Repost from January 2004
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I was walking on the side of the road, fire inside my head. I was
saying I am going to go to Florida and, if she does not want me back,
then look for a job in Russia. I was saying I do not like how
Americans think. I was saying, I will work to make Russia the greatest
country in the world and make its values - refinement of the soul,
education, intelligence - count in the world. People were attacking
me, some saying they put in so much resources in me and then I come
back with this, others saying that I'd be leaving them stranded,
others saying you damn commie go back to Russia.
I was on fire. Then Jesus appeared and calmed me. He said, stay in
place and learn about God. I have been attending McLean Bible Church,
a non-denominational megachurch run by Lon Solomon, a converted Jewish
priest. The priest whose 7:30 PM services I've been attending, Ken
Bau, has been running a 6-week series about the book DaVinci Code,
defending the historicity of the Bible and life of Jesus with
archeology. The book asserts that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene
and that she was the Holy Grail, the person instructed by Jesus with
carrying on the church, an information gotten from an interpretation
of DaVinci's painting The Last Supper and Gnostic texts. He says that
it doesn't matter if Jesus was married for Jesus' divinity (my
thoughts while I was listening to the sermon: I would respect Jesus
more if he was because then he would know what it means to share one's
life with another person), and in response to the question "Was Jesus
the first feminist?" he says that Bible asserts that men and women are
equal in worth but different in roles. He says that according to the
Bible one can be man of God while being married or one can be man of
God while being celibate, and neither role is superior to the other.
But I digress.
Jesus said that I should learn about God at this church and then
spread God's word. When I was 10 years old, I experienced a presence
about me saying that it was God and telling me that it was going to
give me a lot of power to make the world a better place. I began
writing political poetry and within a year was reciting bombastic
political-philosophical poetry before large audiences in the Soviet
Union and vowing everyone with my insight. Then my parents immigrated
to the United States. In Italy, while staying with the expatriot
Jewish community, I wrote a play in poetry about the Passover and it
was performed at the synagogue. Then I came to America and within a
year performed bombastic recitations of political poetry, now in
English, before 1500 people to a standing ovation. I finished college
at age 18. I have had incredible luck in many things and I've had many
supernatural things happen in my life.
When I met Julia, I told the story to her priest brother. He told me
that that spirit probably wasn't God; that it most likely was a demon.
A psychic had once told me that I was being attended to by a bad
spirit that had passed down to me from my father, and that it was
giving me insight even while it was destroying me. My life has been
pretty destroyed for the last several years, except for the six months
with Julia, during which time she re****ted a lot of negative spiritual
activity and during which time there was a lot of telepathic
communication. I once asked her if she thought I was the Antichrist,
as I fit the demographic profile perfectly. She said the choice as to
what to be was up to me.
As I was walking further along the 15-mile trek, I was thinking about
how the end of the world prophecies are being fulfilled, but I
remembered Nostradamus telling the people in his time that prophecies
can be averted if people act in a way that intelligently averts their
fulfilment. I thought several months ago that if I was the Antichrist
then the best thing for me to do would be to join forces with Jesus,
as then I would be saving my soul and averting the end of the world.
Well. I might not necessarily be averting the end of the world; that's
up to God; but in refusing to play my assigned role of immanentizing
the Eschaton, I would be doing my part toward saving the world from
destruction. And what better way for man to assert his free will and
his love for his fellow man and his choice and his liberty and his
independence from fate than that. In Exodus, there is a story in which
Moses convinced God not to kill off Israel when God was enraged about
the Israelites' idolatry. I understood that the conditions of God
agreeing with me to change His mind about anything is my complete
respect and loyalty in spirit and in action, my willingness to act in
a manner that's righteous and that extends to other people the same
patience and compassion that He extended to me through all my sins.
But enough speculation.
I was saying "I'm with you God," then I saw Julia's presence and said
"I will be with Julia." Jesus came over. He was saying "I'm right
behind you," "I'm with you" - he was being very reassuring, and I was
thinking about all the statements I've heard by traditional Christians
that to love one's woman above all on earth is blasphemy as love
belongs with God, and I realized how utterly full of crap those people
were, as in Bible there are several love stories, and in New Testament
it says "God is love," "He who is in love is with God, and God is with
Him," and "Man should love his wife as his own flesh." I realized that
these people's beliefs had nothing to do with God and everything to do
with usurpers preying on people's ignorance, and that romantic agenda
of men and women having beautiful relation****ps and making the world
beautiful for each other was perfectly compatible with Christianity,
for as long as their love existed within the context of love of God
and service to God. So I said, "Have beautiful relation****ps within
the context of love of God." Jesus said "Finished."
I thought about my occultist and New Age friends and said that since
I've done the same thing as they did I'm no better than they are, and
that I would emphatically refrain from going after them but rather
leave them to their own choices while letting them know what those
choices entail. However, magick and sorcery results in real violations
of people's rights, and to protect ourselves from these violations it
would be appropriate to know all uses of magick and use Christian
power in response. I also believed that it would be necessary to
inform the children of these people as to what is the truth, in order
that they can make their own informed decision. And if Hollywood
should insist on spewing garbage that influences children to do drugs
and beat their girlfriends and go into crime and act in destructive
fa****on, then the correct response will be to bring about Christian
miracles in Hollywood so that they know the truth. They said free
speech and I said responsible speech and they said artistic spirit and
I said there's nothing artistic about what you do.
I had seven more miles to go, and I was thinking about how people
accuse Howard Dean of being a Northern cultural elitist but Bush is in
fact a part of a political dynasty, and that in choosing Northern
cultural elites vs. Southern oil business ones I would most certainly
go with the cultural elites because they had a broader perspective and
better education and better habits and better principles, believing in
dignity of human being, treating their families decently, producing
work that endures, reading and studying more and making intellect
rather than barbarism their guiding quality. I said that Howard Dean
was more responsible than Bush, as Bush was bankrupting the country
and destroying the planet while Dean stressed balanced budgets and
protection of the environment, that Dean was a success in private
sector before going into politics while Bush was a failure, and that
while both were Christian, Dean had more reason and competence to
supplement his faith. I heard snide women saying that, well, the
liberal elitists will go with Dean and I said, we make the world
beautiful while you make it ugly. They said they voted for Clinton but
they won't vote for Dean, and I said, Aren't the people that voted for
Clinton supposed to lack character? And the Republicans started
dissing them and a voice said, that's right, use their divisions
against them like they have always done to everyone else.
Civilization will out against barbarism, and true Christianity against
false Christianity. Real culture will develop in this country, and I
will stay around to make sure it does.
Ilya Shambat.
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