|
Bertram
D. Brochmann in English An English version of the book is also available in
paperback. Order the book from mailto:dagoj@online.no
at the price of NOK 100,00 Before you start, read
more about Bertram D. Brochmann in English here. B.
DYBWAD BROCHMANN THE
ART OF READING THE BIBLE Translated by Edited by Dag Ove
Johansen Chapter
1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
Chapter 7 Chapter 8
Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 What the Bible really
tells us The Bible gives an
account of human nature in an inspiring and imaginative way - it discusses
the risks and dangers, as well as the possibilities and opportunities
available to us. There is no other work of poetry or drama that describes the
primitiveness of mankind in such an elaborate and comprehensive way, as well
as dealing with our conscious and unconscious way of living. Therefore, The
Bible will experience a renaissance in the future when modern research in the
mind and large-scale psychology teach us to be very certain about what The
Bible really tells us. The world has discussed this for several hundred
years, but still man hasn't come to a final positive result, as each side
doggedly maintains its position. Up to now The Bible has
managed to keep the world involved in one continuous guessing game. Just when
someone thought they had found the right interpretation, then new information
came into the picture, and the guessing game began again. It is just too limiting
to consider The Bible as only having to do with "religion". The
word itself doesn't even exist in The Bible, and neither is there a notion of
something similar to what we today mean with the word "religion". The Bible discusses
economy and judicial matters, ethics and ethical conflicts, along with
innumerable stories and poetic allegories, much symbolism and art. It
contains teachings from prophets and wise men, and tries to raise barbarians
to human beings and human beings to gods. The Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) contains all kinds of information about
how people should behave. The "law giver" even includes such
information about how a person should take a spade along when he goes outside
of the camp area to relieve himself, so he can then bury the waste when he is
finished. (Deuteronomy 23: 12 -13). It would be fairly
difficult to explain that all of these regulations about life here on
earth could be reduced to "religion", and could be rewritten to
only pertaining to "religion", if we didn't understand that The
Bible contains social teachings, economy and morals for society, etc. which
are fairly incompatible with the current political and pagan sociology,
morals, economy, statutes, etc. Since The Bible expects a conflict
between God's Order and human authorized order, and when The Gospel tells
about the false shepherds that are hired and paid by paganism, then it's
easy to understand the "politics" and tactics" that are behind
the misinterpretation of The Bible. The Bible has been rewritten to look like
a heavenly religion that has nothing to do with life here on earth. There are other topics
discussed by The Bible. It talks symbolically about "the first human
beings" and about the chance and risk that was a part of awakening to
consciousness and gaining knowledge. Knowledge can be used in two ways - for
good or for evil. The Bible tells much
about the conflict that only human beings can experience - the conflict
between society's tree of knowledge and the tree of a holy life. The one tree
bears evil fruits and dies. The other living and luminous tree of life bears
good fruits, renews itself, and has eternal life. The Bible very clearly
explains how human nature on one side strives, yearns, and grows up, like all
living things do. On the other side, it is in a deep sleep, and therefore
shows a slowness and stubbornness, something that we have seen through out
history. The Bible reprimands "apathy" and hard hearts. But it's also true, that
The Bible, in addition to discussing human nature, creation, growth, and
building of communities, also deals with our relationship to God and our
weakness for gods, Molochs, demons, uncontrolled fantasy, temptations, and
the dangers enticing our body and spirit. Also, the Bible tells about the
reality of God, about His Laws and inherent orderliness, and how God Himself
arranges that His Laws be obeyed. And, finally, The Bible
tells about how the human spiritual and intellectual life loses direction -
why and how it happens, how it manifests itself, what consequences there were
and still are. And furthermore, The Bible tells us about the world's mental
Savior who came to save us from our wayward mentality, as well as finally
about how the future can develop, and about the final goals of the life of
the individual and of society. The biblical description
is of a perfect place where all obscurities and problems are removed. We are
assured that humanity, according to the Old and New Testament, really are the
inheritors of this wonderful kingdom where The Son of Man is no longer
a servant, but now sits on His proper throne, radiant and glorious, as
a Child of God, The Son or Offspring. In one way, The Bible
contains everything concerning our past, present, and future - it is a
synthesis of everything. In spite of that, people still like being
"analysts", i.e. they divide existence into many strictly divided
"areas of life". By doing that, we lose the opportunity of viewing
the completeness and interconnectedness of Life, offered in The Bible.
Therefore, what the Lutheran ministers are teaching people to believe is an
enjoyable image and a cheap delusion - that The Bible "only" is
religion, and that the Savior of the World "only" is the founder of
one religion, in competition with several dozen others. In this book we want to
give the reader a sterling picture of the world's mental Savior, in the best way we
can, and therefore we will mostly use The New Testament. It's much easier to read and
understand the Four Gospels, instead of trying to interpret and describe all
the rest of The Bible. Therefore, The Bible has
to do with mankind and about our relationship to God and to Our Savior.
Probably no one doubts that. But since mankind always has misinterpreted and
misunderstood itself, many have unfortunately not understood that they have
any need for a "Savior" in their lives either. Since mankind has
the understanding that God has constantly changed, mankind can think
that they no longer have any need for God in their lives today.
Superficially, it can appear that God in our day and age is different from
the God of, for ex., 100 years ago. When religious history and theological
works from earlier times are read, it is quite unbelievable what people have
convinced themselves and others to believe. It's as if they are saying that
there are many of us who believe that we will develop much more, and that
"God" will also be changing. Bjørn Steiner Bjørnson said the
following: "Where good people walk, those are the Paths of God". At
least people believe that if there is a God, then He must be how "the good
people" (pious and orthodox) understand Him. Christianity has been
represented as religion, but some look at religion as a nuisance on The Road
of Life, others think that it should have nothing to do with politics,
yet other opinions are that it is "childish nonsense" that the
world needs to outgrow. What all these opinions have in common is that they
understand the word "religion" to mean the Christianity of
Europe and America, i.e. what "the good people" believe! Since mankind has never
understood itself before, and only now has slowly begun to come close to the
entrance to the depth of its spiritual life, we need to agree in the
beginning that it isn't completely sure that what we have called
Christianity up to now, is the real Christianity. Perhaps, the best
understanding is it is only something in the direction of Christianity.
Maybe the truth is that the Name of Christ has been ridiculed, disdained and
rejected in the world because mankind has misinterpreted Christ, and
been mistaken regarding Him, God and ourselves? What does The Bible say
about this question? Here are some examples: Isaiah, long before the
time of Christ, says the following in Ch. 52:5: "'What shall I do?'
asked Jehovah, 'my people are taken away from me for naught. They that rule over
them are howling', said Jehovah, 'and my name is continually blasphemed all
day long'. 6: 'Therefore my people
shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that
doth speak; behold it is I'. 7: 'How beautiful upon
the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth
salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!'" (Since verse 7 is
probably a bad translation, we'll try to state it in other words: How blessed
are the feet and way of life of him who is entrusted to bring the glad
tidings, to preach peace when others create war, to witness about positive
things when others only speak about negative things, to appeal for the
salvation for mankind when everyone else has lost faith and hope, and to
teach the people that God alone is the Lord, when the whole world
cries after dictatorship and organization). In verse 5 we saw
clearly that the people's understanding of who God really is was not clear
and was misunderstood, therefore His Name was blasphemed. Paul says very clearly in
a letter to the congregation in Romans 2: 24: "For the name of God is
blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, even as it is written".
So we see that the
phenomenon is not unknown in The Bible. Pure Christianity has not been practiced
since the time the Savior passed away and left His teachings to his
disciples. The Savior has prepared us for that. When Olav, the Holy
"brought" Christianity to Norway, he resolutely chopped off the
head of any farmer who wouldn't be baptized. And when the first Christian
pilgrims from the north of Europe traveled down through Europe, they ravaged
and plundered all along the way, even in the "Holy Land". Gustav Adolf was a brilliant personality for his
time, a pious and for his time right-thinking man, but our current
churches would probably not accept his theology. Abraham who wanted to slay his own son
was, until a few years ago, looked upon as an example of a man of God, and Salomon,
with his 5000 wives, was also a radiant example. After people started
criticizing these actions, and our ethical understandings developed and
became part of our way of life, there were many Norwegian theologians who
didn't want to be bothered with The Old Testament because it had become too
"difficult" to explain to the orthodox believers. This is one of the
results of claiming that everything was completely created several thousand
years ago and trying
to fool yourself about the truth concerning the perpetual creation. It is true in the Jewish
children's instruction that it says that God rested on the seventh day, but
Jesus assures us many thousands of years later in John 5:17: "But Jesus
answered them, My Father worketh even until now, and I work". Therefore
we have to change our position that creation is finished and that we are born
again for eternity. We must understand that we will be continually born again
- in spirit and truth. When people are allowed
to continue with the unlucky delusion that Olav, The Holy imported 100 %
complete Christianity 900 years ago, and in addition let people accept the
current Christianity espoused by the Church with its mammon cult, public
paganism, and war between the classes, it's no wonder that "Christianity"
is considered a nuisance on The Road of Life. A German Gestapo man told me
directly: "Honestly, we don't want to hear the name of Christ
anymore". And then I replied: "I can certainly understand why you
would say that if you are referring to the "Christianity" that was
preached in the many German churches I have visited over the years". The
German sermons were filled with fire and brimstone. My view is that the
Church Christians have had a choice for a long time: Either to see the name
of Jesus Christ blasphemed, trampled on, and rejected around the world, or to
admit their tremendous mistake regarding how they understand both God, The
Father, the almighty Creator of heaven and earth, and the Savior, Jesus
Christ, and not in the least regarding the understanding of ourselves as
human beings and our human society. Therefore, we need to
read The Bible again, in a new way. My understanding is that Henrik
Ibsen, Arne Garborg, and other Norwegian "prophets" had
a similar interpretation, and this has been my understanding since the
beginning of World War II. During 1914 – 1915 I began to understand that
there was a great distance between what really was in The Bible and the
involuntary misunderstandings and deviations from the truth taught by the
Christian Church. (In my magazine "Community Life" 1930 – 40, I have
continually tried to prove the faithlessness and sinful ways of the Christian
Church). Because of that it’s been
fairly easy for me to understand that God is, and always has been, the one
and the same. We humans have grown and developed along the way as new
ideas create new ways and possibilities for our growth. We’re standing in
the middle of creation and, right now, just before a powerful rebirth in
spirit and truth. If we could only understand that it is just before the return
of Christ, which would make it easier to put things in perspective when
we read The Bible and try to understand what’s happening around us. People who have a rigid
belief that life is complete and that creation ended a long
time ago have difficulty understanding life in a dynamic way, and that’s why
there are many now who are certain that no development has taken place. They
say that everything just continues in circles, and that’s the same way flies
understand things when they continue to helplessly fly around the light
without understanding what they’re doing. It’s also difficult for these
people to believe in "the light" and the power the light has
as an eternal source for growth and change. They think that they have understood
things correctly, and interpret truth as something static - that
is final and complete. Why? Well, of course, because they don’t understand
that there is movement in the eternal life. The eternal life that
we’re talking about here is eternal movement, even after we have reached the
perfection that The Creator is talking about. Psychologically it is
easy to understand that people who haven’t yet discovered "the
light" as a creative and re-creative factor in our existence can easily
misunderstand dictatorial teachings and speak seriously about "the power
of the state", "the power of weapons", "the power of
money" and "the times" and "business cycles" as
living sovereign dynasties, (The academic world uses the expression
"independent variable" to describe what we call here for
"sovereign dynasties".) that rule in the world according to their
own thoughts and whims. When you first have discovered, once and for all,
that all of the progress in the history of man is dependent upon an
expanded orientation to life ("new light",
new forms of life, and new ways of living), then you recognize a primary
light as the only objective correct source of power, and then you soon see
that the history of mankind is only composed of what mankind has convinced
itself it is. God and Satan are the omnipotent factors that decide our
destiny and they are in us – not demons outside of us. Although an individual
can certainly feel and experience this as omnipotent demons, good or bad
"supernatural" powers, outside of himself or above himself. Granted
that the spirit of the time or of the masses is stronger than an individual’s
spirit, and really does make itself felt "over us" and
"outside of us", but the truth is still what The Savior has assured
us, that the kingdom is in us, and that, because of that, we must go into a
private area to pray, and preferably not pray out loud in congregations. When The Savior says to
Pilate: "You have no power that is not given to you from on high",
what he means is that no statesman or government official has more power or
another power than the spirit of the time or the common way of thinking will
give to him. "Money" has
exactly as much power as the people unknowingly playing with it give to it. The doll only has as much
life as the child playing with it imagines. One fine day the doll is
"dead", and that’s exactly the way it happens and has happened with
all of the Molochs (see earlier explanation) in the history of
mankind. They live and prevail, having ominous and mysterious powers
as long as we believe in them. Then "they die". "The times and
the business cycles" are certainly capricious, just as unpredictable and
capricious as we humans are, until we regain self-control and remove all
of the demagogues from public office. "Statesmen"
have become exceedingly stronger in our time, as compared to only 100 years
ago. Why? For the simple reason that we all hate and fear each other,
and everyone clamors together and screams after a "strong state"
and a "big, strong" man who will tell everybody what to do. In my
childhood, both "sprites" and "trolls" were living and had
power. Then a new light came over the so-called "supernatural" and
it was understood for what it was, and it was no longer correct to talk to
children in the same ways about the "trolls". But maybe this way of
understanding life is returning? "Glorifying Caesar" was abolished
a long time ago and was replaced by "The Parliament", because
people were doubtful and skeptical about "the state" and
"central authorities", and were more inclined to give more freedom
to the private individual. It is true that God gave
the Norwegian people May 17, 1814 (Independence Day). "All Norwegians
thank God Almighty." Initially we said we
received our freedom "from above". Later we said that coercion came
"from above", because our condition had changed and became
something else - the opposite of what we wanted. It is situations like
that The Bible talks about. When we read The Bible to find out the truth
about God and ourselves, we have to understand that God is a mental power
within us. David sings the following: "They shall perish,
but thou shalt endure; Yea, all of them shall
wax old like a garment; As a vesture shalt Thou
change them, and they shall be changed; But Thou art the same,
And thy years shall
have no end." Psalms 102: 26-28. "Jesus Christ is the
same yesterday and today, yea and forever." Hebrews13:8. But when it looks like
both God and The Savior have changed, it’s because we, ourselves, are
changing according to how we are affected by the light of truth or delusion. In this connection, think
about when we believed that the world stood still on a foundation. "Where wast thou
when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast
understanding. Who determined the
measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who stretched the line
upon it? Whereupon were the
foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the
cornerstone thereof?" Job 38: 4 – 6. We remember the awful
uproar in the circles of the learned and the infallible when we understood
that the sun stood still, and that it was our earth that moved around in
space with enormous speeds and a variety of movements. Then we believed that
the earth stood still, just as we believe about ourselves that we stand still
and were somehow, by magic, "perfectly created" all at once.
Mankind doesn’t seem to possess the "kinetic sense", or the sense
of what lives and moves. As they say: "There’s nothing dangerous about
growth." But we must learn to use that sense if we are to understand The
Bible and the Word of God, because it’s all either a game of chance and
creative dynamics, or a mighty self-active mental and creative power. When The Savior says:
"Wander in truth" that means the opposite of the teachings and
practice of the Christian Church who "stand still in the truth".
Then one day the saddened parishioners find out that the truth was alive, but
it disappeared for the priests/ministers who just stood and ground their
"mills" and played their old worn out records on their Sunday
record player. (Compare with Revelations 18:22 " …and the voice
of a mill shall be heard no more at all in thee…") It’s probably due to our
own slowness, self-satisfaction or laziness that we don’t understand our own
creation as growth and development. We are "indolent: people of
comfort". Therefore we get organized into associations so that we can be
"indolent" together. We don’t like movement and unrest. That’s why
the whole population in the eastern hemisphere worships the static religions,
and therefore they dream about "Saint Nirvana", complete quiet, the
blessed indifference, and the leveling of all movements and reactions. That’s
why the temperance people can’t stand beer and wine because those things
create unrest, and many ideas and impulses, and often also irritating
initiatives. Doesn’t the message of
Christ contain more than just wanting to see things in a new light? We need a
new light to see things better in our lives, so we can develop further.
Notice what Salomon says
when he asks for more wisdom in 1 Kings 3: 5-12, and what Peter then admits:
"Lord to whom shall we turn, if not to You, who knows the inherent
orderliness of eternal life and can, therefore, show us the way with Your
words of wisdom?" It appears to me that the Christian Church and
their sects interpret "words about eternal life" to mean that Christ
gave a lecture to his disciples about life after death. As I said earlier, Christ
did not direct us to stand quietly in the truth, but to wander and
move in the truth so that we could grow and "become whole"
as was intended. Every time I find a new
light over my life, I immediately understand it as new words about the
eternal life that I am now living, and this is most important for me to
understand - as much as possible. Other kinds of "news" are less
important for us, if we wish to move in truth. I don’t criticize the
State Church of Norway for being steadfast in their faith or on guard for
heresy, but I do take them to task for thinking over and over: "now
we’ve really found the correct answer", and they seem to forget all the
missteps along the way in the history of the Church. The Church denies that
we are standing in the middle of creation and that we need new light for our
salvation, rebirth and renewal. Some typical reactions
are the following: "We’re already
Christians and don’t need to accept any new thinking about the way to
salvation." "We don’t want to be
different and don’t believe that religion should have anything to do with
community life." "My name is lay
minister Jensen. I know everything." "Our kingdom is not
of this world." "We are the only
ones who really understand." What I am trying to come
to terms with is the way that the parishioners behave. It is this spirit of
the Pharisees that created traitors who pray to God for victory over their
enemies, instead of the way Salomon prayed, which was to have more light.
This is the spirit that believes in the "power of money" and the
"power of weapons", that supports the "power of organizations
and the state", and with a vote of 149 for and 1 against will throw out
research, new light, new orientations, and new recognition as the only
positive way to salvation. It is this sterile and senile way of
approaching life that made it impossible in 1940 for Norway to successfully
manage the situation when everybody was running around without any plan,
without any clear understanding about the meaning of life, without any
shepherd, any savior, and no true and living spirit of God as the center of
their lives. Let everyone keep his own convictions - wasn’t that what was so
important? Note: The Bible references
are taken from The Holy Bible, American Standard Version |