> DavID:

> You said: "The Bible is filled with
> gnostic and esoteric "Tree of
> Life" stuff."

> No, it's really NOT.

Sure it IS.

It's sort of like how MUSIC, for example, is "filled" with mathematical and musical stuff.

If I were to describe and explain a beautiful musical piece by Mozart or Bach from a arithmetical analysis perspective, there may be dozens and dozens of common features shared with the functions and equations that also desctibe and explain how cylces of combinations of sound waves share common rules perhaps with the radio-active decay rates of atoms used in atomic fission dynamics.

this does not suggest that such arithimetical REALITY is also linked with DESTRUCTIVE FORCES, for example, so that HERESY is evoked by such LINKS, paradoxically also demonstrating BEAUTY and FORM, etc., also described in MUSIC, in the arthmetical viewpoint, because it also happens to describes how the destructive forces of Nuclear bombs work?

The GOSPEL, especially the "simplicity of the Gospel" is WHAT I believe you are DESIRING to comment about and make an ISSUE that "special knowledge" is NECESSARY to comprehend the Bible etc.

There's nothing esoteric or HIDDEN, for instance, in the GOOD NEWS itself.

> All that's condemned as heresy...

Well YOU certainly seem to be doing some of that.

"Gnostic and Esoteric" stuff comprises virtually a plethora of doctrinal roots, good and bad for sure, but nevertheless it is THERE.

> --why would you jump from one form of
> spiritual foolishness directly into
> another?!

Nobody's jumping on anything, but it's funny, you know, your imaginative prejudices are leaping to no bounds of prejudice regarding the perspectives in question.

> I know alot about Gnosticism, as well as
> other "esoterica"--

You may also "know" a lot of biblical doctrines also. Funny how that works, eh?

> I wasted a lot of my life in that, too--
> "been there, done that"...

Sorry to hear that.

> --it only puffs you up, and darkens your ability to discern truth. Col 2: 18-23, 1 Cor 8:1-3.

Just about anything will do that, you know, in fact, there are so many aspects and divisions of spiritually-based indoctrinations themselves, that have been historically outsourced by the puffing leaven of prejudice itself (scattered throughout its "ancient of Daze" interpretations, dogmatisms and hallucinatory demands on this TRUTH.

> I dropped it--you should, too.

There's nothing for me to drop, 'cause there's nothing being held.

> there's no wisdom there, and it only has appeal > to those seeking their own self-aggrandizement.

Such insults are directly proportional to the degree of assumptions you base your judging upon.

But I'll take the slander as an ironic joke, since the BIBLE itself is filled with such appeal too.

> Aren't you just a littlt tired of trying to
> be part of a "spiritual elite"--COG/TF/TFI or
> Gnostic--there's no real difference--why be a
> chump, AGAIN?

Judging by such a loaded statement, I can only conclude you know very little, (but your prejudices are quite active nevertheless), on the subject of gnostic and esoteric viewpoint within the Bible.

Assumptions are very creative things, but they lack one important quality: REALITY.

> PS You want to be like THIS GUY? Still?

Never was, so how can I STILL be?

You're doing a pretty good immitation though, judging by the condemnation factored into the polarisations embellished.