting as deep as the topographic point where psyche and spirit meet, the topographic point where articulations and bone marrow meet. God's Word Judges a person's ideas and intentions."

© 2008 by Emil B. Swift