Last Christmas is not quite yet a distant memory and the Lenten season is almost here. This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday which officially marks the beginning of Lent. Lent is a 40-day period during "which Catholics pray, fast, contemplate, and engage in acts of spiritual self-discipline." [1] The number of Catholics who actually engage in acts of spiritual self-discipline specific to this period is probably small based on the fact that most Catholics do not even attend Mass weekly. Those who do and still can find new acts of spiritual self-discipline to engage in, Lent after Lent, are probably on the road to sainthood since a virtuous practice adopted in a Lenten season ought to become permanent in life. If that is not the case, what is the point of doing it for 40 days? On second thought, being good for 40 consecutive days out of the year is better than 40 hours. Forty consecutive days should give one enough time to be aware of oneself, to allow for some distance to view the situation and give it the proper perspective. Realistically, however, regressing to a not-so-virtuous habit after 40 days of Lent is naturally something one looks forward to with eagerness, going back to for example, indulgence in pornography [2], unwholesome sex, drugs and alcohol, and doing so with a vengeance, having voluntarily starved oneself for 40 days. Life then becomes secularly sinful once more, celebrating Easter with easter bunnies and easter eggs with no reference to Christ's Resurrection, like Christmas with parties and gifts with no reference to the birth of a Savior.
[1] http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/why-do-catholics-practice-fasting-and-abstinence-during-lent
[2] http://cbmw.org/men/leadership/porn-and-future-marriage/
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Valentine's Day 2015
It is good that the world has a day dedicated to love. Like anything else that is pure and good in the world, love has been contaminated. Valentine's day is not about love that is pure and wholesome but about monetization of love, merchandising, polyamory, recreational sex of all kinds including bondage and sadomasochism. Is that so terrible? Not as terrible as abuse of power, sexual abuse, rape, betrayal and murder, for instance, but sinister nonetheless.
To complete the circle of love, Valentine's day should also remind people of sexually transmitted infections, jealous love, spurned lovers and all that goes around, comes around.
If Valentine's day is a day about love, why is it also not a Holy Day of Obligation? Is the Catholic church so sterile and devoid of love that the thought of reserving a special day to remind people of the love of God and of the ways they can love God in return has never entered its consciousness? It can rationalize that every day is a day of love, but then every day is also a day of sin, which makes every day a day of repentance. Daily occurrences are not special. Even miracles are taken for granted. A special day to remind all the love of God is missing, and is sorely needed. God is love, but where is the love for God?
To complete the circle of love, Valentine's day should also remind people of sexually transmitted infections, jealous love, spurned lovers and all that goes around, comes around.
If Valentine's day is a day about love, why is it also not a Holy Day of Obligation? Is the Catholic church so sterile and devoid of love that the thought of reserving a special day to remind people of the love of God and of the ways they can love God in return has never entered its consciousness? It can rationalize that every day is a day of love, but then every day is also a day of sin, which makes every day a day of repentance. Daily occurrences are not special. Even miracles are taken for granted. A special day to remind all the love of God is missing, and is sorely needed. God is love, but where is the love for God?
Friday, February 13, 2015
Christ The Healer -- His Mother The Intercessor
Jesus' healings are documented in the Gospels. Included in a chronology of Jesus' miracles [1] are the miraculous healings. They took place over two millennia ago but new ones are still occurring around the world. Today, Christ is still the healer and His Mother is the channel that leads to His healings. The Blessed Virgin Mary welcomes the afflicted regardless of religious beliefs in the many shrines around the world that were built as a result of Her apparitions. Those who go there to pray with purity of heart and unyielding faith are heard, and their requests granted in ways God thinks are best.
I would like to distinguish between the church Jesus built upon Peter [2] and the chapels or shrines requested by the Blessed Virgin Mary, for example, at Lourdes, France [3], at Tepeyac Hill, Mexico [4] and at Veilankanni, India [5], [6]. These and other similar chapels or shrines are not churches in my view, but each of them a home for the Mother of God and the Mother of all. Every home of Blessed Virgin Mary's is like any home where a mother is waiting for her children. While Jesus built His church on the rock that was Peter, His Mother had asked for a humble place at various sites around the world to call home, not to glorify Herself, but to welcome all her earthly children, a place where all can go to and feel safe and pray for help.
In Her home, the Blessed Virgin Mary would listen to Her children. In Heaven, She would intercede by praying with the angels on behalf of those who ask with deep faith and sincerity. I believe that whenever She intercedes, Her Son listens and acts in accordance with Her wishes.
Not only does the Blessed Virgin Mary have homes where people can go visit Her, She has made Herself available to all who pray to Her. Individuals are temporarily transformed into temples when they pray, temples in which the Blessed Virgin Mary would feel comfortable calling home.
[1] http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/miracles.htm
[2] http://lemomentdepaix.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-church.html
[3] http://en.lourdes-france.org/deepen/bernadette-soubirous/the-apparitions
[4] http://www.queenoftheamericasguild.org/BriefHistoryNew.html
[5] http://www.motherofmiracles.org/velhistory.htm There was no written record that the Blessed Virgin Mary requested a chapel but a thatched chapel was built at the site where a crippled boy was healed.
[6] A video of Vailankanni can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP-jGUXwjf0 It is a worthwhile 38.34 minutes except where the narrator at approximately 18:51 said that the Lady asked for a church to be built in her honor. These made-up words do not comport with the humility of the Blessed Virgin Mary and in my opinion grossly exaggerate the intent of the Blessed Mother. While the Blessed Mother deserves the best, it is best to portray Her as Who She is, a humble and loving Mother devoted to God and Her family with no ego and no desire for grandiosity.
I would like to distinguish between the church Jesus built upon Peter [2] and the chapels or shrines requested by the Blessed Virgin Mary, for example, at Lourdes, France [3], at Tepeyac Hill, Mexico [4] and at Veilankanni, India [5], [6]. These and other similar chapels or shrines are not churches in my view, but each of them a home for the Mother of God and the Mother of all. Every home of Blessed Virgin Mary's is like any home where a mother is waiting for her children. While Jesus built His church on the rock that was Peter, His Mother had asked for a humble place at various sites around the world to call home, not to glorify Herself, but to welcome all her earthly children, a place where all can go to and feel safe and pray for help.
In Her home, the Blessed Virgin Mary would listen to Her children. In Heaven, She would intercede by praying with the angels on behalf of those who ask with deep faith and sincerity. I believe that whenever She intercedes, Her Son listens and acts in accordance with Her wishes.
Not only does the Blessed Virgin Mary have homes where people can go visit Her, She has made Herself available to all who pray to Her. Individuals are temporarily transformed into temples when they pray, temples in which the Blessed Virgin Mary would feel comfortable calling home.
[1] http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/miracles.htm
[2] http://lemomentdepaix.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-church.html
[3] http://en.lourdes-france.org/deepen/bernadette-soubirous/the-apparitions
[4] http://www.queenoftheamericasguild.org/BriefHistoryNew.html
[5] http://www.motherofmiracles.org/velhistory.htm There was no written record that the Blessed Virgin Mary requested a chapel but a thatched chapel was built at the site where a crippled boy was healed.
[6] A video of Vailankanni can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP-jGUXwjf0 It is a worthwhile 38.34 minutes except where the narrator at approximately 18:51 said that the Lady asked for a church to be built in her honor. These made-up words do not comport with the humility of the Blessed Virgin Mary and in my opinion grossly exaggerate the intent of the Blessed Mother. While the Blessed Mother deserves the best, it is best to portray Her as Who She is, a humble and loving Mother devoted to God and Her family with no ego and no desire for grandiosity.
Monday, February 9, 2015
God's Call
Many religious over the centuries had heard God's call [1]. Even certain secular leaders had heard from either God or the Holy Spirit. As far as I know, neither God nor the Holy Spirit speaks, but then again, who am I to hear them speak? Who did speak was the third part of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God, but nobody listens to Him--nobody I personally know. Many people (and I) talk about Him, about His parables but do not live up to His expectations. Most (including myself), however, do live up to Satan's expectations but Its name is not often mentioned. Why is that? Does Satan not deserve credit for the sins that are committed? Is it because Satan does not speak to people enough for It to be in the forefront of people's consciousness?
If people can hear the voice of God, they can hear the voice of Satan. If a person can detect a "call" to do God's will, to follow the footsteps of Christ, how can the person be so certain that it is not a "call" from Satan to contaminate true discipleship? Is it not true that not all religious, no matter what garb they wear, are quite sinful themselves? How many religious will kneel down and wash the feet of another religious? [2] If a secular leader hears a voice to invade another country or change its regime via a coup d'etat can it be Satan's? Why is the clear voice of Christ who told all to love thy enemy [3] fallen on deaf ears?
Perhaps the world ought to talk less about God and more about Satan. After all, Satan is what the world adores and Hell is where the world is headed.
[1] A religious who feels the compulsion to take vows and lead a religious life could very well have heard God's "call"--not a verbal one but one so definitive that no doubt is left in the mind and heart of the person called to serve God.
[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2013:1-17
[3] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5:43-48
If people can hear the voice of God, they can hear the voice of Satan. If a person can detect a "call" to do God's will, to follow the footsteps of Christ, how can the person be so certain that it is not a "call" from Satan to contaminate true discipleship? Is it not true that not all religious, no matter what garb they wear, are quite sinful themselves? How many religious will kneel down and wash the feet of another religious? [2] If a secular leader hears a voice to invade another country or change its regime via a coup d'etat can it be Satan's? Why is the clear voice of Christ who told all to love thy enemy [3] fallen on deaf ears?
Perhaps the world ought to talk less about God and more about Satan. After all, Satan is what the world adores and Hell is where the world is headed.
[1] A religious who feels the compulsion to take vows and lead a religious life could very well have heard God's "call"--not a verbal one but one so definitive that no doubt is left in the mind and heart of the person called to serve God.
[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2013:1-17
[3] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5:43-48
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Limits Of Intellect
Like Free Will, man's intellect is a gift from God and is most often used to serve man himself and his ego but rarely used to serve God. [1] This entry relies on the assertions that the foundation of man's intellect is reason and reason gravitates toward justice.
Man's sense of justice is necessarily imperfect because his knowledge of the facts is incomplete. Incomplete facts contribute to flawed reasoning which in turn results in injustice. Even if the facts are complete in a hypothetical situation where motives of every act relied on and cited are known, man's reasoning remains faulty because of his many biases and self-serving interests. In contrast, "angels are perfect intellects [2]" and therefore they have flawless reasoning and can dispense perfect justice every time. Even Lucifer was able to do so before It fell from Heaven.
Lucifer was supposedly the most beautiful angel whom God favored. After man came along, Lucifer was no longer in first place. Angels were made to serve man and that did not sit well with Lucifer. Not only was Lucifer not given the experience of incarnation, he had to share God's attention with a new creature that Lucifer considers sinful and inferior to angels. Precisely because of his angelic nature, Lucifer was able to judge man accurately for what he is, an intellectually feeble and chronic sinner. Lucifer thus rebelled against God to for what he perceived as God's unfairness.
Reason would concur that Lucifer was correct in his judgment regarding man but the same reasoning cannot be applied equally to God. God is not subject to reason even though reason came from God. God is beyond reason. God is love, and love is superior to reason. What angels lack is the ability to love. Love is inherent in the flesh and it is through incarnation that love is born. Man is part spirit and part flesh and therefore he can reason and he can love.
After God created man and gave him the capacity to love, God has continued to love man even after his fall from Eden and hopes that he would use his intellect to find his way back by choosing freely to love God in return. On his way back to God, Satan has scattered before him every conceivable temptation to distract him from his potential to reason flawlessly, leading him away from his unconditional love for God.
The nature of intellect is pure but malleable, therefore intellect is easily manipulated. Man's sinfulness compels it to be dishonest. Yet, it wants to stay pure and it does so by distorting itself through a process called rationalization. Another name for it is intellectual dishonesty. Man's sins result in man's constant need to rationalize and man's continuous failure to reason purely and flawlessly.
Faulty reasoning is the cause of injustice and injustice is the cause of conflicts in the world. There are people who think they are so intellectually gifted that they can dispense justice around the world and re-order their lives [3] but what they fail to see is their intellect's limitation. The more wicked their rationale, the more hellish the world.
Those who fail to recognize defects in their intellect are proud, arrogant, fortitudinously weak and feeble-minded. Their pride has obviated their need for God Who has become for them an occasional asset that is used as an expedient political gain. A little humility before God would awaken their God-given intellect which will show them that they are nothing without God. That is unlikely to occur anytime soon for they are so blindly in love with themselves and their intellect that they have become like Lucifer who is now Satan. "Lucifer became so infatuated with himself that he forgot that he was dependent on God for his very life." [4] There are people in the world with a similar infatuation.
[1] Exceptions apply to God's saints, as distinguished from political saints who had been canonized for reasons that had little to do with holiness.
[2] http://www.aquinasonline.com/Topics/angels.html ( Ia 50,1 )
[3] Those who thought and are thinking that they could establish a new world order, obviously with their defective intellect, are now seeing a whole new world of disorder coming into being. It is always better to humble oneself before God than to have a humble pie shoved down one's throat. If being force-fed in the flesh is undesirable, one ought to consider being punished by demons for an eternity in Hell. For those still in the flesh, it is not too late for repentance and reparation.
[4] http://mcdonaldroad.org/bible/study/lucifer.htm
Man's sense of justice is necessarily imperfect because his knowledge of the facts is incomplete. Incomplete facts contribute to flawed reasoning which in turn results in injustice. Even if the facts are complete in a hypothetical situation where motives of every act relied on and cited are known, man's reasoning remains faulty because of his many biases and self-serving interests. In contrast, "angels are perfect intellects [2]" and therefore they have flawless reasoning and can dispense perfect justice every time. Even Lucifer was able to do so before It fell from Heaven.
Lucifer was supposedly the most beautiful angel whom God favored. After man came along, Lucifer was no longer in first place. Angels were made to serve man and that did not sit well with Lucifer. Not only was Lucifer not given the experience of incarnation, he had to share God's attention with a new creature that Lucifer considers sinful and inferior to angels. Precisely because of his angelic nature, Lucifer was able to judge man accurately for what he is, an intellectually feeble and chronic sinner. Lucifer thus rebelled against God to for what he perceived as God's unfairness.
Reason would concur that Lucifer was correct in his judgment regarding man but the same reasoning cannot be applied equally to God. God is not subject to reason even though reason came from God. God is beyond reason. God is love, and love is superior to reason. What angels lack is the ability to love. Love is inherent in the flesh and it is through incarnation that love is born. Man is part spirit and part flesh and therefore he can reason and he can love.
After God created man and gave him the capacity to love, God has continued to love man even after his fall from Eden and hopes that he would use his intellect to find his way back by choosing freely to love God in return. On his way back to God, Satan has scattered before him every conceivable temptation to distract him from his potential to reason flawlessly, leading him away from his unconditional love for God.
The nature of intellect is pure but malleable, therefore intellect is easily manipulated. Man's sinfulness compels it to be dishonest. Yet, it wants to stay pure and it does so by distorting itself through a process called rationalization. Another name for it is intellectual dishonesty. Man's sins result in man's constant need to rationalize and man's continuous failure to reason purely and flawlessly.
Faulty reasoning is the cause of injustice and injustice is the cause of conflicts in the world. There are people who think they are so intellectually gifted that they can dispense justice around the world and re-order their lives [3] but what they fail to see is their intellect's limitation. The more wicked their rationale, the more hellish the world.
Those who fail to recognize defects in their intellect are proud, arrogant, fortitudinously weak and feeble-minded. Their pride has obviated their need for God Who has become for them an occasional asset that is used as an expedient political gain. A little humility before God would awaken their God-given intellect which will show them that they are nothing without God. That is unlikely to occur anytime soon for they are so blindly in love with themselves and their intellect that they have become like Lucifer who is now Satan. "Lucifer became so infatuated with himself that he forgot that he was dependent on God for his very life." [4] There are people in the world with a similar infatuation.
[1] Exceptions apply to God's saints, as distinguished from political saints who had been canonized for reasons that had little to do with holiness.
[2] http://www.aquinasonline.com/Topics/angels.html ( Ia 50,1 )
[3] Those who thought and are thinking that they could establish a new world order, obviously with their defective intellect, are now seeing a whole new world of disorder coming into being. It is always better to humble oneself before God than to have a humble pie shoved down one's throat. If being force-fed in the flesh is undesirable, one ought to consider being punished by demons for an eternity in Hell. For those still in the flesh, it is not too late for repentance and reparation.
[4] http://mcdonaldroad.org/bible/study/lucifer.htm
Friday, February 6, 2015
The Encroaching Hell
Satan does not pick sides [1]. It is in the business of collecting souls to populate Hell because It thinks that man who sins constantly does not deserve God but God has forgiven man out of love and it is up to man to accept or reject the love of God. Actions that are Christ-like indicates acceptance; those that are anti-Christ means rejection.
Man who often falls short of being Christ-like is able to repent. Repentance is man's apology for his wrongs against God but retribution is man's anger towards God. In seeking vengeance, man is in effect saying that God does not matter and that he is the sole judge and executioner. Whenever God is not absolutely central to a decision, the void in the decision-making process is filled by Satan and the resultant action is necessarily evil, to a greater or lesser degree.
Recently, the world learned of the burning of a man to his death [2] and the Jordanian king is vowing revenge [3]. This intensifies the confusion that already exists, not knowing who the enemy or the friend is, with Muslims in various countries battling Muslims in those same and other countries, adding to the on-going conflicts between the Jews and the Muslims, on top of the underlying currents between the haves and the have-nots, between opposing social, political and religious ideologies as well as among countries vying for economic and military superiority.
Satan must be delirious these days as voices of retribution become louder and louder, as vengeful actions leading to more bloodshed become more and more definitive and as the world becomes more and more hellish. [4], [5]
[1] The fact that the world had gone through periods (including world wars and the age of crusades) where many more people had been tortured and killed than the on-going "regional" conflicts in the Mideast, in the Ukraine and elsewhere does not make them and those who caused them any less evil or, from Satan's perspective, more promising. For Satan, evil is evil, and It is is constantly tempting man (including speaking to him while imitating the voice of God) to make the wrong choices on both sides of an on-going conflict (or to start one), regardless of era, in order to pack Its Hell with sorry souls.
[2] Hell is often depicted as an inferno. That being the case, scenes of Hell on earth are being witnessed. One of the most horrific is the burning of a Jordanian pilot captured by ISIL who might have caused or intended to cause conflagration such as those reported here: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/isis-syria-photos-fire-balls-explode-kobani-battle-rages-1471108
[3] http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/02/05/jordan-hangs-2-al-qaeda-prisoners-after-isis-video-shows-jordanian-pilot-burned/
[4] Perhaps Saddam Hussein had the correct foresight in saying that the invasion of Iraq would start "The mother of all battles."
[5] http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12003
Man who often falls short of being Christ-like is able to repent. Repentance is man's apology for his wrongs against God but retribution is man's anger towards God. In seeking vengeance, man is in effect saying that God does not matter and that he is the sole judge and executioner. Whenever God is not absolutely central to a decision, the void in the decision-making process is filled by Satan and the resultant action is necessarily evil, to a greater or lesser degree.
Recently, the world learned of the burning of a man to his death [2] and the Jordanian king is vowing revenge [3]. This intensifies the confusion that already exists, not knowing who the enemy or the friend is, with Muslims in various countries battling Muslims in those same and other countries, adding to the on-going conflicts between the Jews and the Muslims, on top of the underlying currents between the haves and the have-nots, between opposing social, political and religious ideologies as well as among countries vying for economic and military superiority.
Satan must be delirious these days as voices of retribution become louder and louder, as vengeful actions leading to more bloodshed become more and more definitive and as the world becomes more and more hellish. [4], [5]
[1] The fact that the world had gone through periods (including world wars and the age of crusades) where many more people had been tortured and killed than the on-going "regional" conflicts in the Mideast, in the Ukraine and elsewhere does not make them and those who caused them any less evil or, from Satan's perspective, more promising. For Satan, evil is evil, and It is is constantly tempting man (including speaking to him while imitating the voice of God) to make the wrong choices on both sides of an on-going conflict (or to start one), regardless of era, in order to pack Its Hell with sorry souls.
[2] Hell is often depicted as an inferno. That being the case, scenes of Hell on earth are being witnessed. One of the most horrific is the burning of a Jordanian pilot captured by ISIL who might have caused or intended to cause conflagration such as those reported here: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/isis-syria-photos-fire-balls-explode-kobani-battle-rages-1471108
[3] http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/02/05/jordan-hangs-2-al-qaeda-prisoners-after-isis-video-shows-jordanian-pilot-burned/
[4] Perhaps Saddam Hussein had the correct foresight in saying that the invasion of Iraq would start "The mother of all battles."
[5] http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12003
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
The Church
"And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." [1] Why did Christ chose a man on whom to build His church rather choosing a building and call that His church? Could it be that the gates of Hades are unable to overcome a man who has chosen to be united to Christ to the end but those same gates could bring ruin to a building intended to be the house of God?
Hades is the "King of the Underworld" [2] so the gates of Hades are the gates of Hell. Since Jesus used the plural "gates," I will assume for purposes of this entry that Hell has many entrances rather than just one with a pair of gates. Under this assumption, one can conclude that any house of God (be it a temple, a mosque or a church) that is more concerned with amassing wealth and power and being political behind its walls than with the word of the living God will have doors that are actually gates of Hell. Accordingly, a church with doors that have been transformed into Hell's entrance is no longer God's house but God's house that is overcome by Satan.
Furthermore, when a house of God is a building situated on a piece of land, it is vulnerable to the influence of Satan because it lives on money, and money is the currency of Satan. Without money, it will have no water, no electricity, no gas and nobody to take care of it and it will fall into disrepair and no church would be left. With money, money that ought to have gone to those less fortunate, it will have custodians who will have incidences of ownership even they do not personally have title to it. In time, these custodians will want to eat well, dress well and generally live well and will continually ask for money in the name of the poor.
Jesus likely foresaw what would happen to a church that is a building and wanted to make sure that His church would be free of all earthly concerns that distract from His teachings. Therefore when He spoke of a church, real estate was not what He had in mind.
"The word church, as used by Jesus, is derived from the Greek ekkasia, which means the 'called out' or 'assembly.' In other words, the church that Jesus is referencing as His church is the assembly of people who have been called out of the world by the Gospel of Christ." [3] And it was Peter that Jesus chose to continue His work, to tell people about Christ as Christ did through His parables told those who were gathered around Him about God. [4]
Jesus did not tell His parables while sitting inside a building. He did not have a church or needed one since He was the church. His church was wherever He was, with no roof but with a gathering of people. He never asked people to go to church; He brought Himself, the church, to the people.
Toward the beginning of the end of His ministry, Jesus chose Peter to be His church, and only Peter [5]. What about the rest? One can only speculate. Either Jesus chose them as well but nobody wrote it down, or that the rest did not have the character of Peter. Peter was blunt, spoke what was on his mind and wore his emotions on his sleeves. He might have been somewhat of a boor but he had no guile. He was a sinner but he was transformed. He was a fisherman and together with others chosen by Jesus became "fishers of men." [6]
Like Jesus, Peter did not have a church but unlike the church that was Christ Himself, the church that was Peter was built on a sinner who had repented, one that was without walls to wall to wall in and hide in secrecy sins of all kinds, but exposed to the world all the imperfections and the struggles to perfect them.
The church that was Peter is no longer here but there are many churches around the world. Is any of them like the church that Christ built upon Peter? If any one of them is a building, then most likely not. Then where is the church Jesus had in mind? It is potentially everywhere, wherever anyone goes. Each person is a church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it if it is united to Christ. The saying that the body is the temple of God is apropos.
[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2016:18
[2] http://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/Haides.html
[3] http://www.gotquestions.org/gates-of-hell.html
[4] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2014%3A6
[5] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+16%3A13-17&version=NIV
[6] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+4%3A19&version=KJV
Hades is the "King of the Underworld" [2] so the gates of Hades are the gates of Hell. Since Jesus used the plural "gates," I will assume for purposes of this entry that Hell has many entrances rather than just one with a pair of gates. Under this assumption, one can conclude that any house of God (be it a temple, a mosque or a church) that is more concerned with amassing wealth and power and being political behind its walls than with the word of the living God will have doors that are actually gates of Hell. Accordingly, a church with doors that have been transformed into Hell's entrance is no longer God's house but God's house that is overcome by Satan.
Furthermore, when a house of God is a building situated on a piece of land, it is vulnerable to the influence of Satan because it lives on money, and money is the currency of Satan. Without money, it will have no water, no electricity, no gas and nobody to take care of it and it will fall into disrepair and no church would be left. With money, money that ought to have gone to those less fortunate, it will have custodians who will have incidences of ownership even they do not personally have title to it. In time, these custodians will want to eat well, dress well and generally live well and will continually ask for money in the name of the poor.
Jesus likely foresaw what would happen to a church that is a building and wanted to make sure that His church would be free of all earthly concerns that distract from His teachings. Therefore when He spoke of a church, real estate was not what He had in mind.
"The word church, as used by Jesus, is derived from the Greek ekkasia, which means the 'called out' or 'assembly.' In other words, the church that Jesus is referencing as His church is the assembly of people who have been called out of the world by the Gospel of Christ." [3] And it was Peter that Jesus chose to continue His work, to tell people about Christ as Christ did through His parables told those who were gathered around Him about God. [4]
Jesus did not tell His parables while sitting inside a building. He did not have a church or needed one since He was the church. His church was wherever He was, with no roof but with a gathering of people. He never asked people to go to church; He brought Himself, the church, to the people.
Toward the beginning of the end of His ministry, Jesus chose Peter to be His church, and only Peter [5]. What about the rest? One can only speculate. Either Jesus chose them as well but nobody wrote it down, or that the rest did not have the character of Peter. Peter was blunt, spoke what was on his mind and wore his emotions on his sleeves. He might have been somewhat of a boor but he had no guile. He was a sinner but he was transformed. He was a fisherman and together with others chosen by Jesus became "fishers of men." [6]
Like Jesus, Peter did not have a church but unlike the church that was Christ Himself, the church that was Peter was built on a sinner who had repented, one that was without walls to wall to wall in and hide in secrecy sins of all kinds, but exposed to the world all the imperfections and the struggles to perfect them.
The church that was Peter is no longer here but there are many churches around the world. Is any of them like the church that Christ built upon Peter? If any one of them is a building, then most likely not. Then where is the church Jesus had in mind? It is potentially everywhere, wherever anyone goes. Each person is a church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it if it is united to Christ. The saying that the body is the temple of God is apropos.
[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2016:18
[2] http://www.theoi.com/Khthonios/Haides.html
[3] http://www.gotquestions.org/gates-of-hell.html
[4] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2014%3A6
[5] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+16%3A13-17&version=NIV
[6] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+4%3A19&version=KJV
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