3 good dreams-the Slave Bible!

 

10-12-23        Evil vs Good Priest-Nick Visit-the New Car-the Slave Bible 

First, I was under the influence of an evil Priest, who I took seriously when he said I should not receive Holy Communion.  I believed in him.

But one day, I rebelled.  There is a Mass going on on a stage, there’s a Priest to the left handing out Holy Communion to a line of people through a window.  Suddenly, I think,

“I am going to receive Holy Communion, I don’t care what that other Priest says,”

and I just make it as the Priest is finished & about to close the window when I present myself before him. As he administers the Eucharist to me, the other Priest is outraged & THROWS something to him, which goes through the window & lands on the floor of his Church – the rectory or Church being inside the window.  I do receive Communion in spite of his interference.

The thing he threw was an attempt to discredit my propriety to receive the Holy Eucharist.  It is an oval deeply engraved glass case, about 6” long & 4” deep, & inside it are a couple mangled dirtied Eucharists, as if they were trod under foot.  He’s presenting this as EVIDENCE as if I did this to Our Lord’s Sacrament.  But the other priest doesn’t buy it.  He glances at it & pays no attention.  He looks at the floor of his church & sees HUNDREDS of Holy Eucharists which people did not receive worthily, but are on the floor.  They are not sullied, they are clean, but they are on the floor to be trod upon.

MEANING:

          ME:  Mother God, need help.

          MG:  The old or former Priest is the old way of thinking – Patriarchal.  You once believed in the Commands & rules of the Catholic/Christian Church.  They told you in so many words, you are an unworthy sinner because of sex & the adult trade – they think sex is dirty, women that are involved in it are dirty & unworthy of God – they are outside the Grace of God.

One day you realized you ARE fit to receive Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist, that you are NOT outside the Grace of God.  You even became a Priest because Jesus appeared to you & ordained you.  You then felt right with God.

ME:  The engraved glass case?

MG:  Glass is something you can see through.  But this is deeply engraved, like glass you saw long ago.  The engraving creates PRISMS or ways of refracting the light, so things appear a certain way.  And so, the old way of Christianity was to present sex & the sexual behavior of women through a PRISM of PATRIARCHY, their way of interpreting reality.  But it is THEIR WAY, not the way God sees it!

And the new Priest UNDERSTANDS & sees so many regular people not worthy of the Eucharist – that those involved with sex are not to be looked upon as FALLEN from the Grace of God – look at all these other sinners in the Church.

 

NICK VISIT 

Nick is my spiritual husband, united to me forever, but we don’t have romantic or loving contact often.  I wish we did.  I am right now in his arms, he behind me, relaxing.  And he has to leave momentarily, to go to work.  I tell him I’d like to go with him but for some reason I can’t.  I ask him what kind of work is it he does?

He says, 

“My job is to find old roses from old bouquets, spruce them up, find more roses & make new bouquets.”

He doesn’t explain what happens to the new ones but I imagine they’re given to people out of love – maybe Souls in Purgatory. {I see large red roses, fully bloomed from before; new ones might be less open blossoms included.}

          MEANING:

          ME:  Help, Mother God. This can’t be pursuing love with living women, can it?  Is it for Souls in Purgatory? 

MG:     Indeed, Souls in Purgatory it is.  Nick has happily achieved a ministry like yours!

The previous roses is love of the past – when a soul was alive.  Now Nick must retrieve or connect the old love with the new, which is Spiritual Love, & present this as bouquets or Gifts for Souls.  It hints that it could have been old relationships of Nick, but it could be anyone he was connected to, such as knowing about someone– the way you helped celebrities in Purgatory like Anthony Quinn, Frank Sinatra, just because you knew about them.  So he might have been connected to some of these Souls, now he takes that link & uses it to reach these Souls in Purgatory with God’s Love.

You can’t go with him to work because it is his own private, personal Ministry of Love.  Indeed he’s your ‘apprentice’ or ‘Jr’ but it’s his work alone, not yours, - the way a lover loves alone, not with the cooperation or help of anyone else.  He is not involved, for instance, when you share deep spiritual love with your great Saints who married you – such as recently Sri Kaleshwar, Shirdi Sai Baba & Saint Charbel.  Nick was not involved in these transactions, they are private & personal.

          THE CAR WITH THE HUGE GAS TANK 

I’m driving around in my old car but for some reason it isn’t working & I have to borrow a car from a lady friend – It’s brand new.  As my recompense for using it, I tell her I will fill the gas tank.

So I drive it for whatever I had to do then pull into a gas station & fill it up.  The price for the gas comes to $79.  That’s a hefty sum, more than twice what I have ever paid to fill a tank!

The car is sort of like a ‘Thunderbird’, sleek, late 60’s, & has 2 or 3 colors.  I tell my friends,

“It was the smoothest ride I ever felt – probably because it’s brand new.”         

MEANING:

                    ME:  Mother God, calling you for help.  Is this Lady you, the Holy Virgin, or some other great Saint?

MG:  This new, smoothest ride you ever felt is indeed borrowing or receiving a Gift of the Supernatural.  But you are reciprocating, or willing to give a return for this Grace, which is ‘filling the tank.’

The car is the vehicle of Grace, it’s a ‘ride’ or a sense, or a consciousness.  Smooth is a feeling you get from it.  ‘Thunderbird’ - it comes ‘from the sky’ & denotes a bird of Great Power, or Grace thereof.  Thunderbirds were spoken of by the American Indians, which were so huge & powerful they could sweep down & capture an infant!

The HUGE TANK, your contribution, sounds like you put in some MIGHTY PRAYERS which were accepted by God with an exchange of Terrific Grace.  Gasoline usually depicts ENERGY as it’s the fuel to make machines run.  So we have the energy of prayer you contributed, you have the Energy of God She gave you!   {end}

 

 The Slave Bible - The BIBLE EDITED FOR SLAVES by SLAVE OWNERS!

 

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1)

Plantation owners in the West Indies worried Bible verses such as the one above would incite their African slaves to rebel against bondage. On the other hand, certain passages of Scripture encouraged submission to authority. Rather than withholding the entire Bible, some masters allowed their slaves to have the Slave Bible, which was compiled from selected parts of God’s word to inspire submission.

What is the Slave Bible?

The earliest copy of the Slave Bible was published in 1807, an “astoundingly reduced” Bible which “contains only parts of 14 books,” Brigit Katz reported for SmithsonianMag.com. Sections that were removed included the Exodus story, which showed God instructing Moses to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.

The account of Joseph’s enslavement, however, remains because his story exemplifies how well-behaved submission is rewarded by God. “The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a successful man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian” (Genesis 39:2).

Editors of the Slave Bible were “highlighting themes of being submissive; the same thing goes on with the New Testament as well,” Anthony Schmidt, PhD, Associate Curator of Bible and Religion in America, told CBN News.

Sources do not offer a table of contents for the Slave Bible, but a copy is available for public viewing at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., which is on loan from Fisk University until September 2019. Two other copies are known to exist in the United Kingdom.

Who made the Slave Bible and why?

The Slave Bible was published in 1807, commissioned “on behalf of the Society for the Conversion of Negro Slaves” for use by missionaries who wanted “to teach enslaved Africans to read, with the ultimate goal of introducing them to Christianity,” according to Katz.

Names of the editors or authors of the Slave Bible are not mentioned. Although their intentions were to evangelize slaves, missionaries had to appease slave owners in the British West-Indies who feared an uprising. This fear was heightened because Haitian slaves overcame their masters only three years earlier during “the only slave revolt in history” in which slaves “successfully drove out their European oppressors to form a new nation,” according to History.com.

Missionaries had to simultaneously respond to the growing abolitionist movement by proving that they had the slaves’ best interests at heart. As they prepared to compile a special Bible for slaves in the West Indies, the missionaries agreed to “uplift materially these Africans” without “teaching them anything that could incite rebellion,” Katz reported.

But it is difficult to completely remove the thread of freedom in Christ woven throughout the Bible.

Slavery in Biblical Context

When Paul was writing much of the New Testament, about “80 percent to 90 percent of the inhabitants of Rome were slaves,” according to Ortlund. Slavery wasn’t based on race in ancient Rome, like it was in the 17^th-19^th century Western slave trade. Rather, Ortlund said it included foreign prisoners of war and local “men and women who sold themselves into slavery in order to relieve a burdensome debt.”

Most people, hearing or reading his letters when they were first written, were slaves. Yet, Paul’s letters speak to slaves and masters alike: “he expects them to fellowship together in the same church as brothers and sisters in Christ,” Ortlund said.

Peter encourages the Church to “live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves” (1 Peter 2:16). The Church’s greatest allegiance is to God, and they can glorify Him by “submit[ing] [them]selves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority,” (1 Peter 2:13), including emperors, governors, and even earthly masters.

While many in Paul’s audience were literal slaves, the message of Christ was applicable to all who recognized their bondage to sin and wanted a way out of it. According to God’s Word, not just 80 or 90 percent, but all believers were once slaves to sin (Romans 3:23). And those who are saved by Christ are now slaves to Christ (Romans 1:1, Romans 6:22, 1 Corinthians 7:22)

Everyone is a slave to something. As Justin Buzzard said at Crossway.org:

“If God is not the center of your life, if he does not hold your ultimate allegiance, then you have been enslaved,” but “every slave master except God will fail you.” Worse still, “when you fail, that master can offer no forgiveness, only misery and shame.” Idols become our slave masters, but “that idol that you love [] doesn’t love you back” and “anything you worship and build your life on other than God will suck the life out of you and destroy you.”

In contrast, the Apostles of Jesus taught that Christ “shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15). Jesus came to serve and save the world (Matthew 20:28). He freed believers from the chains of sin and death, satisfying the requirements of God’s law through His own death and resurrection.

This message was explosive and unsuitable for an excerpted Bible designed to promote submission to one’s earthly master, but it was well-suited to the abolitionist movement which opposed slavery. God’s complete, undistorted message nurtured abolition in the West and would help make the Slave Bible obsolete.

Oppression of one person by another for personal gain was never part of God’s original plan. When viewing the Bible in its entirety, one understands the true meaning of slavery and servanthood as God portrays it, not as demonstrated in the Slave Bible.

 

The Author:

Candice Lucey lives with her husband and daughters in (mostly) tranquil Salmon Arm, BC, Canada. Here, she enjoys digging into God’s word when not working or taking part in ministry activities. Her prose and poetry has previously appeared in such publications as Purpose and Creation Illustrated, and her short plays were performed at Christmas by Sunday School students for several years. Catch up with Candice’s scriptural studies at her blog Wordwell.ca.

Photo Credit: WikiMedia/PublicDomain/SlaveBible