"The story of Reverend Carlton Pearson, a renowned evangelical pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who cast aside the idea of Hell, and with it everything he'd worked for over his entire life.
Carlton Pearson's church, Higher Dimensions, was once one of the biggest in the city, drawing crowds of 5,000 people every Sunday. But several years ago, scandal engulfed the reverend. He didn't have an affair. He didn't embezzle lots of money. His sin was something that to a lot of people is far worse: He stopped believing in Hell." (From This American Life)
Now Bishop Pearson is preaching and teaching a New Gospel - The Gospel of Inclusion - which is the title of his latest book.
"When love, healing, tolerance and justice cease to be the cornerstones of the Christian faith, it is not the non-Christians of the world who are damned. It is Christianity itself - .... Christianity deserves better. Christ deserves better."
"In the Oneness of God there is room for all. It includes much more than any one religion contains."
(exerpts from The Gospel of Inclusion")
Since being cast out by the Evangelical community and labeled a heretic, Bishop Pearson has found a new community of believers - believers of Oneness, Love and Inclusivity. He has been accepted for "Privilege of Call and Ministry" by the United Church of Christ and embraced by a widening circle of faith communities including Episcopalians, UCC, MCC, Unitarians Universalist, Buddhist, Native American, Jewish, Islamic, GLBT and New Thought. Bishop Pearson has been embraced and befriended by Bishop John Shelby Spong, Jim Garrison of Wisdom University and Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith along with many others.
New Thought Ministries of Oregon is proud to be among those embracing his message and supporting his new ministry.
Carlton Pearson, has found a long buried truth that is not new at all! Orthodox, regular everyday and evangelical Christians know not what and whom the really worship! The Bibles translations are so political and thus so badly translated as to serve only those who cherish power. I am a Sephardic Hebrew, a true descendant of Hebrew blood, which Spaniards labeled as “Los Marranos.” Once my Ancestors came to Southern Spain so long ago they did bring with us the “Good News,” the real gospel preached by our fellow Samaritans: “That the Lord God of Judah was not god, but only the lord god of the Judeans, the tribe of Simeon and of Benjamin (Christians see in Luke 2:36 and Philippians 3:4b-6.) Please remember that Benjamin is the ravenous wolf referring to the Temple's altar, and its heavy presence there of biblical sacrifices of the First Born euphemistically Passed thru fire.[ The so-called Lord was only the national god of Judah, chief god the chairman of the council of the gods, Elohim (see "Ha Elohim” and "Elohim tsaddiq.”) In Gen 20:13 Abraham, before the polytheistic Philistine king Abimelech, says that "the gods (elohim) caused (plural verb) me to wander! Gen 35:7 and there he built an altar and called the place El-bethel, because there God had revealed (plural verb) himself to him when he fled from his brother (Genesis 35:7, ESV. We had to suffer similar persecutions and have had to avoid both the Jews and the Christians wrath, because we followed the oral traditions that we are forbidden from committing to writing. Jehovah or Yahweh, is the anthropomorphic God who could walk through the Garden of Eden looking for Adam and Eve, Jahwist presented by the as an example of the blind god who is jealous because them have become exactly like him, gods and showing thus his powerlessness requiring the help of “US” in his statement: “…Let US…”
ReplyDelete“The word Elohim occurs more than 2500 times in the Hebrew Bible, with meanings ranging from "god" in a general sense (as in Exodus 12:12, where it describes "the gods of Egypt"), to a specific god (e.g., 1 Kings 11:33, where it describes Chemosh "the god of Moab", or the frequent references to Yahweh as the "elohim" of Israel), to demons, seraphim, and other supernatural beings, to the spirits of the dead brought up at the behest of King Saul in 1 Samuel 28:13, and even to kings and prophets (e.g., Exodus 4:16). The phrase bene elohim, usually translated "sons of God", has an exact parallel in Ugaritic and Phoenician texts, referring to the council of the gods.”
Further information: Names of God in Judaism
“Elohim occupy the seventh rank of ten in the famous medieval Rabbinic scholar Maimonides' Jewish angelic hierarchy. Maimonides said: "I must premise that every Hebrew knows that the term Elohim is a homonym, and denotes God, angels, judges, and the rulers of countries, ...”