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CULT
AND PLACE OF CULT
During
the past centuries, from paganism to Judaism, to
Christianity and to the Islam, men have invented cults
and places of cult - pagodas, temples, churches, and
mosques - to worship the multitude of gods or the One
Unique God. The monotheists have adopted pagan cults in
their veneration of the Unique God: the Jews in the
Temple of Jerusalem with sacrificial cults of different
animals, incense, etc…and in the synagogues with
ritual gestures; the Christians, in the churches and the
Muslims in the mosques have done the same. Buddhists,
Hindus etc… practise their cults in their different
pagodas etc…
When
God revealed Himself to men, He repeated several times by
the prophets that the only cult He wants is love, the
site of which is man's heart. This cancels all the
materialistic cults, as well as the places where they are
still practised. Men couldn't yet detach themselves from
the materialistic cults offered in materialistic
buildings. This is due to many reasons, the most
important of which are the prestige and money offered to
the religious leaders who keep their "faithful followers"
in a state of submission, ignorance and immaturity in
order to be dependant upon the different religious
hierarchies.
Here
are some divine interventions by which the Creator
rejects the places and the offerings of the material
cults and specifies that the unique place of cult is
man's heart and the only offering agreeable to Him is
love:
When
David wanted to build a temple, God sent him the prophet
Nathan: "Go and tell my servant David: 'Yahweh says this:
Are you to build me a temple to live in? …Did I ever
say to any of the judges of Israel,…Why do you not
build me a cedar-wood temple?…" (2 Samuel 7,4-13).
In spite of that, Salomon built the first temple, which
was subsequently destroyed twice.
2-
When Jesus came, He foretold the destruction of the
Jerusalem temple, in order to build up the Spiritual
Temple : "Destroy this temple (the temple of Jerusalem) ;
and in three days I will raise it up…He was speaking
of the Temple that was His Body", risen up after three
days (John 2,19-22).
3-
The Samaritan, speaking to Jesus, told Him: " Our
fathers worshipped on this mountain (the Garizim mountain
in Samaria) though you say that Jerusalem is the place
where one ought to worship". Jesus responded: "Believe
me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the
Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem…But
the hour is coming, indeed is already here, when true
worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and
truth; that is the kind of worshippers the Father
seeks. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must
worship Him in spirit and truth" (John
4,20-24).
These
words deserve a meditation: "Believe me woman", Jesus
says. It is difficult, in fact, to believe in the
spiritual cult, that is practised neither in Jerusalem,
nor in Rome, nor in Mecca etc…. The "true
worshippers" offer this cult in their hearts, because
"that is the kind of worshippers the Father seeks", not
the kind men want. Jesus revealed this fact 2000 years
ago. His disciples have not yet understood the depth of
this revelation. Instead, they keep on worshiping God
dressing themselves up in purple. They practise such a
material cult ignoring and disregarding the Holy
Scriptures and the biblical prophecies therein. Yet, the
heart of the cult, which God agrees, is a cult in spirit,
a cult through knowledge and love for what God has
revealed. Those who seek this knowledge and pass it over
to others (their sons, neighbours, the ones who desire to
listen) offer a real cult in spirit and truth to the
Almighty.
4-
The prophet Micah (VIIIth century A.C.) had already
revealed the nature of the only cult which pleases God,
the spiritual one: love. In fact he says: "With what
shall I enter Lord's presence, …with burnt
offerings, with calves one year old? Will he be pleased
with rams by the thousand, with ten thousand streams of
oil? Shall I offer my eldest son for my wrongdoing?
…You have already been told what is right, and what
God wants of you. Only this to do what is right,
to love (God) tenderly, and to walk humbly with
your God" (Micah 6,6-8). God also revealed to the prophet
Hosea : "for faithful love is what pleases me, not
sacrifice ; knowledge of God, not burnt offerings"
(Hosea 6,6).
The
Creator spoke again through the prophet Amos: "I hate, I
scorn your festivals, I take no pleasure in your solemn
assemblies. When you bring me burnt offerings and your
oblations, I do not accept them and I do not look at your
communion sacrifices of fat cattle. Spare me the din of
your chanting, let me hear none of your strumming on
lyres, but let justice flow like water and uprightness
like a never-failing stream" (Amos 5,21-24).
5-
Jeremiah, after Micah, revealed that God had never
prescribed sacrificial cults: "For when I brought your
ancestors out of Egypt, I said nothing to them, gave them
no orders about burnt offerings or sacrifices. My one
command to them was this: Listen to my voice, then I will
be your God and you shall be my people…but they have
not listened to me, have not paid attention; they have
deliberately resisted, behaving worse than their
ancestors…" (Jeremiah 7,21-28).
Then,
where do all these practises of the Law (Torah)
prescriptions come from? They are prescribed in the Books
of Exodus, of Numbers, of Leviticus, of Deuteronomy? God
answers through Jeremiah that they were not inspired by
God, but had been added by the scribes: "How can you say,
we are wise, since we have God's law? Look now it has
been falsified by the lying pen of the scribes!"
(Jeremiah 8,8). The biblical scribes of the past, then,
as well as the different religious chiefs, imagined and
imposed cults and prescriptions to satisfy, in the name
of God, their own pride and their material interest. This
sad situation is still going on today…
Jeremiah
reveals also that God will make with His true
worshippers a New Covenant, which is in man's heart:
"Look, the days are coming, God declares, when I shall
make a New Covenant…Within them I shall plant My
law, writing it on their hearts…There will be
no further need for them to teach each others, saying:
Learn to know God, they will all know Me…" (Jeremiah
31,31-34).
This
New Covenant has been instituted by Jesus' sacrifice:
"This cup is the New Covenant in My Blood" Jesus said
(Luke 22,20).
Thus,
the only cult that pleases God is the one inspired by New
Covenant. Today, the Independent Believers practise this
cult freely in the intimacy of their houses, with
simplicity, as the first disciples of Christ did (Acts
2,42-47).
It
is for this reason that Jesus, in our apocalyptical
times, chose a new "kingdom of priests" who are not like
the traditional ones (Revelation 1,6 and 5,10). He chose
the believers who listen to Him knocking at the door of
their hearts, those who open to let Him in to share with
them the Lord's Wedding Supper (Apocalypse 3,20 / Luke
12,35-37). This is the cult, which our Divine Father
desires.
6-
God, in the Gospel, invites us all to take conscience
that the place of cult is not a building of bricks and
stones in a precise geographic place, but it is within
the heart of the believer himself:
"Do
you not realise that you are a Temple of God with the
Spirit of God living in you? …God's Temple is Holy,
and you are that Temple" (1 Corinthians
3,16-17).
"The
Temple of God cannot compromise with false gods and that
is what we are -the Temple of the living God-. We
have God's word for it: 'I shall fix My home among them
and live among them ; I will be their God and they will
be My people" (2 Corinthians 6,16).
"You
are fellow-citizens with the holy people of God and part
of God's household. You are built upon the foundation of
the apostles and prophets and Christ Jesus Himself is the
corner stone. Every structure knit together in Him grows
into a holy Temple…and you too, in Him, are being
built up into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit"
(Ephesians 2,19-22).
7-
Thus, the cult to be offered to God is a spiritual
act. It is completely different from the material cults:
sacrifices of animals, incense etc… Saint Paul
offers God "a spiritual cult by preaching the Gospel of
His Son" (Romans 1,9).
The
Holy Scriptures reveal a new spiritual era defined as "a
New Heaven and a New Earth, and the New Jerusalem, coming
down from Heaven" in which, John said, "I could not
see any temple in the city, since the Lord God
Almighty and the Lamb were themselves the Temple"
(Apocalypse 21,1 and 21,22).
The
Holy Koran also invites the true worshippers to the
spiritual cult and urges them to renounce to the animal
sacrifices in favour of piety. Speaking of sacrifices we
read: "Their flesh and their blood will never reach God,
your piety, instead, will reach Him" (Koran XXII, The
Pilgrimage, 38).
Concluding,
the only cult God desires is man's attitude: to
grow in knowledge and love of God and of men. The only
place of this cult is man's heart, which expresses love
around the divine Table of Jesus in the intimacy of the
family. The Bible and the Koran invite us to this cult
(Refer to the text "Jesus restores the priesthood").
"When
you pray", Jesus said, "go to your private room shut
yourself in, and so pray to your Father who is in that
secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done
in secret will reward you" (Matthew 6,6).
The
writer of this text and the readers who put its
teachings in practise offer a spiritual cult to the
Eternal Father in the Temple of their
souls.
"These
are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks" (John
4,23).
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