>>38853 >As an icebreaker, how did anon come to join the faith? Well my family has always been Christian but I guess I didn't really take it seriously until my 20s. I began to look more into the history of the faith and where it comes from. What does authentic Christianity look like? How does the current situation compare with the testimony of the past? Those kinds of questions. These drew me more to historic, Traditional (with a capital T) Christianity. Later I had a huge crisis of faith but now I'm at the point where it's no longer possible for me to believe that my life has been an accident. I can see how God has worked in my life even if I don't understand the reasoning just yet. Thank you, Mr /k/ BO. I've been away for the past couple of weeks and have no idea what's going on. I hope this doesn't break rule 1.

>>38853 >As an icebreaker, how did anon come to join the faith? I don't really identify with any denomination or anything like that but I came to christianity through a combination of looking through christian threads back when the original 8chan was still around and thinking christian identity made sense(I still hold the view that the Israelites were white but I've dropped some of the more... ridiculous viewpoints) and realizing how aggressive the attacks on Christianity truly are. The Jews in particular absolutely loathe Christianity which I find hilarious when people call it a Jewish religion because the Jews hate it more than anyone. If the Jews writing into their secret book some of the most blasphemous statements about Christ you will ever hear won't convince you that it isn't a Jewish trick then you may as well call Hitler a Jewish agent as well.

>>38877 >you may as well call Hitler a Jewish agent as well. You joke, of course, but I've actually seen this exact accusation on 4/pol/ before.

>>38878 Oh no I know it's an opinion held by a small minority. But the goal is obviously demoralization. The idea is too make people paranoid and think that absolutely everything is according to their plan and that nothing can be done to stop them. Not doubting that some "anti jewish" people are controlled but you need ample evidence to prove that they are controlled opposition rather than just screaming that they are and dividing the people who truly want what is best for our people

>>38853 >how did anon come to join the faith? I was a Romanist and I was zealous for the religion of my fathers. I knew the reality of the gospel of works righteousness it taught and it destroyed me. Thanks to my study of the scriptures I was able to discover the only true gospel which set me free from the burden that was on my soul, and I came out of her.

Is it safe in here?

>>38899 Yes.

>>38901 The causes of the thread's creation are better left unspoken.

>>38919 Dude, lay off. Don't get the rest of us VPNiggers rangebanned. >>38899 Welcome to /k/, bro. >Is it safe in here? It's about as safe as a foxhole can be. >>38880 Yeah, that's the funny thing, how obvious it is. I don't wanna turn this thread into /pol/-lite, so that's all I'm gonna say about it.

Anyone else like the look of Christian aesthetics. There something about it that's undeniably beautiful to those who follow the faith.

>>38927 Repent Idolater.

The situation appears to have corrected itself. In case of flare-ups this thread will be left open for one week before being locked. If you believe the decision to lock this thread is wrong, use the meta thread to explain why. That is all.

>>38927 Though a lot of Christian art now and through the ages can have a similar style or tone, it can vary quite drastically. Pics related. First pic: Graffiti symbol used by early persecuted Christians to signify a secret gathering of followers, relating to Jesus's famous metaphor "fishers of men." Second pic: Depiction of Jesus resurrecting Lazarus found in a Roman mausoleum. Notice the attire, shave and magic wand. Third pic: The Virgin Mary disguised as a Japanese deity, made during the intense persecution of Christianity in the the Edo period.

>>38938 >Graffiti symbol used by early persecuted Christians to signify a secret gathering of followers Actually I'm pretty sure they used the literal word 'fish' >Depiction of Jesus And that's a problem because the bible says not to make an image of God. Images of Jesus are a blasphemy, they should not exist, we cannot pretend to capture the majesty of divinity. >The Virgin Mary disguised as a Japanese deity That really says everything that is wrong with Romanist piety.

>>38937 Well thanks again. Please accept this Christ-chan offering of good-will I just finished making. I don't know much about guns or which are considered good on /k/ because I live in a no fun allowed country but I have played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. so I copied one from there. Please no bully if I made a stupid mistake but at least I know enough to keep her finger off the trigger.

>>38946 Cute! Thanks, anon. One more Christ-chan for the collection.

>>38938 >Notice the attire, shave and magic wand. Buddhist? >the bible says not to make an image of God I thought it said not to idolize images, which is basically what the third pic is.

>>38963 >I thought it said not to idolize images It says both.

>>38963 In the context that the verses were written in it meant not to make idols like the golden calf for example. This tactic of iconoclasm is just a way to try and get christians to destroy christian imagery like angels, Jesus, the nativity scene, and especially the cross themselves. Don't fall for it.

>>38963 >2nd pic I think it's related to some outdated practices. You do bring up an interesting (if heretical) point that I've heard; that the bible erases 20 years of Jesus' history because some scholars believe he made a pilgrimage to the East and learned Zoroastrian teachings while he was over there (Zoroastrianism being a precursor and early influencer of Buddhism by several hundreds if not thousands of years, much to the chagrin of Buddhists to this day). >Which is basically what the third pic is. Christianity has a muddy history in Japan. The Jesuits, for all the good they did in the 1300s/1400s, royally screwed Japan under the common socio-political values of "western dominance through religion" in the 1500s/1600s and were outlawed. Obviously there were still a lot of Japanese Christians in Nagasaki (foreign hub) and in outlying regions (converts from early Indian converts who had come to Japan and spread the faith), but they would have been beheaded for practicing the faith. They had to disguise their churches as places of shinto/buddhist worship to get around the national authorities who would periodically visit. Before the age of mass transit, tying a concept to imagery was the easiest way to get the local populations to learn, hence statues like that one being for educational purposes more than anything.

>>38966 >In the context that the verses were written in it meant not to make idols like the golden calf The context of Deuteronomy 4 is not the golden calf it's the formlessness of the fire on Mt. Horeb. Now the calf is certainly relevant, because it was clearly intended as an image of the true God and worship was rendered to it for the purposes of worshipping YHWH, so it's not favorable to the idolater at all however the prohibition of divine images in Deuteronomy 4 is explicitly because the Israelites saw no divine form (that is, God has no body to depict, He is not limited to a visible form) and therefore they shall make no image of Him because it would be improper for them to do so. Moses gives an exhaustive list of created things which they are not to depict Him as, men, women, beasts, insects, fish, birds, stars, the sun or the moon, there is absolutely nothing in creation which it is acceptable to reduce God to. >This tactic of iconoclasm is just a way to try and get christians to destroy christian imagery like angels, Jesus, the nativity scene, and especially the cross themselves There is nothing Christian about an idol. The objects which you fall down before and call on will not save you, they are nothing and their works are less than nothing. There is nothing in all of creation which is deserving of worship, only God does because He is beyond all things and the things which He has made are subject to Him. It is indeed the worst abomination a man is capable of to worship the creation instead of the creator, because he spits in the face of the only God and robs His glory to give it to ashes. >>38967 >The Jesuits, for all the good they did in the 1300s/1400s The Jesuits did not exist in the 1400s or earlier, nor should they be credited for doing anything good because when they were created in 1540 it was for the express and exclusive purpose of destroying the Christian religion by any means possible. Consequently they have never done anything besides promoting false religion and attacking true religion. >They had to disguise their churches as places of shinto/buddhist worship This was consistent with the Jesuits' doctrine of lying, where they excused themselves for violation of the commandment against false witness. However, it is strictly incompatible with the command of God not only to bear false witness but to do so for the purpose of denying the Lord and communing with false gods. If they had been Christians while they might have hidden they would not have lied once caught nor could they have under any circumstances denied the Lord Jesus while worshipping false gods, this is the sin of apostasy. But since they were Romanists I suppose it made little difference to them since they were worshipping the idol of their strange goddess Mary anyways.

>>38967 >that the bible erases 20 years of Jesus' history because some scholars believe he made a pilgrimage to the East and learned Zoroastrian teachings while he was over there Source: we made it up

>>38968 Keep crying every time you see a picture of Jesus.

>>38967 >You do bring up an interesting (if heretical) point that I've heard; that the bible erases 20 years of Jesus' history because some scholars believe he made a pilgrimage to the East and learned Zoroastrian teachings while he was over there (Zoroastrianism being a precursor and early influencer of Buddhism by several hundreds if not thousands of years, much to the chagrin of Buddhists to this day). It seems more likely to me that any Buddhist influence would be more local than that. Ashoka was said to have sent Buddhist missionaries to places like Syria and Egypt in the 3rd century B.C.

>>38973 An idol has no power over me, Anon, and I'm not the one who will judge you for your sin. I am only His messenger.

>>38978 The ark of the covenant had images of cherubim as well as other images. You only seek to destroy christian history to make them easier to destroy. Here's a book on a few treatise on icons, it should be noted that the destruction of icons was always the result of a nation's decline.

>>38983 The Byzantine Empire literally repelled the Muslim invasions under the Iconoclast emperors (despite the subversion of the iconodules) and the Netherlands overthrew the Spanish and built for themselves a great and godly empire after despising their idols. Your apology is invalid

>>38983 >The ark of the covenant had images of cherubim as well as other images Are cherubim God? Were they commanded to worship the images? >Here's a book on a few treatise on icons Because you are incapable of defending your idols yourself >it should be noted that the destruction of icons was always the result of a nation's decline. Repentance is in all cases the way to reverse a nation's decline, since such things are subject to God's providence, who is the decider of every battle; therefore while some men trust in chariots and some men trust in horses let us trust in the Lord our God. In the specific example of the Byzantines they were certainly cursed for their apostasy, because the idols were worshipped everywhere in their country while God was practically unheard of. To reverse their decline and their poor showing against the Arabs the pious emperor Leo ordered the destruction of the idols and attempted to restore true worship, which was resisted by the many pagans of the empire who ultimately prevailed and ensured Byzantium's slow and painful death even while the Franks who did not worship images were ascendant and would push back the muslims whom the Byzantines were consistently defeated by. Later on when the light of the gospel was restored to Europe after the Babylonian captivity of the Church many nations embraced Christ and cast off their idols in favor of true worship of the true God, such as the Germans, the Swiss, the English and others. And look how they prospered for centuries receiving unprecedented blessings for their faithfulness to conquer the whole world, only now starting to collapse because they have forgotten their first love and gone a-whoring after other gods. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.

>>38987 The book isn't for you, it's for others to more elegantly defend against your pipul. No matter how hard you try you'll never get christians to stop putting up their nativity scenes every winter.

>>38988 >The book isn't for you, it's for others to more elegantly defend against your pipul Because you can't defend your idols yourself.

>>38967 >that the bible erases 20 years of Jesus' history Yes, that was my implication lol but also because not only buddhism used zoroastrian clues but also relied heavily on taoist "magic" or like they used to say "energy cultivation and spirit counseling", in its early stages taoism had many key figures who travelled around and performed miracles while claiming to be mere men who simply "grabbed" energy from the natural sources but due to their knowledge of other realms they were often allegedly commanded to help the needed and in one specific case to expect being killed as to unlock a series of events which would end up leading a peasant sector being liberated, or "fate". Later they went to study and write stuff which goes deep into what we would call alchemy and esoteric mathematics, teachings which were heavily corrupted and taoism overall never recovering nor having its wandering sages around. One of its most mythical figures, Zuo Ci, is suspected to have been contemporary to Jesus as he was 16 to 36 when Jesus was travelling around the east. Due to Zuo Ci having done similar things according to myth (transformed or summoned food, transplanted energy, cured the very ill, taught of the spirit and a much higher realm above us which we need to behave and live well to reach/understand) some chinamen theorize Jesus learned from him as did other latter taoist masters, but we might as well say in theory Zuo could've learned and understood the teachings from a wandering foreigner and later meditated to attain what He said (anyone can perform great things if you believe) and after all Zuo is famous for being one of the first to have done such widespread and notorious acts to the point of the de-facto emperor summoning him and later being persecuted for trying to dissuade the authority to study with him and leave their campaigns to subdue the population. After all it is not unheard of chinese attaining some masterhood from a wandering foreigner expert (Buddhism reaching China via Bodhidharma "the red-haired blue-eyed monk") Also to note a good chunk of chinaman history has also been deleted a couple of times, the manichean/nestorian church was the main belief in a considerable sector of China for 500 years, even Marco Polo was surprised in seeing churches in the middle of nowhere back there with the white buddha he had heard of being probably Jesus on the altar due to the cross and the identical acts.

>>38983 Nice find, anon. Word of advice: if you save a lot of PDFs and possibly EPUBs off the internet without actually reading them, consider buying an e-reader that supports both file formats. They're a lot nicer to read on than a computer screen and I personally find I read more of the stuff I save if I have it on an e-reader.

Fuck it, /animu/ was the wrong place to post this writeup (doesn't help that I likely posted it in the wrong thread) so I'll repost it here on the offchance someone is interested in this movie or somehow saw it before its rediscovery. Zenon: Boundless Love Here's one you likely haven't heard of: a 1999 children's movie that may or may not have been considered lost media until it turned up in a Polish church's archives. So why would a Catholic parish have an obscure anime movie laying around? You see, this was the home parish of one Wladyslaw Zebrowski, better known to his beloved Japan as Zenon Zebrowski. In the early 1930s he and a few other monks established a Franciscan monastery in Nagasaki and quickly bonded with the locals. You can probably guess what happens from there: he survives the nuking of Nagasaki, thrusts himself into caring for the survivors, builds an orphanage, possibly meets Emperor Hirohito several times, then becomes a fixture in Japanese disaster relief and charity for several decades following this. I really can't do his long life justice, especially after only knowing about him for a few hours. For example, I am only just discovering as I write this that the leader of this missionary trip to Japan, Maximilian Kolbe, is not only considered a saint within Roman Catholicism, but is also responsible for Zenon's surviving the nuking of Nagasaki in the first place. St. Maximilian Kolbe apparently refused to build the monastery within Nagasaki, declaring the city would be soon destroyed by a ball of fire, and had the monks build it on a mountain slope facing away from the city where it was ultimately shielded from the blast. So how is the movie? As a children's movie, it's decent. There's some nice music by Toshiyuki Watanabe and its animation and backgrounds are decent enough, but it's very limited by its target audience and short length, and these hurt it in a couple areas. For example, it doesn't quite capture the scale of what Brother Zenon did, greatly compresses the timeline, and almost gives the impression that Brother Zenon achieved all this through a mixture of divine providence (which he definitely benefited from) and befuddling and exasperating everyone around him as a sort of holy fool, which really isn't the impression I get from other English-language articles on his life. However, to be fair to the production crew, how do you portray a man so near to sainthood through animation? There is an extensive tradition of how to do so in writing and still images, but you try to place him in an anime and he gains a sort of unreality (or super-reality?) that makes him stand out from everyone around him. An ideal portrayal would also have this quality, and it is to the team's credit that something of this shines through even if they didn't quite understand him. Would I recommend Zeno: Kagirinaki Ai ni? If what I've described interests you and you don't mind it being a children's movie, then, sure. It's only a little over an hour long and- Actually, it's getting late and I don't know what else to write about the movie itself right now, so I'll jump back to the opening subject for now. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=YQL_SC6T-qU https://web.archive.org/web/20220721055131/https://www.ucanews.com/story-archive/?post_name=%2F1999%2F01%2F07%2Fanimated-film-highlights-work-of-polish-franciscan-brother&post_id=12770 https://web.archive.org/web/20161002092355/http://brotherzenon.com/ https://iderepublica.pl/en/known-unknowns/index/brat-zenon-zebrowski/

>>39055 So, if English-language information about Brother Zenon is scarce, information about this movie is even scarcer. There may have been some kind of theatrical release in Japan (I've found a date of May 15th, 1999 on websites like AniList) and possibly another in Poland, but I haven't seen anything of a home video release. The UCA News article I've attached below claims it was funded entirely by donations, and from digging through Youtube comments it seems a gentleman who knew Brother Zenon personally brought this VHS tape over from Japan and gave it to Brother Zenon's old parish. From there it seems to have languished in obscurity until the Youtube uploader found it and enlisted a teacher and a friend to translate it. This is all I can find on the English internet and by running Youtube comments through Google Translate. Perhaps a Polish or Japanese-speaking anon more acquainted with their sides of the internet could dig up more, but that's also assuming any on /animu/ are even interested. It is a very niche anime, after all, and I wouldn't have even heard of it if someone hadn't mentioned it in the comments on a new-ish Kenny Lauderdale video. https://polanddaily24.com/221-the-second-best-known-pole-in-japan