
I AM LOOKING FOR ANOTHER COUPLE OF EXTRAORDINARY PROOFREADERS for my book, “The Essential Apocalypse: Making Sense of the Book of Revelation”. At the moment, I have three proofreaders currently scanning the book, and would like two more. I now have a first draft manuscript with 643 large-format (6” x 9”) paperback size pages. However, before you volunteer, there are some things which I need you to consider. First, if you like to put people in boxes and give them theological labels, then this isn’t an assignment for you. I don’t do boxes and labels anymore, as I am only interested in discovering truth rather than lining myself up with manmade theological systems of thought which only bring one into conflict with other manmade systems of thought. If you’re thinking, “Well how am I supposed to know where you stand?”, I reply, “Why do you need to?” This desire to put everyone in a box or label them is not a healthy one. It is sectarian and dismissive of their individuality. The same thing arises in terms of my politics. People say to me, “Are you left or right? I can’t make you out”. That’s because I am neither. I’m just a simple loving human. Why do you have to put me in a box? So the only way you can discover where I stand on anything is to actually read my writings. It’s all in there, shamelessly available for scrutiny. I have nothing to hide. But I defy all boxes and labelling. I leave that behaviour to others. Now I know that rankles many because they want to know how to label you before they bother reading your work. Well, tough! You’ll simply have to read my writings to find out. 😊 Then you can get to work smearing your judgemental labels on me. Sheesh! It’s all so immature and unspiritual. Forcing people into pigeonholes. It is no coincidence that churches are magnets for control-freaks. For there they can indulge their labels and boxes to their hearts’ content under the bogus heading of “sound doctrine”, as they are all at it with each other, in their mad, mad, world of watching to see if everyone is dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s! Makes me shudder, the very thought of it. Oh to find a gathering of simple disciples who love the simplicity which is in Christ and are living that out like they did in the middle of the first century! (Forgive my unattainable fantasy).
Second, in my preface, I write these words:
“I hold no candle for any sect in the strange and often crazy Christian scene of today. Therefore, I could never attach myself to a human label such as Calvinist or Arminian, for I do not follow men. Neither do I refer to myself as being charismatic, anti-charismatic, Pentecostal, evangelical, Methodist, Protestant, Catholic, Reformed or any other made-up name you can think of. I am a simple disciple of Christ watching the times unfold with great interest and anticipation”.
If you can’t handle that, then proofreading this book is definitely not an assignment for you. As a number of you know (because you have walked this journey with me) over a long period of years, I had to go right back to the drawing-board of my faith — unfettered by any need to please men or their masters — stripping everything away back to a dark night of the soul in order to discover the difference between what is real and what has been manufactured by controlling and authoritarian men. The sectarian, narrow, cliquish, factional, doctrinaire ways of thinking have become so endemic in people’s minds that they take all that madness as being normal, while spirituality has been eclipsed by a rigid materialism that has not the faintest awareness of its earthbound character. They are actually living out a modern variation on the Inquisition, in which a religious version of ‘McCarthyism’ has taken hold. “You vil tell me your seeology, or you vil pay ze price, you seditious heretik” (spoken in a Bond-villain voice! 😃).
I do not have a name for my “theology”, as it is simply what any disciple of Christ sees blazing out of Scripture on a welter of Light. To me, it is more important to quietly discover unfettered truth rather than conform to any manmade -isms. I know that the many seekers of truth who follow this site, who I know have no church entanglements or affiliations, will appreciate this.
So, the only way to know my “theology” is to read my writings, for they are it! There is no preconceived manmade theological agenda. Nothing is hidden. All is declared. But please do not label me or try and put me in a box. It will not work. If you do not like that, then you need to ask yourself why that should be. For it is not the way of Christ to create or follow human sects. All Christ’s problems came from those. And His disciples’ problems today do so too. A great deal of abuse has taken place in churches under the guise of fitting members into a straitjacket. I abhor straitjackets as they are the very antithesis of faith. Many with deep issues who I have counselled in the last couple of decades were hampered in the freedom of their faith by a straitjacket into which others had tried to force them with some unfortunate success.
So I repeat it again. I am a simple disciple of Christ. I do not follow ‘party-lines’ or sign up to sectarian labels. I do not “take theological stances”. I simply scrutinize the Scriptures to get as close to the truth as possible. I am always interested to know if you think I have hit the mark. Intelligent debate is always attractive to me; but not if it involves someone trying to tell that I am not who I know that I am! Spirituality is never enhanced through formulas or mimicry. The enforcement of formulas and mimicry inevitably gives rise to some kind of inquisition, which to me is abhorrent.
After having read this and if it doesn’t cause you any problems (which, I am delighted to say, means you are laudably free of manmade labels, boxes, pigeonholes and straitjackets), and you would like to be a proofreader of “The Essential Apocalypse: Making Sense of the Book of Revelation”, please send me a message at this email address: diakrisis-project@outlook.com and I will send you a link to the latest draft in a fully-interactive PDF file. The idea is, once proofreading has been completed, to make a final edition of the manuscript publicly available by request as a PDF eBook (which can be read on many platforms, including Kindle). After feedback has been received for a while thereafter, the book may be made into a physical book (thanks to kind sponsors), if it seems worthwhile.
Thank you for reading this! It comes to you with love from me.
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© 2021, Alan Morrison / The Diakrisis Project. All Rights Reserved. [The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]