Jail is too good for Nigerian pastors (Page 5)

i'm proud to be a catholic

“God can't be seen by the natural eye, but He is seen by the sympathy of our acts. When man acts, he either acts according to happiness or misery for the reward is in the act, and the knowledge of this is God. So God is in us and we are in our acts. And God won't censure man's acts unless man censures them himself. We too often mistake our lives for some other person in this way. If I tell you not to eat or drink this or that and you believe me, when you really believe you are me and not yourself, and you attach your senses to this belief and all the misery follows for the superstitious man, for God is not in an opinion. So when the Minister tells you that this is wrong and this is right, he deceives himself and makes the word of God of no effect, for God can't give an opinion. And the minister can't give any proof that he ever got the truth from God but man. Now all such foolish beliefs make one nervous, for you are bound, yet you were not born a slave, for God does not enslave anyone. But man is a slave to his own beliefs and forges his own fetters.
“What was it that Jesus wanted to communicate to the world? One simple fact that man was a progressive being, that his happiness and misery were of his own make, that his belief is his wisdom and if it is founded on an opinion, it was liable to make him unhappy. To separate the truth from the error is a science, the knowledge of which teaches how to correct an error or disease and in this knowledge is eternal life. Jesus never intended to teach the people a belief in another world. His words and acts showed them that their beliefs were false and that they were the cause of their misery. But this they could not understand, and being in their belief, their belief became a part of their identity. As they were taught to believe in spirits, their misery was attributed to them. And as error begets error, the people were tormented by their own belief. It never entered into the minds of these blind leaders that as a man sows, so shall he reap, for action and reaction are equal
“Jesus tried to establish the kingdom of truth in man so that men would teach it, but he failed not because he was ignorant himself but because man was not developed enough to receive it
 Jesus had to establish a kingdom as the priests had done: theirs was based on opinions, his on science, so everything that they believed was only an opinion which his science could tear to pieces. So he begins by saying, “Seek first the kingdom of Heaven”; that is, seek wisdom or science, then all their craft could be explained. Then he says, “The kingdom of Heaven has come unto you and ye will not receive it”; that is, the science is here but you will not try to understand it. In the Old Testament, David called this science wisdom and exhorted his son to seek it first of all. Jesus called it the Kingdom of Heaven and calls on all men to seek it. If this Wisdom and the Kingdom of Heaven were not the same, then Jesus and David had different ideas of wisdom. Does the priest call on the people to get understanding? No. That is what they fear. The priests want them to have religion; that is, to believe in the creeds which cramp the intellect and bind burdens upon them so that they can lead them. They fear investigation, for it is death to their craft

IS THIS A NOVEL?