Messiah's Handbook Quotes

Everything is exactly as it is for a reason. The crumb on your table is no mystical reminder of this morning's cookie, it is there because you have chosen not to remove it. No exceptions.

You gave your life to become the person you are right now Was it worth it?

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah. The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in awhile and watch your answers change.

Everything in this book may be wrong.

There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.

Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms, and they'll call you crazy.

Any powerful idea is absolutely fascinating and absolutely useless until you decide to put it to work.

The less you know about the game, and the less you remember you’re a player, the more senseless living becomes.

I mentioned on Friday, the church sits and listens to preposterous stories: Mary and the virgin birth, Jesus turning water into wine, Peter getting two gold coins from the mouth of a fish, Moses parting the Red Sea, donkeys talking, the Ark of the Covenant destroying Israel’s enemies, Moses receiving the Ten Commandments from God, the prophecy of the Messiah’s death as in Isaiah 53, Jonah being swallowed by a whale, the flood of Noah, and on and on it goes. Most of us believe all the stories,

The individual is always the exception. “Everybody can’t . . .” but anybody can.

Here’s a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.

No one can solve problems for someone whose problem is that they don’t want their problems solved.

Life tells you nothing, it shows you everything.

If God looked directly into your eyes and said, “I command that you be happy in the world, as long as you live,” What would you do?

It’s a slow process, changing principles, and you’ll never know they’ve changed until something that used to be right just doesn’t feel that way any more.

How many lives on the planet? How many lives in the universe? One.

You wait a lifetime to meet Someone who understands you, accepts you as you are. At the end, you find that Someone, all along, has been you.

If you want to meet someone who can fix any situation you don’t like, who can bring you happiness in spite of what other people say or believe, look in a mirror, then say this magic word: “Hello.

He meant to pass by them” (Mark 6:48). This wording might evoke some of the appearances of God to important persons in the Old Testament (Moses [Ex. 33:19]; Elijah [1 Kings 19:11]). Ghost (Matt. 14:26; Mark 6:49). The disciples were most likely thinking of an evil spirit rather than the ghost of a dead person. “It is I” (Matt. 14:27; Mark 6:50; John 6:20). This is the same statement used at the burning bush when God told Moses, “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex. 3:14). “You of little faith” (Matt. 14:31). Though Peter had shown more faith than the others—enough to actually climb out of the boat—it was insufficient. Son of God (Matt. 14:33). Recognizing Jesus as the Messiah is not as significant as recognizing him as the Son of God. Even though the Israelites were at times referred to as God’s sons, and kings were seen to be in father-son relationships with God, the use by the disciples went beyond these. They were designating Jesus as deity.

Some believe that the apostolic writers were so christocentric in their understanding of the OT that they read Christ into passages that had nothing to do with the coming Messiah.

In contrast to our forward surge in technology, the direction of religion worldwide continues to careen backward to the Dark Ages, more tribal than transformative. From holy wars over holy lands to holy wars in our own minds, each religious camp is flying their gang colors. Each has determined that their own Messiah of love or Prophet of peace should be pronounced the absolute. And if you don’t submit, these gangs will destroy you, despite clear instructions from their Prophet or Messiah to the contrary. Democracy and Christianity delivered in so-called smart bombs; Islam delivered in car bombs. As the world unifies economically, it is fragmenting and dividing culturally.

Richard Bach echoed Jung’s sentiment when he said that if ever there were a manual written for “advanced souls” it would have to end with the following words: “Everything in this book may be wrong.” (Richard Bach, Messiah’s Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul) We can turn to people for advice and use the tools they have devised, but what will work best for our current situation is for us to discover. If we try a technique that others have used with great success and it does little to help us, we should not take this as a sign that we are incurable, it just means we need a different tool to escape from the chasm of our mind into which we have fallen. If we really desire to attain a level of mastery over our psyche we should experiment with techniques that work on all three of the main forms of human experience: our behaviours, our thoughts, and our emotions.

I couldn’t put it down. I read through the rest of the gospels, and I realized this wasn’t a handbook for the American Nazi Party; it was an interaction between Jesus and the Jewish community. I got to the book of Acts and—this was incredible!—they were trying to figure out how the Jews could bring the story of Jesus to the Gentiles. Talk about role reversal!” So convincing were the fulfilled prophecies that Lapides started telling people that he thought Jesus was the Messiah. At the time, this was merely an intellectual possibility to him, yet its implications were deeply troubling. “I realized that if I were to accept Jesus into my life, there would have to be some significant changes in the way I was living,” he explained. “I’d have to deal with the drugs, the sex, and so forth. I didn’t understand that God would help me make those changes; I thought I had to clean up my life on my own.

It simply will not do to say that infants here symbolize weak adult human beings, as though the babes and infants in Psalm 8:2 only served as metaphors. Such a reading robs the psalm of its force. Besides, it crashes into the New Testament usage of this passage. Matthew 21:12–17 records Jesus’ temple cleansing, amidst the cheers of children, portraying the event as a prophetic fulfillment of Psalm 8:2 (among other Old Testament prophesies). In this recasting of Psalm 8:2 the chief priests and scribes are the “enemy and the avenger,” whose objections to Jesus are silenced by the praising chorus of children (Mt. 21:15–16). Jesus stops up the mouths of His accusers by pointing to the children who have been crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” These children have identified Jesus as Messiah, the One who brings the Lord’s salvation. The Jewish religious leaders are offended by the cry of the children, but Jesus accepts their praise. The arrogant become indignant over the cries of the children, but Jesus is delighted by them. The children manifest a greater degree of Spiritual perception than the priests and scribes, a typical example of a gospel reversal. We are forced to ask: Is our attitude toward children more like Jesus or His enemies? Do we treat their claims to love God as mere lip service or as the fruit of the Spirit’s work in them? Are we skeptical of the praises, professions, and experiences of small covenant children? Or do we believe that through such humble means, God has “perfected praise” (Mt. 21:16)?