A couple of months ago, I published a blog about a church, La Luz del Mundo (LLDM), and to my surprise, it has caused quite some stir! I have since learn much more about the church and the mentality of some of the members that attend. As you may know, I pointed out that the church’s foundation is based on lies- due to their belief in a modern-day apostle, Samuel Joaquin Flores, who is at the core of the congregation’s teaching. Emphasis is placed on this man… more-so than Christ. Being straight to the point, people have to believe in this “chosen one sent by God” for their salvation in heaven, and what is worse: the church naively proclaims that outside of LLDM, there is NO salvation. It appears that our Lord Jesus Christ, dying for our sins, was not enough and people must revere this new “apostle” to be saved. As honest individuals, what are we to think of such bold blasphemies and blatant lies? The church hierarchy, beginning with Samuel himself, to his sons, and his elite inner-circle possess mostly dubious behavior, to say the least. Personally, I would not feel safe if surrounded by this group. They are interested in money and holding their position at any cost. In my other blog, La Luz del Mundo: A Church Founded on Lies, I was fortunate to meet several people with a genuine love of God and who put forth their testimonies regarding their negative experiences with this church, if it can even be called that, since it appears to be more like a cult… unbeknownst to the poor, misinformed people who attend, of course. My aim, and of others here, is not to offend at all but to expose the church for what it is. We are conscientious that many, many people that attend do so out of their love and genuine faith in God, what they do not know is that Samuel preaches a different gospel altogether.

It is sad how humble people with a desire to know God are being taken advantage by this false “apostle”.

Annihilation, damnation and obliteration

are things which cause me consternation,

Hence, I feel sorry for the youth of the nation.

Humanity’s nature for self destruction

is clearly evident with each generation.

I dare say God made a pitiful creation.

What is the worth of one man’s determination?

Blood and stress and perspiration

and things such as mutilation

are things the Son of God endured with mild hesitation.

Obedient to the end, he assured our salvation.

A toast to the Son of Man, our Lord and admiration.

When will Jesus come is a good question,

everyone says soon- to be ready for our destination.

Repent and pray is all we can do as a preparation.

This world was great but sin killed its incantation.

Alas, poor Jesus, he didn’t deserve his elimination.

May Christ live on in each nation and unite all denominations.

There is this particular church in mind called La Luz del Mundo, which translates directly to English as The Light of the World. It is a Christian denomination church headquartered in my father’s hometown of Guadalajara, Jalisco in Mexico. The church claims to be the largest non-Catholic Church in all of Latin America, and its main church, in Guadalajara, can accommodate approximately 12,000 worshipers. The Light of the World has about 5 million members in about 40 countries. All this information is all good and all, the problem lies in its foundation.

My father and his family have long tidings with this church, as most of his siblings and his parents (my grandparents) belonged or continue to belong to this church. He knows the inner workings of the church from close range and saw things that made him refuse to be a member of it. Needless to say, my father is the most ethical man I know, and if he saw wrong, then there was something wrong. He was enveloped in this church practically since birth. Since he is not a member of the church, his own siblings turned their back on him, preferring their religious brothers and sisters than their own blood. They never call to even say hello. My grandparents on my Dad’s side were never like that. Heck, my grandfather was eventually disillusioned and refused the position of pastor in his later years. An uncle, one that is not a member of this church, recently told me this about The Light of the World : “Those people are disrespectful and hypocrites”.

The church was started by a man named Aaron Joaquin Gonzales who (like Paul who encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus and was instructed to go as an apostle to the gentiles) was also called on as an apostle in 1926 in Monterrey, Mexico. This made him apostle #14, after Paul and the twelve original apostles. Aaron Joaquin Gonzales thus began to preach this new church and began to have many followers by making them believe he was “appointed” by God himself to “restore the church of Jesus Christ”. Like many churches, this church is no different in that it has evolved into a money-hungry establishment. Aaron Joaquin was revered as a deity, God on earth mentality by his followers. He passed away on June 9, 1964, and as it is common, his son, Samuel Joaquin Flores, took control of the church afterwards. It has been this man who has expanded The Light of the World to its current state and continues to serve as the director of the church. Here is the catch: He is also an apostle, on the same terms as Paul, Thomas, Peter, and the others! He is apostle #15, after his father of course, and according to his 5 million followers. I have never heard of an apostle passing down the powers of apostleship to his son but it happened here.

The only good thing I see about this church is that it introduces people to Christ and the Bible. That is the only thing. People are bred into the church and arranged marriages are not uncommon. Every year, on August 14, wherever people of the congregation may be, they must travel to Guadalajara to pay homage to the apostle of Jesus Christ. It used to be that people would kiss his hand and place their tithe in a large jar next to him. Nowadays, it is no longer required to kiss his hand. Samuel Joaquin is, of course, filthy rich. Brainwashing ignorant masses can make you so, tax free. It will be very interesting to see if they were the 14th and 15th apostles in reality.

Should I start this off with a question? Or, should I speak what is on my mind? How about both: is love stronger than religious faith? Ah, such an entertaining topic this is, one that reveals the real plumage of certain people as well as the inner cogs that make them tick. Well, is it? Is love stronger than faith, the very faith that has been been intertwined into a person’s sheer being probably since birth? Tell me, I am dying to know.

A person can claim to be religious and be devoted to their God, but when that same person falls in love with someone of a different religion, what happens then? Do things not change? The scripture is different, the beliefs are different, the culture is different, the Gods are different… I can only wonder, is love strong enough to fill such deep gaps? Ah, if it were only so simple to convince the world, and to convince me, in particular (wagging finger, no-no). A person claims a religion, a religion they practice and follow, but are they following it all the way? Are they following it all the way if they love someone of another religion, who worships a different God? I find such things highly interesting. I ask again, does the love for a person exceed the love of a person’s deity and religious teachings? I honestly believe so. In fact, I have seen it. It happens all the time. It is not my place to judge, but it is irresistible not to observe. It is irresistible not to form an opinion. I like observing and being logical, but, unfortunately, I find such things illogical. Perhaps I suffer from a flawed mentality, one that prohibits me from seeing the big picture. Yes, it is probably me that is the problem.

If a Buddhist man and a Catholic woman fall in love, does it not compromise their relationship? It can probably work if both of them were not religious or a non-practicing Buddhist or Catholic. In fact, I can only see such a union possible in such a scenario. Yet, when both parties are zealously devoted to their religion, I do not know what to think, so I form an opinion. If a Muslim man and a Christian woman fall in love, how does that work? Islam prohibits a relationship with non-Muslims and Christians that are in a relationship with Jesus still fall for someone that does not adhere to the Holy Bible. One believes in the Prophet and the other in Jesus. They can both worship independently, but where is the line drawn? Is it feasible to only follow parts of the Bible or the Koran, and not others? You can’t eat pepperoni, but you can date a Christian? To this I say, how convenient. If you walk under the banner of a religion, follow it all the way or not at all. In my eyes, many times the love of a person does, in fact, surpass the love of their God. People may counter that it is not true, but I know better.

If I may end this with a quote from the film, Kingdom of Heaven.

“I put no stock in religion. By the word religion, I’ve seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called ‘The Word of God!’… Holiness is in right action – and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves… And by what you decide to do everyday, you will be a good man – or not.”

I think I am a good man, but there is always room for improvement.

                        Given my natural curiosity, I never take something that is hearsay for truth. I always do research on things I do not know about, before accepting it as fact. I firmly believe that people should never take something heard from another person (or the media) as complete truth and to find out first hand. I would spur even my children to challenge orthodox thinking and question most of the things in life, to question why things are the way they are. On the topic of religion, for example, I would ask myself something like: How did Mexico and most of Latin America become Catholic countries? Why is almost every Hispanic I know a Catholic? Surely, something happened along the way that brought about this present configuration. And it did. Hundreds of years ago, countless gold greedy Spanish Conquistadors came to the Americas to annihilate Indians and convert the survivors to Catholicism. They literally cut their heads off if they did not renounce their gods and take the one true God from the Bible as their new absolute Lord and savior. When threatened with decapitation, most people will definitely do a little change of religion and hence, where Spanish came, Catholics emerged. Many people do not even question this; they simply make it as tradition. Their great-grandmother was Catholic, their grandmother is Catholic, their mother is Catholic, and so they must also be Catholic. It’s an endless chain until the link comes to someone like me or someone who opts for another religion because Catholicism just isn’t cutting it for them. 

                    I chuckle at some of the things religious people say when attacking non-believers or men of science. Granted, science does not have all the answers and it never will, neither will religion, everything is imperfect in this blue sphere of mystery that is our planet. God as the answer for everything unknown is a bit of a cliché. When priests attack evolution, they will adamantly say that we were created in His holy image and that we do not come from monkeys. They say the mere idea that we came from primates is a ridiculous lie, and that evolution should not even be taught in school. Actually, they are partially right. Their hate for Darwin aside, we do not come from monkeys, we come from something else that evolved into monkeys and ourselves. Fossils do not lie, you can find vestigial structures indicating evolution from a common ancestor, all people have to do is a little digging, and more importantly, have an open mind. The evidence for evolution is staggering in magnitude, yet religious people still do not believe it, they’d much rather believe that women came from a single rib, which makes more sense to them than evolution. Does not an HIV virus evolve to be immune to drugs acting on its reverse transcriptase? Exploring the Bible even further, I run into complete mystery. For example, in the story of David and Goliath, Goliath was a giant and there was a whole army of them, whole armies of giants. Well, if there were armies of giants then where the heck are the fossils of these so giants? Surely, we must have found one by now, but here we are thousands of years later and we have not. I do not doubt for a second that Jesus was more than just a great man, that he was the Messiah, but mankind has a tendency to ruin things.

                   Priests and pastors usually know most of the Bible and interpret things the way they believe, given the ambiguity, but most cannot teach you anything else that is relevant in this life. Most of the preachers I have met have been very ignorant in subjects like philosophy, mathematics, literature, and of course, science. Imagine being in a world where only Bibles existed in every library of the world, no other books, just the Bible. We wouldn’t have medicine, technology, or engineering (there wouldn’t even be libraries), basically we would just be slaves to a system with no independent mind, and we would live in rubble, frozen in time. Like people living in caves in Afghanistan. Most of the greatest minds that have ever lived didn’t believe in the biblical God. Paul Dirac, Richard Feynman, and Albert Einstein were geniuses of the highest caliber and being at such pedestal, they were able to see the truth concerning religion. Take for instance, what Richard Feynman says about this subject: 

“It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate the universe without man, as it was in a great part of its long history and as it is in a great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty are fully appreciated to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to see life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare and very exciting. It usually ends in laughter and a delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing—atoms with curiosity—that looks at itself and wonders why it wonders. Well, these scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it was all arranged as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.“ 

Now, clearly the Bible does not talk about atoms and all, but Feynman brings out an important point: everything is made of atoms, albeit atoms usually arranged in a super complex way. What would be the point of making such a complicated universe with so many galaxies and comets and stardust if God only wanted to watch a battle between good and evil? What do the galaxies that are so far away and the supernovas exploding and the asteroids colliding with planets have to do with good and evil? What do the little ants making a colony near the edge of the freeway have to do with God’s interest in this battle between light and dark? The ants are going about their business making a colony for the queen and establishing the well being of their society while people are just driving by, oblivious. God wouldn’t have added all the extras if they weren’t to be part of something more deep and intricate than merely observing a battle of good and evil. God does play with dice. Let’s take a look at another excerpt by this Nobel Prize winner:

“God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now, when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you’re taking away from God; you don’t need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven’t figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don’t believe the laws will explain, such as consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time — life and death — stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand. Therefore I don’t think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out.”

I totally agree with Dick Feynman on this. A long time ago, people would say apples fell from trees because God made them fall. It wasn’t until someone smart like Newton came and finally realized that apples fell due to the law of gravity, not because God flicked his invisible finger on them. After the law of gravity was confirmed, God wasn’t needed to explain why apples fell. The Aztecs, or more accurately, the Mejicas, sacrificed people to their gods because they could not explain the mystery of drought. They just figured the gods were angry and blood offered to them will bring rain again. We haven’t strayed too much from that premise. Our curiosity demands an answer, and if we do not have the answer, we assign the answer to be the will of God, at least the big, deep questions.

                   Albert Einstein once said, “Religion without science is blind, and science without religion is lame.” In other words, we need both branches to get somewhere, to advance the human race. Einstein viewed God as Nature. A God that is uninterested in the affairs of humankind. Call me crazy, but it sounds very appealing to me. At the end of the day, I do believe in God, but not the God that is so concerned with good versus evil and into the doings of every human being. The view evangelical Christians hold is that one must repent for all sins committed and accept Jesus Christ to gain entry into heaven. When in heaven all that must be done is glorify the Lord for an eternity. I seriously doubt that God created us to be mere zombies to glorify and sing to him and jump up and down for him for an eternity. That sounds more like a tyrant, the stuff of dictators, who repeatedly wants his subjects to show how great he is. I believe God created us for another purpose, what that purpose is no one knows. I tread without fear because I am a good person. In fact, I am more good and pure than some people that proclaim to be saved already. Don’t laugh! This isn’t reality TV.