Satan's Greatest Lies: The Ethician Bible

By George H. Russell

For many years, George H. Russell has struggled to understand the meaning and purpose of ‘Organized Religion’ as condemned by Jesus and also to understand why wars and genocide are frequently associated with religion—making it seem that death and destruction are somehow condoned by God. While singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching As to War’ in church, Russell could think only about Christians slaughtering Jews, Moors, Native Americans and others all in the name of Jesus. Satan’s Greatest Lies chronicles Russell’s attempts to understand a peculiar interpretation of Christian ideology encountered while living in East Texas. This is the introductory part of his book , followed by The Ethician Bible in which Satanic verses are removed from The Holy Bible by the author to spread only God’s loving messages to humankind. In Russell’s opinion, many of the messages in the Bible should be considered as sent from an evil Satan, not a benevolent God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664195868

George H. Russell

Born May 22, 1945 in Neosho, Missouri. In 1953, Russell was a founding partner in Educational Filmstrips Company, a family business, which became Educational Video Network in 1989. Over the course of 70 years, he has participated in the production of more than 1,000 filmstrips, videos, DVD’s and movies, while serving as CEO of EVN for more than 25 years. Russell produced the independent horror films Long Pig, Naked Horror and Psycho-killer Bloodbath. He also chronicled 37 years of his experiences in Italy in his first book, From My Tuscan Window. In the year 2000, Russell founded The Universal Ethician Church in order to promote a religious understanding of the critical need to care for what Christians, Jews and Muslims call “Creation” and by doing so, to work toward peace and understanding amongst all faith traditions. (www.salvationnetwork.org) Since then, over 3,000 acres of Lands were purchased by the Russell family, The Universal Ethician Church and The Ethician Foundation for the establishment of the world’s first “green” family cemetery and surrounding natural areas. (www.ethicianfamilycemetery.org) Married to Suzanne Bennett in 1967, the Russells had four children.

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Copyright © 2021 by George H. Russell.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Public Domain).

Cover and interior illustrations are by folk artist Molly Bee from Navasota, Texas. They are reproduced here with her kind permission.

Rev. date: 10/25/2021

Xlibris

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Contents

Prologue

Introduction

Satan’s Greatest Lies

Lie #1: Once Saved Always Saved

Lie #2: Jesus Is God

Lie #3: Jesus Was God’s Only Begotten Son

Lie #4: Mary Was A Virgin When She Gave Birth To Baby Jesus

Lie #5: God Is A Man

Lie #6: Humans Were Created In The Image Of God

Lie #7: God Is In Favor Of The Death Penalty

Lie #8: Gay People Should Be Put To Death

Lie #9: And Ye Shall Eat The Flesh Of Your Sons, And The Flesh Of Your Daughters (Lev. 26:29)

Lie #10: God Promotes Slavery

Lie #11: A Man Is Worth Twice As Much As A Woman

Lie #12: God Promotes Genocide And Pedophilia

Lie #13: God Demands That Anyone Who Is Caught Working On The Sabbath Must Be Executed

Lie #14: Blasphemy Is A Capital Offense

Lie #15: Making Love To A Consenting Animal Is A Capital Offense

Lie #16: A Man Or Also A Woman…That Is A Medium Or Is A Wizard Shall Surely Be Put To Death. Lev. 20:27

Lie #17: And He That Curseth His Father, Or His Mother, Shall Surely Be Put To Death. Ex. 21:9

Lie #18: And If A Man Smite His Servant, Or His Maid, With A Rod, …And He (Or She) Continue A Day Or Two, He Shall Not Be Punished; For He (Or She) Is His Money. Ex. 21:20-21

Lie #19: God Condemns Birth Control

Lie #20: God Demands Celibacy Of Catholic Priests And Nuns

Lie #21: God Believes That Men Must Continue To Have Control Over Women’s Bodies, Their Spirits, And All Aspects Of Their Lives

Lie #22: Jews Killed Jesus

Lie #23: Mary Magdalene Was A Whore

Lie #24: God Believes That Sex Education Causes Children To Have Pre-Marital Sex And Pregnancies

Lie #25: Adam And Eve Were White

Lie #26: God Loves Rich People Over Poor People And Especially Loves Mega-Preachers

Lie #27: God Has Condemened Humankind To Be Sinners No Matter What

Lie #28: God Loves John Hagee And The Left Behind Cult

Lie #29: The End Times Are Coming Soon And Christians Should Welcome The Wars And Violence That Are Necessary For Life On Earth To End

Lie #30: God Promotes War And Genocide Against Non-Believers

Lie #31: God Demands That Christian Churches Send Missionaries Around The Globe To Save Souls

Lie #32: Anyone Who Commits Suicide Will Burn In The Fires Of Hell For Eternity

Lie #33: Before Jesus Comes Back To Rule The Earth For 1,000 Years, The Dead Will Rise From Their Graves And Meet Jesus In The Sky During What Is Called ‘The Rapture’

Lie #34: Jesus Is Going To Come Back To Earth In What Is Called The Second Coming

Lie #35: Satan Has Affected The Minds Of Believers So That When One Of Them Dies, The Obituaries State That The Deceased Has Gone To Be With Jesus.

Lie #36: God Says That All Kings And Presidents Throughout History Have Been Chosen By Him To Lead

PROLOGUE

F OR OVER 60 years, I have struggled to understand the meaning and purpose of Organized Religion as condemned by Jesus. I have struggled also to understand why wars and genocide are frequently associated with Organized Religions, where it seems that death and destruction are somehow condoned by God. While singing Onward Christian Soldiers Marching As to War in church, I could think only about Christians slaughtering Jews, Moors, Native Americans and other peace-loving peoples, all in the name of Jesus.

Even as a child attending Sunday school and church at First Methodist in Huntsville, Texas, I could never wrap my head around The Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Nor, could I ever understand the utterly irrational decision by the Methodist God to have His Only Begotten Son nailed to a cross so that evil people could be saved and go to some kind of Heaven. Heaven sounded more like Hell to me as I contemplated sitting on a cloud for eternity and having nothing to do but to listen to harp music, or standing in a line of billions of people who had gone to Heaven, waiting for thousands of years for their turn to be with Jesus and to be judged.

Even more bizarre was growing up with children who were members of the First Baptist Church where my peers feared God and would certainly burn in the fires of Hell for a multitude of sins. Yet, if they had been Baptized in a total immersion ceremony and had pronounced these words: I believe in Jesus, Jesus is my Savior, please forgive me, the child would be saved forever and could never be unsaved’ no matter what. I could understand Jesus forgiving past and even present sins", but I could never believe that all future sins were pre-forgiven in advance.

Being saved was open to adults as well as children. Because there were known sexual predators lurking about town, there was danger in many activities such as being in Boy Scouts or using a public restroom. Of serious concern was that at least one of the town pedophiles was a Deacon in the Baptist Church, and each time he would be caught molesting a baby or a child, he would repent one more time. But, since he was saved and could never be unsaved, he was forgiven, and his future molestations would be pre-forgiven in advance.

When listening to both radio and television Evangelists, I am told by the preacher that no matter how good a person is throughout life that good deeds mean nothing to Jesus, and unless people accept Jesus as their savior, they will be doomed to the fires of hell for eternity.

My many attempts to read the Holy Bible failed as I just couldn’t wade through what I referred to as gibberish and ungodly evil in the Old Testament. Eventually, I began to develop my own spirituality and understanding of just who Jesus really was and what his actual mission seemed to be.

A very serious problem that I had to deal with when reading the Bible was how it could be possible for Christians to be in favor of the death penalty. I had to agree with Don Reid, the father of my classmate, who had spent years witnessing the death of each prison inmate in his position as publisher of The Huntsville Item. He published a book with John Gurwell in 1973 entitled, Eyewitness: I Saw 189 Men Die in the Electric Chair, which was reprinted in 2001 as Have a Seat, Please. Don Reid attempted to expose the evils of the death penalty and the fact that many people who were totally innocent of any crime had been put to death.

The New Testament also presented serious problems that I could not understand. For instance, why did Paul seem to be quoted and worshipped far more than Jesus, and how could any person respect Paul, who was obviously obsessed with other men’s penises including his own and with denigrating women and making them second class citizens again-- after Jesus had brought women into equality for the first time in history.

In my opinion, Thomas Jefferson was to be admired for expunging the parts of the Bible that did not meet his spiritual criteria. He believed that they were not worthy of being a part of that book--hence The Jefferson Bible. Like Jefferson, I never believed in the Resurrection as being credible, or even having a legitimate purpose in the grand scheme of things.

Finally, after many years of procrastination, I waded through the King James Version of both the Old and New Testaments and harvested the verses that, in my opinion, represent a loving god and the actual mission of Jesus.

As a child, I revered Jesus both as an iconoclast and a revolutionary, who attempted to bring Peace on Earth and Goodwill toward Men (and Women). It was my belief also that God did, indeed, demand that all Creation was holy and that each and every species on Planet Eden was to be protected—just as Noah protected all species in the fable of The Great Flood.

By the age of 12, I had developed a great deal of my belief system and spiritual philosophy which was largely based on believing in the Sacred Nature of Nature. My inspiration for that belief came from my Vacation Bible School teacher, Winifred Springfield, who took me into her garden and explained how the beautiful Tapestry of Creation is interwoven and how all forms of life are sacred to God.

Sunday was the day of the week that I hated the most because it meant being taken away from the birds, butterflies and wildflowers that I loved and being forced into uncomfortable shoes, slacks and a silly bow tie. Then, after attending Sunday School, it was my duty to sit quietly between my parents and listen to the preacher whose sermons made little sense to me. When I tried to draw pictures or doodle to keep from being bored to tears, my father would grab my arm rather harshly to force me to pay attention. At that point I believed that Suffer the little children…to come unto me Matt. 19:14 (KJV) really meant that Jesus wanted children to suffer in church.

Eventually, I was able to age out of the Sunday school class of the teacher who was also a football coach. Every Sunday he would declare that Jesus was like the quarterback of the team and his Disciples made up the rest of it. He had been a winning football coach that later-- like many other coaches--became school principals or superintendents.

In my opinion, there was never any purpose in playing football, but I had to attend the games because of my playing the bass clarinet as a member of our high school band. The idea that football in East Texas was ruled by tribalistic gods, each representing different schools was in my mind insane. When the teams would huddle, our local team would pray to the god of Huntsville, so that we would be able to crush the team from Conroe. At the same time, the Conroe team would be praying to their god to destroy Huntsville’s team and thus defeat the god of Huntsville.

Public prayer made me sick to my stomach as it was contrary to Jesus’ admonition to pray in secret and not make a loud spectacle of oneself. In seventh grade, I was traumatized when the Principal’s voice boomed into our classroom over the loud speaker. The voice announced, George Russell, it is your day to say the morning prayer! Even as a septuagenarian, I am still traumatized by the experience of defying Jesus’ teachings and finally developing the courage to say in a faint squeaky voice, Dear God, bless this school. Amen.

When I went off to LSU as a freshman in 1963, various churches attempted to recruit me and my roommates. At one immersion event, the preacher asked us what we would want Heaven to be like. I shouted out perpetual orgasm and was quickly escorted out of the building.

As a student of the United States Constitution, I am a firm believer in the separation of Church and State. Thus, it is especially upsetting to me when prayers in the name of Jesus (Church) were spouted out at City Council Meetings (State). To this day, I refuse to bow my head when hypocrites and movers and shakers, known to be ethically bankrupt, spout their hypocritical prayers. In recent years, the City of Huntsville has plastered IN GOD WE TRUST on the rear end of every police car in town, which I find abhorrent, having been falsely arrested five times by dirty cops sent to intimidate me for promoting ethics in government.

While preparing to be commissioned as an army officer in 1969, I was trained to KILL COMMIES FOR CHRIST, KILL THEM ALL AND LET GOD SORT THEM OUT, KILL EVERYTHING THAT MOVES AND BETTER DEAD THAN RED. I then began to believe that it is not God or Jesus in charge of Christianity but Satan himself, because it seemed as if Satan ruled from virtually every pulpit in America. I was then determined to establish a church based on what I believe the real Jesus was rather than the mythological creature as invented by those men who used Jesus as a weapon against logic, reasoning, science, history and ethics—those who also wanted to take control of people’s souls and pocketbooks. Hence The Universal Ethician Church was finally formally recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)3 Church in 2003.

It took me some two years to convince the IRS that our church was genuine and based on the actual philosophy of Jesus and not on some alien mythology. A female agent had been assigned to our case, and during one of our phone conversations, I asked her out of frustration: If Jesus were to return today, would you allow him to open a church in America? Her terse response stuns me to this very day: No, he wouldn’t meet the criteria!

INTRODUCTION

T HIS INTRODUCTION TO Satan’s Greatest Lies and The Ethician Bible is going to make many readers very uncomfortable, because we will explore the fallacy of Faith as being responsible for people believing Satan’s lies as preached from pulpits across America and from around the world. Satan’s lies in The Holy Bible are those verses which portray God as a vengeful being rather than a loving one. Thus, they have not been included in The Ethician Bible which includes only messages of peace and love.

I cannot write about what my theological investigations have revealed over the last 60 years without being condemned as being anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic or anti-Hindu, anti- Zoroastrian and anti-all other religions when in fact my message is exactly the same as that of Jesus: WORLD PEACE!!! Just as was Jesus, I am indeed opposed to oppressive and violent abuses committed by organized religions regardless of whether Christianity, Islam, Judaism or any other religion.

I wish to appeal to agnostics, fundamentalists of any of the world’s religions, atheists, wiccans and all members of our species on this planet. So, it is essential that I be able to use universally accepted words such as: GOD and SATAN, GOOD and EVIL, HEAVEN and HELL, and so on-- whether or not the reader believes in the existence of any of these entities or none of them.

I am not attempting to educate humans who are already dedicated to the protection of our biosphere, aka God’s Holy Creation, and to World Peace. Our church, The Universal Ethician Church, has only one rule: The Ethician Rule which is Do unto others that which would ethically make them happy according to our abilities, while also protecting and preserving what religious people call God’s Holy Creation" and less religious people call our biosphere. This means keeping intact the life support systems in our biosphere for all species including the human species.

As an anthropologist and cultural ecologist, I can state with scientific certainty that our species evolved to the top of the food chain with domination over our biosphere by being ruthless and greedy-- and by gobbling up any species that didn’t gobble us up first. The current tragedy is that we, as a species, should have evolved to the point of being able to make peace rather than war, to protect the life support systems on our planet, and to be kind to our air, our water and our soil. We need to respect the worth of all species of life on our planet as well. It is unethical to continue to greedily exploit our biosphere. This includes sucking our planet dry by plundering finite hydrocarbon resources and by using them to pollute our biosphere and contribute to climate change that have led to climate disasters.

In regard to global warming and climate change, the climate on our planet has always been in flux even though our species has sped up the current warming of our atmosphere without question. We have clearcut our forests, paved over hundreds of thousands of acres, and created heat islands across the globe which, like millions of radiators, heat up our planet. But, global warming is not the whole problem. Over millions of years as climate has changed, species were able to move up and down in elevation and could also move north, south, east, or west in search of a more desirable location.

In my opinion, the real problem today—at least the most important part of it-- is fragmentation of our ecosystems. As the habitat of various species continues to be divided up into smaller and more isolated fragments, it no longer allows those species to move around to seek a place where they can survive. Thus, the fragmentation of their habitat can result in mass extinction even more so than global warming. Overpopulation by the human species also results in fragmentation-- as well as the unmitigated exploitation of native ecosystems. Both of these practices destroy the ability of plants and animals to survive long term. Greed blinds capitalists, socialists and communists alike, so the problem is not political but ethical.

This book is going to explore the warfare between good and evil, or in simplistic terms between God and Satan, whether or not you believe in either. So I will be dealing with a metaphor and an allegory that I attempted to reveal in my first horror movie: Long Pig.

In doing this, I will prick at faith, various religions, preachers, and organized religion in the form of churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples, etc. However, that doesn’t mean that I do not respect the ethical parts inherent in each and every religion on earth. Virtually all religions contain a certain amount of both good and evil, such as is embodied in the fictional character of the good Dr. Jekyll and the evil Mr. Hyde, (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by R. L. Stevenson). In my book, Satan’s Greatest Lies, I will attempt to expose the Hyde or Satanic parts of religions. Perhaps adherents of each of the planet’s faith traditions can expose and expunge the evil parts of their religious traditions and embrace Ethicianism.

SATAN’S GREATEST LIES

T HE FOLLOWING THIRTY-SIX Lies are beliefs emanating from both the Old and New Testaments of The Holy Bible which I have edited out for The Ethician Bible . There are those who believe every word in the Bible is literally the word of God, and thus believe them to be true.

LIE #1

Once Saved Always Saved

O NCE SAVED ALWAYS saved, is usually followed by no matter what, one cannot be unsaved. This Satanic lie has caused delusional fundamental fools to commit atrocities during their entire lives falsely believing that they have a free get out of hell pass and thus will be with Jesus for eternity--even if they have molested and tortured children or have taken part in other atrocities their entire adult lives.

Thus, when George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq which resulted in the slaughter of over 200,000 innocent Iraqis, he was totally unconcerned that his action might cast him into the fires of hell. Rather, he is fully expecting to enter into the arms of Jesus after he dies.

Mass delusion is instilled into the minds of millions of Christians from pulpits inhabited by hypocrite preachers who are actually carrying out Satan’s orders.

They need to read the following verse from The Holy Bible:

Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. James 2:18 (King James Version)

LIE #2

Jesus Is God

P REACHING THAT JESUS and God are one and the same is so totally illogical that it should boggle the minds of all church goers or those who listen to radio preachers and televangelists who spout that nonsense. Just think about the insanity of Jesus, who is also God, nailing himself to a cross and dying so that evil people can be evil their entire lives. Jesus’ blood will wash away all of their evil deeds-- past, present and future-- so that they will go to heaven. If God and Jesus are one, then Jesus committed suicide by killing himself.

LIE #3

Jesus Was God’s Only Begotten Son

I CAN’T WRAP MY head around this crazy myth. So God has been sitting on a gold throne for eternity, which means trillions of years times infinity or forever and ever. Then, a couple of thousand years ago after allegedly creating the heavens and the earth out of nothing in 4004 B.C. and creating Adam and Eve, he decided to turn himself into an angel and impregnate a fourteen-year-old virgin named Mary while preserving her hymen, thus making sure that his only begotten son would be the product of a virgin birth. If indeed God created Adam, then Adam would have been his first son and Eve his first daughter, and if he created all forms of life then he would be the father of humans, apes, whales, birds, snakes and so on. The purpose of impregnating Mary, it appears, was so that God could have his son Jesus murdered in order to wash away the sins of evil people. But wait: We have already learned that Jesus and God are one and the same. How can otherwise intelligent people, including folks with Ph.D. degrees believe this nons ense?

LIE #4

Mary Was A Virgin When She Gave Birth To Baby Jesus

T HE FABLE OF a virgin birth has been a part of various mythologies over the centuries. Mary was indeed a virgin, when at age fourteen she fell in love with a shepherd boy who impregnated her. Under the Satanic Laws of the Old Testament, Satan disguised as God demanded that any female who became pregnant out of wedlock must be killed. Mary’s parents were terrorized when they found out that their daughter was pregnant, so before it showed, they found a family friend to marry the child. Mary was to become the mother of Jesus, thus legitimizing Jesus and saving the lives of both mother and child.

LIE #5

God Is A Man

I N JESUS NATIVE