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And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: Hebrews 9:27
As reported by Sam Creighton of the London Daily Mail, February 12, 2015:
Her bizarre New Age views on topics such as reincarnation and UFOs have often left the public baffled.Miss MacLaine's comments are indeed "utterly ridiculous," but all she's saying is what New Agers believe, so it comes as no surprise to this blogger to see her expressing such opinions. It's been my experience that if you talk with a hardcore New Ager about Adolf Hitler and the Jews and you can keep the conversation going long enough, eventually, the New Ager will end up defending Mr. Hitler and blaming the Jews. 23 years ago, a knowledgeable brother in Christ and I had a conversation with a New Ager (let's call him "Miles") who told us that we all create our own reality in our imaginations, and when the subject of Adolf Hitler and the Jews came up, Miles followed that logic said that the Jews created their situation for themselves (I have it on good authority that shortly thereafter, Miles was found unconscious in his truck because, for some reason, he created a reality in his imagination in which he accidentally hit his head on the top of the doorway and knocked himself out).
Now Shirley MacLaine has provoked widespread fury by claiming the victims of the Holocaust may have brought their fate upon themselves.
The veteran Hollywood actress suggests the six million Jews and millions of others systematically murdered in Hitler’s death camps in the 1940s were ‘balancing their karma’ for crimes committed in past lives.
She also suggests that cosmologist Professor Stephen Hawking may have subconsciously given himself his debilitating motor neurone disease.
Miss MacLaine’s comments, in a recently published book, were attacked last night by Jewish campaigners and other activists as offensive and wrong.
In her memoir, the 80-year-old, who won an Oscar for Terms Of Endearment, writes: ‘What if most Holocaust victims were balancing their karma from ages before, when they were Roman soldiers putting Christians to death, the Crusaders who murdered millions in the name of Christianity, soldiers with Hannibal, or those who stormed across the Near East with Alexander? The energy of killing is endless and will be experienced by the killer and the killee.’
A spokesman for the Community Security Trust, which campaigns against anti-Semitism, said: ‘The first impressions are that these comments will offend and bemuse many Jews – and many other people too.’
In her book What If..., Miss MacLaine, who was raised a Baptist but is well known for her unconventional views on reincarnation and alien life, suggests Professor Hawking had subconsciously brought his crippling medical condition on himself.
She says he may have created his illness in order to ‘free his mind’ from the needs of his body, so he could focus completely on his scientific research.
Miss MacLaine, who has previously insisted that she lived on Atlantis in an earlier life, claims to be friends with the scientist, whose life inspired the award-winning film The Theory Of Everything, starring Eddie Redmayne.
Her book – subtitled A Lifetime Of Questions, Speculations, Reasonable Guesses And A Few Things I Know For Sure – poses the question: ‘Did he “create” the disease that has crippled him in order to learn to be dependent on caregivers and the kindness of strangers so that he could free his entire mind to the pursuit of knowledge?
‘Did he “create” the disease that has crippled him?' asks Miss MacLaine of the disabled cosmologist Stephen Hawking, pictured with Eddie Redmayne
‘What if he inadvertently chose to set an example of himself to show the rest of us that cosmic travel and universal understanding are available, regardless of one’s physical condition or circumstance?
'If Jesus chose to die in a state of martyrdom, then Stephen Hawking could just as readily have chosen to live in a dual state of being: visibly physical weakness and unseen knowledge and power. What if all reality is an illusion?’
Her views were branded ‘utterly ridiculous’ by disability charity Scope, while a spokesman for Disability Rights UK added: ‘She obviously has some very confused ideas that a lot of disabled people will be baffled by.
'It’s completely wrong to say people choose their disabilities, especially Professor Stephen Hawking, who has a genetic condition.’
Miss MacLaine, who played Lady Grantham’s American mother in Downton Abbey, writes that she is recognised more for her part in the ITV drama than for any of her film roles.
She also suggests that she felt so at home on the set because she may have lived in the 1920s during a past life.
Representatives for Miss MacLaine declined to comment last night.
While the Bible teaches that the world we inhabit is real--although fallen--Hinduism teaches that the world is illusory. Reincarnation in Eastern religion is a form of punishment in which the individual suffers the punishment for sins committed in previous lives. Karma is the enforcement of the law against one's sins from previous lives, and no one can interfere with that. This explains why Hinduism in India produces indifference toward suffering; those who are suffering are getting exactly what they deserve, and to interfere with that by alleviating suffering is to interfere with one's karma. Not only are you not supposed to interfere with karma by alleviating suffering, you're not even supposed to notice such things as disability, poverty, or filth.
I have to take issue with Miss MacLaine's statement that Jesus "chose to die in a state of martyrdom." He didn't die as a martyr, but as the Saviour, shedding His blood--innocent, sinless blood--on the cross as an offering to satisfy His Father's conditions for payment of the penalty for man's sin. He wasn't reincarnated, but resurrected from the dead. The Lord Jesus Christ is God Incarnate, not reincarnate.
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; Romans 3:23-25
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: I Peter 3:18
And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. I John 2:2
And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. I John 4:14
It is really difficult to understand MacLaine's ideology without thinking she is truly insane. This thinking is nothing less than a total rejection of God in place of making one's own self a god -- which MacLaine has indeed claimed to be.
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