Phillip Medhurst

A Pilgrimage to Truth

Category: Bible

Jun 27, 2016

The Apocalypse Revealed 5

Adam and Eve were able to eat all the trees of the Garden that were available for their food, except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. These trees included the Tree of Life, conferring immortality. But as result of their disobedience, God passed a sentence of death. The pair did not die immediately: the sentence took the form of an exclusion from the Tree of Life. Adam then went on to live 930 years reckoned in mortal time. If Adam was 70 years old – a mature man – when he ate the fruit, he was in fact alive for 1000 years. All of Adam’s children now pass into oblivion until the second coming of Christ. The perfect obedience of Jesus – after Adam, a second son of God – earned him the immortality denied to Adam.

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Jun 21, 2016

The Apocalypse Revealed 4

The Light – the spiritual consciousness – brings about eternal Life (John 1:4; 1 John 1:5). It has been manifested in these latter days in and through Jesus of Nazareth, and, before him in time collectively in the 144,000 Gnostics of spiritual Israel (Revelation 22:13). Once this Light was shed upon matter and time, the various forms of creation could arise in a hierarchy during the six “days” of the issuing-forth of the universe. When that process was completed, the created order could function independently of its Creator, and God could, on the seventh day, “rest”. The Fall initiated the reverse process, one of entropy and occlusion, culminating in the final Omega of the Word of destruction, when the light emitted will be the glare of the lake of fire.

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Jun 18, 2016

The Apocalypse Revealed 3

In the beginning Wisdom (Sophia) proceeded from God and created matter, energy and time (Proverbs 3:19-20, 8:22-31). Matter had rudimentary structure and time existed as sequence, but neither was purposeful. It was only when God spoke His Word that the order of the days of creation commenced. The Alpha of that Word was Light. Light was the prime creation. This “Light” was not the light we see: rather, it was the Light by which we see light (Psalm 36:9). The light we see came into being when the light-emitting bodies were formed on the fourth day (Genesis 1:14). Rather, the first Light was (and is) spiritual consciousness, the Gnosis which ordered Sophia’s creation and which is conscious both of itself and of its Creator.

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Jun 18, 2016

The Apocalypse Revealed 2

One incarnation of the underground stream of Truth is the Apocalypse of John of Patmos. Unsurprisingly, visions here of the end-time are reflections of dreams of the beginnings. In both, the number seven is key as the time-sequence of the primal story, and light is the symbol by which all other symbols are seen. And yet, as if to emphasise the fact that Truth is not located in sequential order and rational lucidity, the Apocalypse constantly subverts sequence and reason in its presentation of material: the orderly and light-filled procession of the story of creation has become a nightmarish jumble, a reflection of the creation-story seen in a glass darkly – as darkened by sin and as rendered a counterfeit of God’s intended order.

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Jun 18, 2016

The Apocalypse Revealed 1

Man has the Divine within him. Spiritual Truth is located within the deeper recesses of the mind rather than on the shallow surface of consciousness. It manifests itself as story or tableau the meaning of which is not always easy to articulate in rational terms. Indeed, such Truth may be altered and so distorted by “worldly” considerations – such as the material needs of a professional priesthood, the maintenance and upkeep of buildings, and the requirement of hierarchies to be seen to be historically consistent in their utterances. But the spring cannot be dammed: the underground stream of stories, images and symbols – dreams dreamed, remembered and re-incarnated in word, paint or stone – will continue to gush forth.

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Mar 26, 2016

The Empty Tomb

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From “Picture Stories from the Bible”, published in book form by M. C. Gaines in 1943. Text by Montgomery Mulford (an erstwhile writer of articles for church magazines) and artwork by Don Cameron.

Maxwell Charles Gaines was one of the pioneers of the comic book form. He may have been the original designer of the stapled comic book, and he was the first to sell comic books, since before that they had only been promotional give-aways. In 1944, Gaines began a “Educational Comics” (EC) which aimed to reproduce classics in picture format. The “Picture Stories from the Bible” volumes were based on previous individual weeklies. Gaines had them distributed in public schools throughout the U. S. in the 1940’s. The two volumes were a huge hit. Gaines died in 1947. The Old Testament and New Testament collections were both re-published by Scarf Press in 1979 and 1980 respectively, and an Old Testament edition was re-published by Bloch (serving the Jewish community) in 1991.

This file was created by Phillip Medhurst from a copy of the original books in the collection of Oliver Medhurst of Redditch.

Phillip Medhurst

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Mar 11, 2016

Jonah

 

In the fish’s belly, I,

Crowned with slimy weed,

Feel odds and ends of recollects

Slide past, a monster’s brunch;

But no repast for me,

The bearer of bad luck.

 

Staring, dreading nought,

Disembodied eyes

And scales and teeth and bones

Swirl round and on and down

Through retribution’s maw,

To God knows what.

 

The storm outside abates.

His anger; is it spent? –

Repentance rolls perhaps from port

Unto metropolis.

The giant tail, now purposeful,

Flicks the new-stilled waves.

 

The sway of swerve round roots

Of mountains, through drowned valleys

Stops. Now patient, I await

A resurrecting belch,

Hoping that those Ninevites

Get just what they deserve.

 

 

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Mar 3, 2016

The Word

 

Between the bone and marrow

Penetrates the arrow

Of your Word. And so

Salvific poison spreads.

 

Once it takes hold

All worldliness contracts

To lodge that head

Below my heart.

 

There is no antidote,

For – sweet Mercury –

The chemistry must kill

What kills, then save outright.

 

This unevaded shaft

Invades me. I must yield.

For once it has arrived,

It lives and thrives.

 

 

 

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Mar 3, 2016

Lazarus

 

I curse the day on which my so-called friend,

Persuaded by my sisters, chose to come

And bellow at me in my cosy den

Where I had slept for days all neatly wrapped

In perfumed swaddling-bands. For up ‘til then

My aches and wants and cares were left outside

My fortress sealed against the world and time.

But now I am re-born with my old bones.

Conclusion to my life has all been robbed:

I must endure the painful swell again.

Though I am made a sign I now repent

The impulse of my blood which leapt too quick,

For peace by any should not be disturbed

When it by natural means has been conferred.

When brute creation first brought me to birth,

I felt no obligation. Flesh and all

I made of it was mine. But now each breath

Compounds my debt to an impatient god.

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Feb 18, 2016

Samson

 

Sam found a little knife

While wand’ring in the ward.

When nurses tried to truss

The old man to a chair,

He cut their knotted tape

And made good his escape.

 

But is he strong enough

To grab with steady hand

The starched lapel of Life-

In-Death’s white coat and crash

That cranium’s empty dome?

That way, he might get home.

 

 

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