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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ishmael" data-source="post: 85381" data-attributes="member: 532">I suppose I should start with the one that began it for me, Isaac Newton.I don't even quite remember exactly what drew me to him, but I had learned in some way that he had a significant amount of theological work written over the course of his life that many people were unaware of. The main reason for that being deliberate suppression but also it has been lost, found and only recently digitized. Half of his theological works are in the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem physically, but they allowed the University of Oxford to host them on their Newton Project site. I heard vaguely that he was heretical and denied the divinity of Christ, so I wanted to look into it myself if the manuscripts exist. I began reading and quickly realized that in fact was a lie and Newton did not deny the divinity of Christ, rather he looked through and did the research to find the figure that the papal church called Christ and obscured. He identified a specific nature that stemmed from the original Hebrew and their way of thinking/perspective.Having already known Greek and Latin due to his profession as a Cambridge Scholar, he learned Hebrew so he could read the Talmud and other supporting books/documents from Jews. He went out of his way to dig as far as he could and learn what he could to determine the truth, he went to the most primary sources he had and came to the conclusion that there was a line that passed through Genesis to his modern day, and will continue going into our future.In reading his texts I never once saw a place that denied the divinity of Christ, but there were many places that went against the literal legal theological belief of the time; Trinitarianism. It was literally against the law and punishable by public embarrassment through loss of office/position (Newton's successor William Whiston), civil rights and after enough times of 'blasphemy' you were put in prison. The last execution for it was a man named Thomas Aikenhead. Multiple people in both the school and his private circles were ostracized for their beliefs that went against the idea of the Trinity. They viewed any disagreement with it as heresy/blasphemy. The truth is that Newton identified that there was a specific distinction between the Son and the Father that had to be truly understood in order for everything to fall in place and for true, proper obedience. I would argue he noticed this from the logical contradictions that come with how the "Jesus is God" Trinity functions. He noticed also before it was proven by mainstream science that there were additions to the Bible that the Institution used as proof of the Trinity for over 1500 years; 1 John 5:7-8 and 1 Timothy 3:16. Both were edited -- whether maliciously or not -- and then from that point forward accepted as fact. Recently some bibles have been omitting or at least footnoting the changes made, but for as long as anyone alive can remember these were the "true" versions of those verses:1 John 5:7-8 (KJV): "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.8. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one."1 Timothy 3:16 (KJV): "And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory."The edit for 1 John is in what is referred to as the "Comma Johanneum". It attaches this preface to an already complete logical concept, insisting on a specific theology. "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." is not original. There are 0 Greek manuscripts before the 14th century that contain it. The only ones that can even fall under a potential hit for this are a late 14th century manuscript and then a few from the next two. However they show signs of being back-translated from Latin into Greek and/or literally added in. Also, none of the other surviving traditions that contain 1 John have it either. Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic.There was also a huge argument about this in the 4th century during the Arian controversy. This exact concept -- the true nature of the Son and His relationship with the Father -- had exactly 0 quotations from Greek church fathers. It wasn't even at Nicea. Men spent their entire lives on this question and none thought to use that verse as proof? Simple. It didn't exist.Originally a Latin, marginal gloss interpretation, it was written in and became scripture in roughly the year 380 in Spain. From there it made its final migration from a side-note into the Vulgate texts to became standard. Funnily enough, the oldest Vulgate manuscript the Codex Fuldensis from 546 AD doesn't even have it either.How it got into the Greek Bible is interesting too. The Dutch scholar Erasmus refused to include it in his 1516 and 1519 Greek New Testaments due to the lack of manuscripts containing the verse and he suffered immense backlash for not including it. Conveniently around this time, a Greek 'manuscript' was located that contained the verse. Not only was Erasmus not convinced, but nobody else apparently is either that it is legitimate in the current day. Due to social and religious pressure he was forced to include it his 1522 edition of the Greek NT while including his suspicion of forgery. From that point forward the dominoes were set.Newton discovered this and recorded it and sent it in a letter to John Locke in 1690 and was published in 1754 long after Newton had died.The Timothy example is an extremely small edit to the Greek, two brushstrokes. "ΟΣ" (He) became "Θ̅Σ̅" (God). That's it. It has the same "lack of use" evidence that 1 John has where no church fathers used it before the late 4th century when it would have been relevant as well as the lack of inclusion in any other tradition. It became widespread in every Bible in the 8-9th century and the standard reading. The Sinaiticus manuscript has been proven to be edited, "He" replaced with "God" about 700 years after it was written by a 'corrector'. This also made its way into Erasmus's Greek work and then the KJV.After learning this I was heavily drawn to more. He was a very rigorous and mentally disciplined man -- in the sense that he sought truth no matter how uncomfortable and was willing to take risks to figure it out. He proved this in his Treatise on Revelation document he created.This document was the main thing that dragged me into Newton and his methodology for finding the truth. He lays down ground rules that are based in Biblical examples for how prophecy should be interpreted and that the idea the 'prophetic age' has ended is false. He insisted that if prophecy is true, it can be verified by looking back at the historical record and comparing it to what was alleged to happen. He created a map for the Biblical Timeline and extended it past where it 'ended' into his modern day, showcasing that the Fourth Beast had already taken shape. It defined a significant amount of his theology. He also insisted on using the Scripture itself to interpret it. What does that mean? Well, if the text makes a distinction or explicitly declares something -- i.e. "Waters" are "People" -- then that is what it means unless otherwise specified. This gives way to a significant amount of layered understanding to many places in the Bible, including places that most people wouldn't initially consider prophetic. Using this he created a way to 'decipher' Revelation; it's not just schizophrenic rambling or incoherent imagery. It's a mental-visual representation steeped in layers of theological meaning that would take thousands of pages to explain without imagery. It's primarily a Hebrew work that was written in Greek, thus understanding how a Hebrew mind would interpret the imagery is the key to understanding it properly.Before my connection with Christ I was very alone and tired. Sad. Despite being married and having good, reliable friends and family; certain factors separated me from all of them. Most of them "an issue" on my end. I have always been very depressed and nihilistic; but in a fairly realistic way. I saw that because not many good things happen to me, I should expect the logical worst cases. I didn't go all the way, but I most certainly was negative and pessimistic and hateful, towards both myself and others. I was in a very dark place for a few years before Christ set me on the right path.I'll preface by saying that any time I feel like God has spoken to me, it came as an abstract thought. Something "of me", that I 'mentally spoke', but did not conjure myself.I was sitting down and wondering -- and somewhat asking I suppose -- what my name would be if God gave me a name like Jesus renamed Simon to Peter. I was hit with the name "Ishmael". I had no real connection to the name, vaguely knew that it had an association with Islam and that was about it. I had never read much about Abraham, Hagar, or Ishmael. Knowing a little bit about how Hebrew works, I looked into what the name means. "Yishma-El" translates to "God will hear" and is told to Hagar for her son at the time of maximum abandonment/darkness for her. It's a light of shining hope from God, telling her in the wilderness that He hears her voice in the darkness and that her son will still be protected despite the circumstances. Years later when he is forced out, God proves the promise by saving Ishmael. He was the son who received his own, personal covenant, outside of the original line who is not abandoned by God. However, this is still a bit different from Peter. Peter was renamed by a declaration of what he would become. I asked. God replied saying that He hears me in my darkest moments. He was always there no matter what was going on, watching and protecting me. It described the nature of my relationship up to that point to a T, and it left me in tears. Any time I have a legitimate spiritual connection I am crying; but not sadness. That cemented itself as the name God chose for me.</blockquote>

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