intercessors

• no i. needed between man and God

2:6.6The af­fec­tion­ate heav­enly Fa­ther, whose spirit in­dwells his chil­dren on earth, is not a di­vided per­son­al­ity—one of jus­tice and one of mercy—nei­ther does it re­quire a me­di­a­tor to se­cure the Fa­ther’s fa­vor or for­give­ness. Di­vine righ­teous­ness is not dom­i­nated by strict re­tribu­tive jus­tice; God as a fa­ther tran­scends God as a judge.

• no i. needed between man and God

6:3.4The min­istry of the Eter­nal Son is de­voted to the rev­e­la­tion of the God of love to the uni­verse of uni­verses. This di­vine Son is not en­gaged in the ig­no­ble task of try­ing to per­suade his gra­cious Fa­ther to love his lowly crea­tures and to show mercy to the wrong­do­ers of time. How wrong to en­vis­age the Eter­nal Son as ap­peal­ing to the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther to show mercy to his lowly crea­tures on the ma­te­rial worlds of space! Such con­cepts of God are crude and grotesque. Rather should you re­al­ize that all the mer­ci­ful min­is­tra­tions of the Sons of God are a di­rect rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther’s heart of uni­ver­sal love and in­fi­nite com­pas­sion. The Fa­ther’s love is the real and eter­nal source of the Son’s mercy.

• enlightenment should deliver from dependence on

92:7.11Re­li­gious mean­ings pro­gress in self-con­scious­ness when the child trans­fers his ideas of om­nipo­tence from his par­ents to God. And the en­tire re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of such a child is largely de­pen­dent on whether fear or love has dom­i­nated the par­ent-child re­la­tion­ship. Slaves have al­ways ex­pe­ri­enced great dif­fi­culty in trans­fer­ring their mas­ter-fear into con­cepts of God-love. Civ­i­liza­tion, sci­ence, and ad­vanced re­li­gions must de­liver man­kind from those fears born of the dread of nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena. And so should greater en­light­en­ment de­liver ed­u­cated mor­tals from all de­pen­dence on in­ter­me­di­aries in com­mu­nion with De­ity.

• Mithras interceded for humans among gods

98:5.3The Mith­raic cult por­trayed a mil­i­tant god tak­ing ori­gin in a great rock, en­gag­ing in valiant ex­ploits, and caus­ing wa­ter to gush forth from a rock struck with his ar­rows. There was a flood from which one man es­caped in a spe­cially built boat and a last sup­per which Mithras cel­e­brated with the sun-god be­fore he as­cended into the heav­ens. This sun-god, or Sol In­vic­tus, was a de­gen­er­a­tion of the Ahura-Mazda de­ity con­cept of Zoroas­tri­an­ism. Mithras was con­ceived as the sur­viv­ing cham­pion of the sun-god in his strug­gle with the god of dark­ness. And in rec­og­ni­tion of his slay­ing the myth­i­cal sa­cred bull, Mithras was made im­mor­tal, be­ing ex­alted to the sta­tion of in­ter­ces­sor for the hu­man race among the gods on high.

• spiritual menace in galaxy of saints

195:4.2Dur­ing these dark and de­spair­ing cen­turies, re­li­gion be­came vir­tu­ally sec­ond­handed again. The in­di­vid­ual was al­most lost be­fore the over­shad­ow­ing au­thor­ity, tra­di­tion, and dic­ta­tion of the church. A new spir­i­tual men­ace arose in the cre­ation of a galaxy of “saints” who were as­sumed to have spe­cial in­flu­ence at the di­vine courts, and who, there­fore, if ef­fec­tively ap­pealed to, would be able to in­ter­cede in man’s be­half be­fore the Gods.