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The Kingdom of God is within You

This latest statements by Count Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist and reformer, was written for the Finnish journal Progress. The book was first published in Germany in 1894 after being banned in his home country of Russia. It is the culmination of thirty years of Tolstoy’s Christian anarchist thinking, and lays out a new organization for society based on a literal Christian interpretation in ‘The Kingdom of God is within You’.

Editors note: Tosltoj seem to me to be thinking mostly of the co-existence in this World, not of the souls survival in this World, for the participation in the next world, Heaven, the physical manifestation of the The Kingdom of God, in another dimension, if that exist. That Kingdom by many peoples experience be reached here and now, as it is a state of mind, a higher consciousness, a soul dimension.

«Tolstoy seem not to believing so much in the miraculous or the historical claims of the Bible, Tolstoy feels that Christianity has much to give to world in terms of loving neighbors, loving God and avoiding war and retaliation for wrongs.»

This is for the most the social communism and humanism preached by communist Pope Francis today, and it looks to be that Tolstoj also was going in the same (death) trap. There is NO salvation in going along with our neighbours, if we are not both me and my neighbour not able to redeem our SOULS, rescuing it from Satan, and unite it with God, without the use of priests, popes or other satanic middlemens. WHY should we love our neighbour, or love the Jews or any heathen satanist under the sun? Because it will serve ourselves to do it, we will be of Love, if we manage to do it, we will be of God.

Logic tells us that the requirement is not there to love our every satanic neigbour so much that we extinguish ourselves, is not recommendable.

That is a watered out Christianity, because it deals with the social, with the carnal world and how we co-exist only, not so much with the rescuing of our own souls, in the World in the hands and the death grip of Satan, and can NOT be united with God without the Redeemer Jesus Christ.

The Salvation is NOT about how we co-exist with Jewish pharisees, heathens, pagans and all kind of satanists in this World, it is about how we co-Exist with Jesus Christ in order to finally co-Exist in the Kingdom of God, even after the body dies, i-e- where our Spirit leaves for Eternal Life or Disposal!

The socialist watered out gospel of the anti-Christs will be this socialist (originally Jewish) co-Exist gospel. I say No thank you, I have no plans to co-exist with the satanists on their terms, witht he laws they implement for all to end up like them, soulless in this dimension, ends up in Hell because they was not resurrected, born again, by Spirit this time. They lived as animals, and died as animals, lights out, because they still was not inititated into the human family, but remain mammals, with the laws of the jungle, the survival of the fittest ruling them. They must in case force me and ultimately kill us, over our dead body, before we should be able to comply to their ‘value’ system, and laws that is manmade to enforce us to be partakers in the kingdom of Satan, the luciferian anti-Christ kingdom for a time. Take on the Mark of the Beast, worship the image of the Beast. That is to be true to Christ, to the end («those who hold out to the end will be saved»).

«America Also is Tending to the Rule of Force»

«The Greatest Illusions is that Which Supposes That Society Can Be Improved By Law»

«America Surpasses Europe is in its Personal Liberty, Which is the Heritage of a Race of Heroes. But This is Doomed To Be Extinguished By the Legislatures of a Time-Serving Generations.»

The title of the book is taken from Luke 17:21. In the book Tolstoy speaks of the principle of non-violent resistance when confronted by violence, as taught by Jesus Christ. In reading Jesus’ words in the Gospels, Tolstoy notes that the modern church is a heretical creation: «Nowhere nor in anything, except in the assertion of the Church, can we find that God or Christ founded anything like what churchmen understand by the Church.»

Tolstoy Compares America and Europe

If only I had begun to preach love and brotherhood when I first began to write stories, I should have accomplished more. It was Schopenhauer and the Bible that converted me. I am an individualist and as such believe in free play for the psychological nature of man. For this reason I am claimed by the anarchists. Even George Brandes declares that I am in philosophical harmony with the ideas of Prince Krapotkin.

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The idea of communism and what it implies refers to the social conditions and it would be senseless for me to demand that every one should sleep as little as I do, eat the same food, wear the same clothes or have the same feelings which are peculiar to me. A man is not a watch. Each is a world in himself. It is therefore an illusion to believe in materialistic economy as if it were a religion. It is foolish therefore to worship the idea of socialism. I worship the soul of man, which is the only reality.

After all it does seem as if the world likes to be deceived. If we did not ave our illusions we could never find the truth. Through error we come to virtue, through ignorance to knowledge, through suffering to joy. These opinions are naturally not popular with the socialists, who therefore oppose me with bitterness. They love to spread broadcast the rumor that I am, instead a doer of the word, a mere talker.

In my preachments of love and truth I am not a partisan. I condemn both revolutionist and reactionaries. I loath the yoke of party; for I believe that all physical force is brutality.

My opposition to administrative power has been interpreted into opposition to all government. This, however, is not true. I oppose only violence and the view that might makes right. The only government in which I believe is that which exercise a moral authority. Moses, Buddha, Christ, these are the great law-givers, the real autocrats, who ruled not by force, but by character, whose government was one of love, justice, and brotherhood.

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I do not believe in a parliament as the final goal of social leadership, for instead of simplifying it only complicates human society. Parliament becomes an instrument to cheat the people in that it deceives them into thinking it truly represents them. They say, «Vox popull, vox Dei,» but it is never the case; for the greatest illusions is that which supposes that society
can be improved by law.

Just as I hate hereditary potentate so do I hate cheap Duma. A government which relies on iron and explosives, which executes a murderer who is so because of insanity or of poverty and which glorifies the butchery of innocent thousands is the greatest instrument for wrong, the worst of oppressors.

Now I will explain why I criticize free America as severely as I do Russia. It is because I am also tending to the rule of force. The methods may differ but the results are the same.

It is true that America does not exile one to Siberia or hang one on the gallows for protesting against the government. But nevertheless it has its lynching and, what is far worse, its judicial murders. It has its great railroad casualties by which thousands are killed by the criminal carelessness of the great corporations, and besides all this it has the exploitation of the poor by the rich.

All this proves that government can not improve the moral nature of man, and that brute force always defeats its object. There can be no coercion of the soul. Every law must have the sanction of the free will. Where America surpasses Europe is in its personal liberty, which is the heritage of a race of heroes. But this is doomed to be extinguished by the legislatures of a time-serving generations.

The greatest indictment against any country is the presence of capital punishment — which exists in such a form as if Christ had never been born. The judge who sentences a criminal to death is ten times more guilty himself. Oh that ideas of humanity could end this tyranny, this black hypocrisy of legal procedure under which so many crimes are committed against humanity!

Yet the root of all the evils of civilization lies in the perverted teachings miscalled Christianity. The modern church is the greatest foe of man, and the churchgoer a blind dupe.

Of course my views are extrememely unpleasant to the Russian Church, and often it has plotted how to get rid of me. Many suppose that I have so far escaped imprisonment simply because of my prominence, but there may be another reason, which I am unable to explain.

I am not afraid of any punishment, and would be happy if I might share it with the many martyrs who have suffered for the truth and justice. Persecution gives freedom strength, and suffering ennobles and purifies.

Speaking of my past I condemn myself unreservedly, for all my faults and errors were the natural result of my aristocratic birth and training, which is the worst thing that can befall a man, as it stifles every human instinct. Turgeneff wrote to me: «You have tried for many years to become a peasant in conduct as well as in ideas, but you nevertheless are the same aristocrat. You are good hearted and have a charming personality, but I have observed that in all your practical dealings with the peasants you remain the patronizing master who likes to be esteemed for his benefactions and to be considered the bounteous patriarch,» in which he was very right.

I am not a lover of sports and athletics, for these I consider a misuse of energy, which might do much to relieve the poor. I am greatly in sympathy with the settlement work in America, but I do not believe in institutionalized charity or in mechanical philanthropy, but only individual effort to relieve suffering.

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The Kingdom of God is within You

Excerpts from LEO TOLSTOI – “The Kingdom of God is within You»,
Christianity not as amystic religion but as a new theory of Life :

If Christianity had been presented to men in its true, uncorrupted form, it would not have been accepted by the majority, who would have been as untouched by it as the nations of Asia are now. The peoples who accepted it in its corrupt form were subjected to its slow but certain influence, and by a long course of errors and experiments and their resultant sufferings have now been brought to the necessity of assimilating it in its true significance.

The corruption of Christianity and its acceptance in its corrupt form by the majority of men was as necessary as it is that the seed should remain hidden for a certain time in the earth in
order to germinate.

Christianity is at once a doctrine of truth and a prophecy. Eighteen centuries ago Christianity revealed to men the truth in which they ought to live, and at the same time foretold what human life would become if men would not live by it but continued to live by their previous principles, and what it would become if they accepted the Christian doctrine and carried it out
in their lives.

Laying down in the Sermon on the Mount the principles by which to guide men’s lives, Christ said: «Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man,
who built his house upon a rock; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that heareth these sayings, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it»
(Matt. vii. 24-27).

And now after eighteen centuries the prophecy has been fulfilled. Not having followed Christ’s teaching generally and its application to social life in non-resistance to evil, men have
been brought in spite of themselves to the inevitable destruction foretold by Christ for those who do not fulfill his teaching.

There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power: that is to recognize and profess the truth.

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That is why that Power cannot require of us what is irrational and impossible: the organization of our temporary external life, the life of society or of the state. That Power demands of us only what is reasonable, certain, and possible: to serve the kingdom of God, that is, to contribute to the establishment of the greatest possible union between all living beings–a union possible only in the truth; and to recognize and to profess the revealed truth, which is always in our power.

On corruption; It consists in plundering the industrious working people of their wealth by means of taxes and distributing it in satisfying the greed of officials, who are bound in return to support and keep up the oppression of the people. These bought officials, from the highest ministers to the poorest copying clerks, make up an unbroken network of men bound together by the same interest–that of living at the expense of the people. They become the richer the more submissively they carry out the will of the government; and at all times and places, sticking at nothing, in all departments support by word and deed the violence of government, on which their own prosperity also rests.

The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy

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