Does Jesus qualify as an idol?

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You have swallowed a lie and don’t care how evil you make Jesus to keep your feel good get out of hell free card.

It is a lie, first and foremost because, like it or not, having another innocent person suffer or die for the wrongs you have done, --- so that you might escape responsibility for having done them, --- is immoral. To abdicate your personal responsibility for your actions or use a scapegoat is immoral.

You also have to ignore what Jesus, as a Jewish Rabbi, would have taught his people.

Ezekiel 18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

Deuteronomy 24:16 (ESV) "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.

Psa 49;7 None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:

There is no way that you would teach your children to use a scapegoat to escape their just punishments and here you are doing just that.

Jesus is just a smidge less immoral than his demiurge genocidal father, and here you are trying to put him as low in moral fibre as Yahweh. Satan applauds you though as you are doing her work.

Regards
DL
Your post is full of antichrist beliefs....You are in over your head and The flood is coming and the ARK is soon to be filled.
 

DavidSon

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I'd never listened to Spong, thanks. It's absolutely true what he repeated throughout the presentation:

"FUNDAMENTALISTS ARE WESTERN HERETICAL GENTILES."

Literalism kills the meaning of religious texts. The 4th Gospel cannot be understood literally. Within it Jesus has exchanges with several people who are unwilling to think beyond their limited mental framework. Even the disciples can't conceive of the spiritual dimension that Jesus speaks from. Spong makes a great point about Middle Eastern storytellers use of exaggeration to relay to the reader the fact these are allegories. It was 150 AD when the first Christian writers began to (incorrectly)interpret Jewish storytelling and as we know helped create a dark age lasting 2000 years. Spong says they went as far as to reinvent the prophets as "predictors of the future", that within their scripts were "hidden, supernatural messages" about the coming of Jesus.

I know some are hurt by these ideas, but only the truth can set us free.
 

DavidSon

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...Jesus is just a smidge less immoral than his demiurge genocidal father, and here you are trying to put him as low in moral fibre as Yahweh. Satan applauds you though as you are doing her work.

Regards
DL
I have to say this is where you lose me GCB. One minute you're extolling Jesus and the positive attributes commonly associated with God, the next they're both genocidal pricks. It's kind of bi-polar, offering elucidation along with insults and taunting.

I've read part of your methodology is to make outlandish/vulgar statements, launching the listener into an altered state of understanding. Taken out of their comfort zone a person can possibly open up to deeper truths.

I've said months ago I disagree with several of your views. I'm just not as upset by the historical worship of deities by humans. The sun may have been the first "idol" and from then we have always wanted (may be needed) an external form to pour ourselves into. The concept of a higher power goes far back beyond Egypt, Canaan, and India. Somewhere along the line we started looking outside ourselves for magnificence; the symbols began to be taken literally. History can't be changed. I think we can take from the past and use it for good.

Do you think the concept/adoration of an all encompassing God is idolatrous?
 

Red Sky at Morning

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I have to say this is where you lose me GCB. One minute you're extolling Jesus and the positive attributes commonly associated with God, the next they're both genocidal pricks. It's kind of bi-polar, offering elucidation along with insults and taunting.

I've read part of your methodology is to make outlandish/vulgar statements, launching the listener into an altered state of understanding. Taken out of their comfort zone a person can possibly open up to deeper truths.

I've said months ago I disagree with several of your views. I'm just not as upset by the historical worship of deities by humans. The sun may have been the first "idol" and from then we have always wanted (may be needed) an external form to pour ourselves into. The concept of a higher power goes far back beyond Egypt, Canaan, and India. Somewhere along the line we started looking outside ourselves for magnificence; the symbols began to be taken literally. History can't be changed. I think we can take from the past and use it for good.

Do you think the concept/adoration of an all encompassing God is idolatrous?
I suspect from the terminology that GCB uses that he has bought the whole Sophia and the Archons thing...

Demiurge, Lucifer the girl etc

https://www.vigilantcitizenforums.com/threads/sophia-and-the-archons-lucifer-in-a-dress.4781/page-3#post-185863
 
Last edited:

DavidSon

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I suspect from the terminology that GCB uses that he has bought the whole Sophia and the Archons thing...

Demiurge, Lucifer the girl etc

https://www.vigilantcitizenforums.com/threads/sophia-and-the-archons-lucifer-in-a-dress.4781/page-3#post-185863
Yet another fascinating subject. The confluence of Platonic, Persian, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, etc. philosophies in the 1st and 2nd century AD. I remember you mentioning Manicheism a while back, that's a whole other story. There is too much to study!
 
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Your post is full of antichrist beliefs....You are in over your head and The flood is coming and the ARK is soon to be filled.
So you decided to hide behind your supernaturalstupid thinking instead of looking at how evil you want to make Jesus and how you do not mind abdicating your own responsibility for your sins.

You are a coward and cowards can never be moral.

Regards
DL
 
Joined
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Messages
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I'd never listened to Spong, thanks. It's absolutely true what he repeated throughout the presentation:

"FUNDAMENTALISTS ARE WESTERN HERETICAL GENTILES."

Literalism kills the meaning of religious texts. The 4th Gospel cannot be understood literally. Within it Jesus has exchanges with several people who are unwilling to think beyond their limited mental framework. Even the disciples can't conceive of the spiritual dimension that Jesus speaks from. Spong makes a great point about Middle Eastern storytellers use of exaggeration to relay to the reader the fact these are allegories. It was 150 AD when the first Christian writers began to (incorrectly)interpret Jewish storytelling and as we know helped create a dark age lasting 2000 years. Spong says they went as far as to reinvent the prophets as "predictors of the future", that within their scripts were "hidden, supernatural messages" about the coming of Jesus.

I know some are hurt by these ideas, but only the truth can set us free.
Nicely put my friend and you see 20/20 on this.

Regards
DL
 
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I have to say this is where you lose me GCB. One minute you're extolling Jesus and the positive attributes commonly associated with God, the next they're both genocidal pricks. It's kind of bi-polar, offering elucidation along with insults and taunting.
I extol the Gnostic Christian Jesus while criticizing the immoral Trinitarian/Rome created Jesus.

If you only see one Jesus speaking from the scriptures, you are not recognizing the more Eastern mystic Jesus that the church never quotes and who says the following.
Here is the real way to salvation that Jesus taught.

Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Allan Watts explain those quotes in detail.

I've read part of your methodology is to make outlandish/vulgar statements, launching the listener into an altered state of understanding. Taken out of their comfort zone a person can possibly open up to deeper truths.
That is the intent. A fresh and honest look.

Outlandish, no. Vulgar, possibly, if you consider the truth of what Yahweh is as vulgar. I just label him immoral just as all Gnostic Christians do.

You will have noted how Christians always run away from looking at those immoralities.

I've said months ago I disagree with several of your views. I'm just not as upset by the historical worship of deities by humans.
I do not mind, and in fact, hope that some will disagree so that I can put my ideas to the fire of debate and hope to be proven wrong.

If I lose an argument, I gain knowledge and wisdom. If I win, I lose that greatest of pleasures. In that sense, I debate hard to win but hope to lose.

If I win without my interlocutor admitting it and just runs, I gain nothing except for the lurkers who agree with my position.

I think we can take from the past and use it for good.

Do you think the concept/adoration of an all encompassing God is idolatrous?
I agree with your first.

To your last. Yes.

If one adores something, one will not change it. It's defects, if any, will last forever in a mind.

Jews, with Midrash, changed their god to a good one while Christianity continues to idolize a genocidal and evil god.

You spoke of symbols. We intentionally create symbols to rally around thanks to our tribal natures. They are unifying. Look at any social movement of late. The first thing they do is adopt a new teashirt or arm band or whatever to identify the group they belong to.

This link will help explain my position.


Regards
DL
 
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I suspect from the terminology that GCB uses that he has bought the whole Sophia and the Archons thing...

Demiurge, Lucifer the girl etc

https://www.vigilantcitizenforums.com/threads/sophia-and-the-archons-lucifer-in-a-dress.4781/page-3#post-185863
Those are our myths and we, unlike Christian literalists, are not stupid enough to read myths literally.

We hold no supernatural beliefs as we do not see that as intelligent.

I am used to your kind of lies and misinformation. Your inquisitions did the same to try to justify their many murders of my founding religion.

Regards
DL
 
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Yet another fascinating subject. The confluence of Platonic, Persian, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, etc. philosophies in the 1st and 2nd century AD. I remember you mentioning Manicheism a while back, that's a whole other story. There is too much to study!
You are right, and much what is studied are old lies.

That is why, as an esoteric ecumenist, I pull out he moral lessons from whatever I read and ignore the rest as just commentary.

In this, I follow the older and wiser ways that are expressed below.

I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental trash that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.

https://bigthink.com/videos/what-is-god-2-2

Further.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about the literal reading of myths.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

Matt 7;12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

This is how early Gnostic Christians view the transition from reading myths properly to destructive literal reading and idol worship.


Regards
DL
 

Red Sky at Morning

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Those are our myths and we, unlike Christian literalists, are not stupid enough to read myths literally.

We hold no supernatural beliefs as we do not see that as intelligent.

I am used to your kind of lies and misinformation. Your inquisitions did the same to try to justify their many murders of my founding religion.

Regards
DL
I think you are getting Christians mixed up with the least Christian pope ever, “Innocent” III?
 
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Messages
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So you decided to hide behind your supernaturalstupid thinking instead of looking at how evil you want to make Jesus and how you do not mind abdicating your own responsibility for your sins.

You are a coward and cowards can never be moral.

Regards
DL
You are just angry because I could answer your question about doing greater things then Christ as He was going to the Father. You have no part with us. Repent or perish says the Scriptures. You are right, It is Supernatural, but only stupid to those who reject it.
 
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You are just angry because I could answer your question about doing greater things then Christ as He was going to the Father. You have no part with us. Repent or perish says the Scriptures. You are right, It is Supernatural, but only stupid to those who reject it.
You are correct that I have no part in your ilk.
Your scriptures say that that is your gods doing and not mine.
Argue your way out of these supernaturalstupid biblical quote that you cannot deny or defend.


Learning your dog-shit ideology might make you think better.

Regards
DL
 

DavidSon

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Joined
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Messages
2,006
You are right, and much what is studied are old lies.

That is why, as an esoteric ecumenist, I pull out he moral lessons from whatever I read and ignore the rest as just commentary.

In this, I follow the older and wiser ways that are expressed below.

I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental trash that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.

https://bigthink.com/videos/what-is-god-2-2

Further.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about the literal reading of myths.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

Matt 7;12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

This is how early Gnostic Christians view the transition from reading myths properly to destructive literal reading and idol worship.


Regards
DL
I plan to watch the videos you've linked. You've posted them oh...20 TIMES before... they must be good lol.

I came across some amazing facts on the subject of Gnosticism. Yeah I know, silly wikipedia again but I swear it's not a terrible launching pad into truth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

"The earliest origins of Gnosticism are obscure and still disputed... As Christianity developed and became more popular, so did Gnosticism, with both proto-orthodox Christian and Gnostic Christian groups often existing in the same places. The Gnostic belief was widespread within Christianity until the proto-orthodox Christian communities expelled the group in the second and third centuries (C.E.). Gnosticism became the first group to be declared heretical... "

"No gnostic texts have been discovered that pre-date Christianity, and pre-Christian Gnosticism as such is hardly attested in a way to settle the debate once and for all."

"Contemporary scholarship largely agrees that Gnosticism has Jewish Christian origins, originating in the late first century AD in nonrabbinical Jewish sects and early Christian sects."

"Within early Christianity, the teachings of Paul and John may have been a starting point for Gnostic ideas, with a growing emphasis on the opposition between flesh and spirit, the value of charisma, and the disqualification of the Jewish law. The mortal body belonged to the world of inferior, worldly powers (the archons), and only the spirit or soul could be saved. The term gnostikos may have acquired a deeper significance here."

"The Shepherd of Hermas is a Christian literary work considered as canonical scripture by some of the early Church fathers such as Irenaeus. Jesus is identified with angel Christology in parable 5, when the author mentions a Son of God, as a virtuous man filled with a Holy "pre-existent spirit."

"Jesus is identified by some Gnostics as an embodiment of the supreme being who became incarnate to bring gnōsis to the earth, while others adamantly denied that the supreme being came in the flesh, claiming Jesus to be merely a human who attained divinity through gnosis and taught his disciples to do the same."

"Three periods can be discerned in the development of Gnosticism:
1)Late first century and early second century: development of Gnostic ideas, contemporaneous with the writing of the New Testament;
2)mid-second century to early third century: high point of the classical Gnostic teachers and their systems, "who claimed that their systems represented the inner truth revealed by Jesus";
3)end of second century to fourth century: reaction by the proto-orthodox church and condemnation as heresy, and subsequent decline."

"A wisdom tradition developed, in which Jesus' sayings were interpreted as pointers to an esoteric wisdom, in which the soul could be divinized through identification with wisdom. Some of Jesus' sayings may have been incorporated into the gospels to put a limit on this development. The conflicts described in 1 Corinthians may have been inspired by a clash between this wisdom tradition and Paul's gospel of crucifixion and arising."

"The movement spread in areas controlled by the Roman Empire and Arian Goths, and the Persian Empire. It continued to develop in the Mediterranean and Middle East before and during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, but decline also set in during the third century, due to a growing aversion from the Catholic Church, and the economic and cultural deterioration of the Roman Empire."

"Modern scholarship notes that early Christianity was very diverse, and Christian orthodoxy only settled in the 4th century, when the Roman Empire declined and Gnosticism lost its influence. Gnostics and proto-orthodox Christians shared some terminology. Initially, they were hard to distinguish from each other."

"According to Walter Bauer, "heresies" may well have been the original form of Christianity in many regions. This theme was further developed by Elaine Pagels, who argues that "the proto-orthodox church found itself in debates with gnostic Christians that helped them to stabilize their own beliefs." According to Gilles Quispel, Catholicism arose in response to Gnosticism, establishing safeguards in the form of the monarchic episcopate, the creed, and the canon of holy books."

"According to Raymond Brown, the Gospel of John shows "the development of certain gnostic ideas, especially Christ as heavenly revealer, the emphasis on light versus darkness, and anti-Jewish animus." The Johannine material reveals debates about the redeemer myth. The Johannine letters show that there were different interpretations of the gospel story, and the Johannine images may have contributed to second-century Gnostic ideas about Jesus as a redeemer who descended from heaven."

"Tertullian calls Paul "the apostle of the heretics", because Paul's writings were attractive to gnostics, and interpreted in a gnostic way, while Jewish Christians found him to stray from the Jewish roots of Christianity."

"According to Clement of Alexandria, the disciples of Valentinus said that Valentinus was a student of a certain Theudas, who was a student of Paul, and Elaine Pagels notes that Paul's epistles were interpreted by Valentinus in a gnostic way, and Paul could be considered a proto-gnostic as well as a proto-Catholic. Many Nag Hammadi texts, including, for example, the Prayer of Paul and the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul, consider Paul to be "the great apostle". The fact that he claimed to have received his gospel directly by revelation from God appealed to the gnostics, who claimed gnosis from the risen Christ. The Naassenes, Cainites, and Valentinians referred to Paul's epistles."
 

Red Sky at Morning

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Joined
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Messages
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I plan to watch the videos you've linked. You've posted them oh...20 TIMES before... they must be good lol.

I came across some amazing facts on the subject of Gnosticism. Yeah I know, silly wikipedia again but I swear it's not a terrible launching pad into truth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

"The earliest origins of Gnosticism are obscure and still disputed... As Christianity developed and became more popular, so did Gnosticism, with both proto-orthodox Christian and Gnostic Christian groups often existing in the same places. The Gnostic belief was widespread within Christianity until the proto-orthodox Christian communities expelled the group in the second and third centuries (C.E.). Gnosticism became the first group to be declared heretical... "

"No gnostic texts have been discovered that pre-date Christianity, and pre-Christian Gnosticism as such is hardly attested in a way to settle the debate once and for all."

"Contemporary scholarship largely agrees that Gnosticism has Jewish Christian origins, originating in the late first century AD in nonrabbinical Jewish sects and early Christian sects."

"Within early Christianity, the teachings of Paul and John may have been a starting point for Gnostic ideas, with a growing emphasis on the opposition between flesh and spirit, the value of charisma, and the disqualification of the Jewish law. The mortal body belonged to the world of inferior, worldly powers (the archons), and only the spirit or soul could be saved. The term gnostikos may have acquired a deeper significance here."

"The Shepherd of Hermas is a Christian literary work considered as canonical scripture by some of the early Church fathers such as Irenaeus. Jesus is identified with angel Christology in parable 5, when the author mentions a Son of God, as a virtuous man filled with a Holy "pre-existent spirit."

"Jesus is identified by some Gnostics as an embodiment of the supreme being who became incarnate to bring gnōsis to the earth, while others adamantly denied that the supreme being came in the flesh, claiming Jesus to be merely a human who attained divinity through gnosis and taught his disciples to do the same."

"Three periods can be discerned in the development of Gnosticism:
1)Late first century and early second century: development of Gnostic ideas, contemporaneous with the writing of the New Testament;
2)mid-second century to early third century: high point of the classical Gnostic teachers and their systems, "who claimed that their systems represented the inner truth revealed by Jesus";
3)end of second century to fourth century: reaction by the proto-orthodox church and condemnation as heresy, and subsequent decline."

"A wisdom tradition developed, in which Jesus' sayings were interpreted as pointers to an esoteric wisdom, in which the soul could be divinized through identification with wisdom. Some of Jesus' sayings may have been incorporated into the gospels to put a limit on this development. The conflicts described in 1 Corinthians may have been inspired by a clash between this wisdom tradition and Paul's gospel of crucifixion and arising."

"The movement spread in areas controlled by the Roman Empire and Arian Goths, and the Persian Empire. It continued to develop in the Mediterranean and Middle East before and during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, but decline also set in during the third century, due to a growing aversion from the Catholic Church, and the economic and cultural deterioration of the Roman Empire."

"Modern scholarship notes that early Christianity was very diverse, and Christian orthodoxy only settled in the 4th century, when the Roman Empire declined and Gnosticism lost its influence. Gnostics and proto-orthodox Christians shared some terminology. Initially, they were hard to distinguish from each other."

"According to Walter Bauer, "heresies" may well have been the original form of Christianity in many regions. This theme was further developed by Elaine Pagels, who argues that "the proto-orthodox church found itself in debates with gnostic Christians that helped them to stabilize their own beliefs." According to Gilles Quispel, Catholicism arose in response to Gnosticism, establishing safeguards in the form of the monarchic episcopate, the creed, and the canon of holy books."

"According to Raymond Brown, the Gospel of John shows "the development of certain gnostic ideas, especially Christ as heavenly revealer, the emphasis on light versus darkness, and anti-Jewish animus." The Johannine material reveals debates about the redeemer myth. The Johannine letters show that there were different interpretations of the gospel story, and the Johannine images may have contributed to second-century Gnostic ideas about Jesus as a redeemer who descended from heaven."

"Tertullian calls Paul "the apostle of the heretics", because Paul's writings were attractive to gnostics, and interpreted in a gnostic way, while Jewish Christians found him to stray from the Jewish roots of Christianity."

"According to Clement of Alexandria, the disciples of Valentinus said that Valentinus was a student of a certain Theudas, who was a student of Paul, and Elaine Pagels notes that Paul's epistles were interpreted by Valentinus in a gnostic way, and Paul could be considered a proto-gnostic as well as a proto-Catholic. Many Nag Hammadi texts, including, for example, the Prayer of Paul and the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul, consider Paul to be "the great apostle". The fact that he claimed to have received his gospel directly by revelation from God appealed to the gnostics, who claimed gnosis from the risen Christ. The Naassenes, Cainites, and Valentinians referred to Paul's epistles."
You have to feel it for Paul as it seems that as soon as the gospel started to be preached, the “alternative” narrative started to be pushed almost immediately. Not that this is surprising of course - real, valuable things always attracts the efforts of forgers!

Acts 20

25“And indeed, now I know that you all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, will see my face no more. 26Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent[e] of the blood of all men. 27For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. 28Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. 29For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. 30Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. 31Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.
 
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