Tag: Third Order Powers
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Remembering the Mission
Conventional Christianity states that Jesus came to save humanity, but only those who acknowledge Jesus as the only Son of God and invite Him into their hearts will be saved. This is the basis for all evangelism and all churches that follow the Nicene Creed, which is to say, all Christian churches, whether Catholic or Protestant. This is why Christians are so keen on saving souls. They don’t want you to suffer for eternity in hell.
The Gnostic Church begs to differ with that common interpretation of Christ’s mission. According to the books of the Nag Hammadi library, all of creation will be redeemed and returned to the Fullness and the Father’s home in Heaven. All of creation, everyone and everything, will be made clean and pure and holy by the end. As they say, it’ll all be good in the end, and if it’s not good yet, then it’s not yet the end.
Gnosis refers to the ability to use reason and logic to arrive at spiritual truth. So, let’s think together about this idea of Christ and redemption and who does or does not go to Heaven. First, if Christ’s redemption were a matter of your belief, then Christ’s mission of salvation would be limited to what you believe. In other words, you would be the one holding the power of salvation, not Christ.
Does that make any sense to you? Are you the one who redeems or is Christ? Can you see how making your belief central to redemption actually limits the power of Christ? Can you see how that makes sinful humans more powerful than the mission of Christ’s redemption? Limiting Christ to your belief, it seems to me, is the greater heresy than simply trusting Christ to accomplish the mission. It is Christ’s job to redeem humanity, not yours. Once we concede that it is only the Christ that can redeem, then what is the point of leading a virtuous life? Why not sin up until the end, have all kinds of fun, and then waltz into Heaven without repentance? Repentance, by the way, means to feel sorrow and regret. Are we allowed to sin willy-nilly with no negative consequences? An even more profound question is, why were we created in the first place? When you dwell in vice rather than virtue, your life is part of the problem and not part of the solution. The Christ brings redemption and remembrance of the Father and the Fullness, one bit, one piece of the Fall at a time. Every time you resist evil and turn a bad habit into a good habit, you have redeemed a piece of the Fall. When you redeem all of your bits and pieces, you will be fully redeemed and regain your home in the Fullness. When all Second Order Powers have accepted the remembrance and the redemption of Christ, then Logos will be fully redeemed and this material universe can pass away. At that point, Paradise, with all of the love, peace and happiness that is implied, will be fully restored.
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Gnostic Psychology Slide Show, Pt. 2
There’s only peace and joy and happiness on the side of virtue when you’re sincere. We’re not talking about hypocrisy. We’re not talking about forcing the issue. We’re not talking about whipping yourself with a flagellant whip to make yourself holy. That is not God’s will. God is entirely love, entirely acceptance, entirely forgiving, entirely compassionate, entirely charitable.
And if you think you’re living a righteous life, yet you’re feeling anger, hatred, division, well then you’re not living a righteous life. Those are clues that you’re in the wrong set of memes, you see? So you want to get rid of those and turn your eyes upward. And you can either turn your eyes directly to Jesus as Christian true believers do, and I mean true believers, not hypocrites or pew warmers, or you can go this Gnostic route and turn your mind up to the Fullness of God, the Son, the Father, and the disincarnate Christ who pre-existed Jesus. You can take your choice, but it all is going to level you up to the Father. If you’re on the path, the glory beam, then you wind up with the Father.
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We Are the Children of the Aeons and other musings
Jesus becomes the first human exemplar of the indwelling of the Christ. But we all have the potential to have the indwelling of the Christ. That’s the ultimate goal, is to allow the Third Order Powers to replace our Second Order Powers. That is the only way to live a truly righteous life that is outside of the Law, but through grace. But this all has nothing to do with salvation, because all will be redeemed because that is the job of the Christ, sooner or later. And it will be later for most people who do not acknowledge the Christ.
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The Third Order of Powers
“Not only did the aeons generate the countenance of the Father to whom they gave praise, but also they generated their own; for the aeons who give glory generated their countenance and their face. They were produced as an army for him, as for a king, since the beings of the thought have a powerful fellowship and an intermingled harmony. They came forth in a multifaceted form, in order that the one to whom help was to be given might see those to whom he had prayed for help. He also sees the one who gave it to him.”
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If everybody is going to heaven anyway, what’s the point of being virtuous?
Welcome to Gnostic Insights. My name is Dr. Cyd Ropp, and I’m your host. In 2019, I posted an article to my new Gnostic Gospel…
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The Nicene Creed
The Nicene Creed is a meme bundle of what one must believe in order to call themselves a Christian. And it came to be that anyone who didn’t believe in those edicts of the Nicene Creed was labeled a heretic, and anyone such as myself that may profess other beliefs, other gnostic beliefs, for example, well, those are heretics because they don’t believe in the Nicene Creed. So let’s look at the Nicene Creed today and see what it is that we agree or disagree with, as far as this Gnostic Reformation goes.
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Karma and Memes
Our karma is the karma that we generate that causes the memes that we cling to to hold on to us. We hold those memes and they are bound to us like a covering through our karma, and my karma is different than your karma. Everybody’s karma is unique to the individual. When you pass away, your karma is momentarily laid aside so that you can see the truth in the in between place after your material body dies.
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Free Will, Redemption, and the Economies
Free will is at the core of our being. It was the free will of Logos that caused him to leave the Fullness and fall. It was the free will of the restored Logos and the Totalities that created the Second Order Powers. And it is the free will of the Powers, by way of our Aeonic inheritance, that directs ours lives here below. It is our own free will that causes us to forget about the Father and the Fullness of God from which we come. It is our own free will that allows us to bow to the rule of the Demiurge and dig our own graves. Because of the nature of free will, we turn to an outside source to assist our remembrance and salvation. This Aeon is known as the Christ.
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Christ and the Third Order Powers
“Then from the harmony, in a joyous willingness which had come into being, they brought forth the fruit, which was a begetting from the harmony, a unity, a possession of the Totalities, revealing the countenance of the Father, of whom the aeons thought as they gave glory and prayed for help for their brother with a wish in which the Father counted himself with them. Thus, it was willingly and gladly that they bring forth the fruit.” The Gnostic Gospel calls this new fruit the Christ.
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Third Order Powers–the Army of Christ
“Then from the harmony, in a joyous willingness which had come into being, they brought forth the fruit, which was a begetting from the harmony, a unity, a possession of the Totalities, revealing the countenance of the Father, of whom the aeons thought as they gave glory and prayed for help for their brother with a wish in which the Father counted himself with them. Thus, it was willingly and gladly that they bring forth the fruit.”