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Posted by Allen Williams on 17:42:56 05/08/08
An open letter to the religions of the world:
The time has come for the religious leaders of the world to join together as allies under a common deity. For too long have the proponents of the various religions of this world engaged in the destructive practice of intolerance, vilifying each other as infidel, unbeliever, heathen or pagan.
And yet, under the thin veneer of cultural difference, our religions share so much. Are we not all equal sons under God? Do we not all kneel together at the feet of Allah? Yahweh, El Elyon, Tao and Shang-ti; these names, and so many more, are just that mortal man s names of a common deity.
Let us focus on what makes us the same, our universal sonship under Tao, under Allah, under our Father in Heaven. Let us quit our focus upon those cultural differences which, when they become our myopic obsession, set us so far apart.
Listen to those who came before us. To Melchizedek, teacher of Abraham, who proclaimed that the way of salvation is thru simple faith. To Lao-Tse, who spoke truth when he taught that man s eternal destiny was everlasting union with the eternal Tao. To Confucius, whose preservation of the great works of the ancient philosophers has brought spiritual enlightenment to millions since his day. And, reaching even further into the past, to Singlangton, who so long ago proclaimed to Asia the truth of Shang-ti, the God of Heaven.
Listen to those who came before us. To Gautama Siddhartha who cast aside the myriad gods which cluttered the spiritual landscape of ancient India, and promised universal salvation, free from sacrifice and ritual. Gautama Siddhartha, who s philosophy extols many, even today, along the promise of the Greater Road, the path to the Amida Buddha, he who so loves the world that he will not suffer those who calls his name to fail in their attainment of Paradise.
Listen to those who came before us. To Zoroaster, who drove out the petty tribal gods and heroically united the Arabic tribes under a single Creator. To Mohammed, who s clear-cut and well-defined presentation of Allah as the one and only Deity has since uplifted millions of his followers.
And listen to Joshua Ben Joseph, beloved to millions as Jesus, who s very life showed to all mankind the true path to eternal sonship under our loving Father in Heaven.
Religions of the world, listen to your own voices. Listen as, over and over, our Creator is celebrated as the most high. Do we not all pray before the same God? Does he not, in our collective minds, reign supreme over all creation? How petty must our differences seem to our Father. How trivial must our quarrels be when seen from upon high? How pitiful and pathetic must our earthly concerns seem, fighting and dying over who s religion is best.
Religions of the world UNITE under the Lord! Join now in the joyful celebration of mutual faith in our common creator. Lead the way into the future! Imagine the confusion in the Hawkish halls of Washington, of Beijing, of Moscow, of Jerusalem, as the Imam embraces the Rabbi, and as the Priest is embraced by the Monk. Imagine the trepidation of those benighted souls lurking in caves around Afghanistan, sad individuals who cling to their primitive belief in an Allah who would actually be made glad by the slaughter of his own children. Imagine their dismay if the Grand Ayatollah and the Pope were join together as joyous children of the same Lord! If the Sunni were to embrace the Shiite, and they in turn were both to be embraced by the religious leaders of Israel and the West, imagine then the tremors, which would reverberate along both sides of our current divide. Imagine the far reaching consequences around the world, if only the great religions would unite in the mutual understanding and celebration of the one God, of Allah, of El Elyon, a thousand names has our Father been given, and yet he remains the same.
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